The Incredible Discoveries of Ian J. Spector

Ten years ago, I was in ninth grade (apologies if that makes anyone feel old), finishing my third and final year at a small private school on Long Island, about 20 miles from New York City.

Like so many other stories you’ve probably heard over the years, the day was like any other. But because somehow I’m a magnet for strange things, the day continued like any other Tuesday. At the end of the day, I got on the bus to head home. It took much longer than normal, around an hour and a half longer than it should have. The Long Island Expressway and the Northern and Southern State Parkways (the major east/west arteries servicing the island) were closed to traffic. I remember coming home after 5:00 pm and putting on the looping Traffic & Weather channel to see what was going on. There’s never really much dialogue on it, usually just music, and there were no explanations of why the roads were closed.

My mom came in the den and told me to put on the news instead. And that’s when I found out about what happend that morning, almost 8 hours later.

The school I was attending, the Long Island School for the Gifted, had intentionally decided to not announce to anyone what had happened that morning. It was a very small, K-9 school. And by ‘small,’ I mean no more than 30 kids per grade. My class that year had fewer than 15.

It wasn’t until the last few years that I became irked by the school’s decisions to not reveal the news to the students. And to tell all the teachers to continue as normal. In retrospect, the faculty was so good at hiding the news that it still leaves an unethical and creepily uncanny taste in my mouth. The administration had also told/required every bus driver of the dozens of busses that brought the hundreds of students back home to not discuss or explain what had been going on. 

To date, I have never met a single person anywhere in the country who had a similar experience.

Following that day, the school had informed us that the reason for their deception was because they weren’t sure if any students’ parents were victims of the attacks. Personally, I always thought that was a load of crap because it was such a small school that I’m fairly certain that they knew where everyone’s parents worked and such, but obviously I don’t have proof of this.

That being said, I can understand why a school may not want to tell a bunch of young kids, even ‘gifted’ ones, about a major terrorist strike on the country because that’s a real tall order. But this was the kind of place where we had to take the SAT in seventh grade. It was the kind of place where kindergarteners were taught Spanish. It was the kind of place where ninth graders were taking classes that most kids wouldn’t take until junior or senior year of high school.

[For some somewhat unrelated, but additional context, it was also the place that hired a teacher who In 2007, pled guilty to possession of kiddie porn. Believe it or not, it gets weirder than that, especially the school’s response. Yes, he was a teacher of mine for a brief period. No, he did not molest me. Yes, we all knew he was kind of weird and none of us were too surprised to hear the news.]

Is it really so inconceivable that our (and by ‘our,’ I’m referring to the older students) fragile little minds couldn’t be made aware of the news? Even just a “something bad happened today?” Hell, there were kids at Stuyvesant High School, just blocks away from the World Trade Center,  who were also our age who lived through the whole ordeal.

There’s a fancypants latin term called in loco parentis. Wikipedia describes it as “the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent.” Basically, schools have a responsibility to act kind-of-parentally to students under certain conditions. Find me a parent who would intentionally conceal to their kids (at least the ones old enough to understand) news of a terrorist attack within driving distance of home and continue the day as if nothing had happened.

So let me ask you this: Doesn’t it seem grossly irresponsible for school administrators to not alert its own students, in at least the vaguest sort of way, that half of the largest terrorist attack in American history took place just 20 miles away? You know … just in case? Let’s say things were much worse on that day. What would it have taken for them to break the news or evacuate? What if a student’s family member actually was a victim? Is it fair to make them go through the entire day only to find out when they got off the bus that a loved one had died and the adults running the school pretended like nothing happened? It was a crazy, horrible day for everyone, everywhere. I don’t see that as a reasonable excuse for inaction. Especially from educators.

Just think about that next time you’re thinking about private school.