Teaching Highschooler's About Terrorism

This article "ethnographically explores a specialized Homeland Security program at a US public high school, paying careful attention to the program’s discursive constructions of terrorism and national security (Nguyen, 2018, p. 841). " Students experiences consisted of "hands-on learning opportunities, field trips to national security hubs, guest speakers, and newly designed Homeland Security courses, Milton’s program trained students in the skills and knowledge necessary for carrying out low-level work in the security industry. Students diligently prepared to secure jobs as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, ‘military grunts’, ‘beat’ cops, Northrop Grumman engineers, detectives, US Customs and Border Protection officers, National Security Agency (NSA) custodians and landscapers, and cybersecurity technicians (Nguyen, 2018, p. 842).

The program taught the students "‘anybody can be a terrorist’, while teaching students how to identify potentially dangerous people and places, sometimes through Orientalist frameworks. Milton students thus came to reject racialized definitions of a terrorist that depicted Muslim and Arab people as threats (Nguyen, 2018, p. 842)." In the program, students were showed students examples of domestic and foreign terrorists. This showed students that there are also terrorists right here in America. I question which groups they studied and classified as terrorist groups and if the public at large would classify these people as terrorist groups. For example, Black Lives Matter has been called a terrorist group and their behavior thus far hasn't shown me that. So I wonder what groups they used, was it black lives matter, the KKK here in America, people like Dylan Roof who shoot people in an all black church?

I love that students learned to question their initial reactions sense there initial racialized reactions were wrong. "Students prided themselves on developing a ‘more advised’, rather than ‘biased’, understanding of terrorism. Yet, students simultaneously learned to identify the ‘red flags’ that pre-emptively signaled a threat, sometimes through Orientalist frameworks. This process strategically reaffirmed the very racialized understandings of terrorism students sought to reject (Nguyen, 2018, p.854)." This suggests that there is still more work to be done but that steps were taken in the right direction. I think we can all benefit from this practice because we all have some kind of bias. The author also discussed how those who have gone to war have had their view of Afghans shaped by their experiences in the war.

I struggle with this topic because I want to be safe. However, I also don't want people to racially profiled and be negatively impact just based on their identity. We know that international terrorist groups murder people but this does not mean that all Afghans should be profiled and treated badly as a result. We also know the predominant terrorist attacks that occur in school shootings are overwhelmingly white men but this does not mean all white boys should be profiled and treated badly as a result. One of the things that they seem to try to battle this with is objective profiling. However, I also realize that authorities need to be able to take action to be able to keep citizens safe. I love that this school is training students to understand that anyone can be terrorist, to examine their initial reactions, and assess risk and reduce risk (threat + vulnerability = risk) They were taught that we can never be threat-free but the risk can be significantly reduced. "The program taught students to imagine the US as vulnerable to an imminent, if not catastrophic, terrorist attack that could come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. Yet the program also suggested that terrorist threats could be made knowable, quantifiable, and predictable. Such framing situated terrorism as an unpredictable but manageable problem. (Nguyen, 2018, p.842). I was overall shocked that this material was being taught at the high school level. If I am understanding correctly the author has a problem with these technologies because they lead to "social sorting that reinforces social difference (Lyon, 2003 in Nguyen, 2018). I guess I could see this as an issue if it is leading to negative outcomes for innocent people.

Nguyen discusses her work in this area. I encourage you to view the video to access deeper insight into her views.

References

Nguyen, N. (2018). Educating force multipliers: constructing terrorism (Links to an external site.) in a US public high school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(6), 841–855.