Media Matters for America has taken education/entertainment media giant Scholastic Inc. to task for its role in promoting the questionable ABC docudrama, “The Path to 9/11.”
The Democratic watchdog group found plenty not to like about the company’s “Student Resource Sheets” (
Scholastic is still making the sheets available online, but appears to have removed external links to the documents. A spokeswoman for the company said Scholastic had no comment on the matter at present.
I took a look at the sheets myself, and noted a couple other problems. To begin with, the sheets feature “critical thinking questions” that reference specific scenes in the movie — although the film isn’t a documentary and its creators, as we know, didn’t always stick to facts as they’re known.
Ironically, due to the film’s deviation from the historical record, it’s actually a great opportunity to teach kids critical thinking skills. Goodness knows, when coping with war, terrorism and civil liberties issues, the country needs as much critical thinking as it can muster. Alas, Scholastic has given students and teachers few of the facts they need to approach the film in that way.
Now, it’s not uncommon to take issue with educational materials — their creators can be masterful at getting facts right but the story wrong. That’s at least in part due to the constraints of the medium: You can only say so much in 50 or 100 words, written to a 6th-grade reading level.
But still, claiming that the Department of Homeland Security was “created in 2002 by President George W. Bush” is a gross oversimplification. The president resisted the idea from the outset, consenting only when DHS became a political inevitability.
Likewise, noting that the 9/11 Commission was “created by congressional legislation and chartered by
President Bush” is factually true, but does not give students the sense of how hard the White House fought against having just such a panel — Vice President Cheney personally “warned” a senior senator against investigating the attacks — and resisted cooperating with it, once it was created.
Scholastic has been responsible for some wonderful creations — I love Harry Potter as much as the next person. But writing history in a volatile era — for students who will soon need to think (and vote) for themselves — requires a more earnest dedication to giving them the facts. Or at least helping them ask the right questions.
Update: Since this post was published, Scholastic appears to have moved or taken down the “resource sheets.” We have removed our links to them to avoid confusion.
