We inherit history through the stories, images, and memories others share with us.

Research shows collective memory is shaped through communication, not simply preserved.

Teaching 9/11 today shows how one generation passes meaning to the next.

I was five years old on September 11, 2001.

This year, the 25th anniversary of 9/11 fell on a day I was teaching my communication and composition course. Standing in front of a room of 18- and 19-year-olds, I realized we occupied very different relationships to the event.

I was alive when it happened, but I was too young to understand the enormity of what I was watching. My memories are fragments, tangled together with everything I learned later from my parents, teachers, news footage, documentaries, photographs, memorials, and the stories our culture has continued to tell about that day. At this point, I’m honestly not sure what I actually remember and what I’ve reconstructed from everything I learned later.

My students occupy an entirely different position... They didn’t exist yet.

So, on the 25th anniversary of September 11, I decided we should spend at least part of class talking about it. For my students, 9/11 has always been history. And that raised a question that felt particularly appropriate for a communication course:

How do we remember something we don't actually remember?

The memories we inherit

I wanted my students to think about how they came to know 9/11 in the first place.

So I asked them a simple question:

Where did your knowledge of 9/11 come from?

Maybe from a parent or grandparent who remembers exactly where they were. Maybe from a classroom. Maybe from photographs of the Twin Towers. Maybe from television specials shown every September. Maybe from a memorial. Maybe from social media.

For my students, nearly everything they know about September 11 has been communicated to........

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