by AFT President Sandra Feldman
September, 2002

Using our strength and
wealth to create a peaceful
planet is our obligation to
the children of the world.

This spring, I visited the new Jewish Museum in Berlin. The building, the work of American architect Daniel Libeskind, is extraordinary, but the Garden of Exile is especially powerful. It is a maze of forty-nine concrete pillars, with trees growing out of their tops. No surface in the garden is completely horizontal or vertical, so you feel unsteady and disoriented as you walk among the concrete trees. The Garden of Exile is a statement about the wanderings of the Jewish people, but it also made me think about the uncertainty that Americans now feel as they look back to a more innocent time that disappeared only a year ago.

We have gone from the comfortable existence we enjoyed before September 11, 2001, to a new and unfamiliar world where we are constantly kept off balance with warnings about terrorist attacks that could come at any time. Those in charge seek to reassure and protect us, but they can’t tell us what form attacks might take or how best to protect ourselves and our children. This sense of exile from a past in which we felt secure is difficult for everyone, but it is especially hard for young people.

Just how hard was made clear in a recent study of school children from all over New York City. Eighty-seven percent suffered from serious anxiety in the six months following the attack. Three-quarters of them said they often thought about the destruction of the World Trade Center, and a quarter said they had trouble concentrating or sleeping. Of course, these are children whose own city was attacked, but the emotional impact of September 11 did not stop at the Hudson River. If we need proof of that, we can find it in Messages to Ground Zero , a collection of letters written by schoolchildren from all over the country (and elsewhere in the world) to New York children. One child put it this way: "It was very scary here in Ohio, so it must have been VERY, VERY scary in New York."

How can we help young people deal with this changed world? In schools, as in families, we are feeling our way. Parents offer love and reassurance, and some schools provide counseling for youngsters who are particularly troubled. But the most important and reassuring lessons will come from the way the adult world deals with the crisis.

Young people learned about heroism from people who died on 9/11 and from the rescuers and the others who continued to work at ground zero long after the terrible day. Our kids discovered, too, that their country was strong and resolute and that it would not allow its citizens to be victims of terrorists. We would take the fight to its source and attempt to destroy those responsible for 9/11 while we also fought to free the Afghan people from the Taliban regime. That we could do these things has helped our children believe in the future.

And while we don’t usually think of foreign policy as something children care much about, they learn an important lesson when we defend ourselves militarily while we also help build democratic institutions and support economic growth in developing nations. They learn that military strength, democracy at home and abroad, and caring for others are compatible--and that all are necessary.

The U.S. can and should spend adequately on our military while still meeting our domestic needs, which include quality education and decent health care. We can and should do more to eradicate poverty--not just at home, but across the globe. It’s a mistake to blame terrorism on poverty; totalitarian murderers, as we have seen, often have quite a few resources at hand. But terrorism does find fertile ground in places where ordinary people cannot exercise basic rights and where they often go to bed hungry. History teaches us that democracy and prosperity are most likely to bring peace. Yet America gives far less than many other countries to foreign aid, and we don’t do nearly enough to build democracy.

A year after September 11, Americans are facing an enormous task, with no end in sight: We must not only protect and defend our country but also take the lead in creating a more prosperous and more democratic world. As we consider what all this will involve, the ground still seems unsteady beneath our feet. But using our strength and our wealth to create a peaceful planet is our obligation to our children and, indeed, to all the children of the world.