EdNews Virginia | September 12, 2026
As Americans paused yesterday to solemnly mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a stark contrast emerged in how the nation’s students are being taught about the tragedy. While U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a nationwide call for robustly honest lessons, Virginia’s largest public school division is now engulfed in controversy over a guide that allegedly sanitizes the hard realities of the attacks.
In a news release and official guidance issued by the Department of Education this week, Secretary McMahon challenged educators across the nation to properly honor the nearly 3,000 Americans who died 25 years ago.
“A quarter century has passed since that terrible day, but we must never forget what September 11th means for the United States,” Secretary McMahon wrote. “This year, I call on American schools to educate students with moral clarity about the events of that day and its significance for the Nation’s history.”
Just miles from the Pentagon, Fairfax County Public Schools took a very different approach.
According to internal teaching guidance obtained and reported on by Fox News, the school division explicitly listed under its “Do” and “Don’t” instructions that educators should not “associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims” and must not “center the extremists or the acts of the extremists.” Instead, the district’s administration advised teachers to be sure to create “safe spaces” for Muslim students.
The guide states that commemorations should focus on “those whose lives were lost and those who sacrificed to help others — not those who attacked the United States.”
Furthermore, the document claims the anniversary “may intensify anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Eastern rhetoric.” The guidance tells educators that speaking out against anti-Muslim bias is their “sacred role as teachers” and mandates that if they hear students or colleagues using “Islamophobic rhetoric,” then “it is up to you to disrupt.”
According to the school division, focusing a commemorative lesson on the 9/11 hijackers and their motives could send the “harmful message” that “Islam, or all Muslims, are responsible for these terrorist attacks.”
The directive has drawn blistering criticism, notably from those who lived through 9/11’s terror firsthand. Retired Vice Adm. Lou Crenshaw was inside the Pentagon that day. In comments to Fox News, he argued that glossing over the role of Islamism fails to give students “a sense of urgency or the evilness of what actually happened.”
Former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares joined the condemnation, slamming the guidance for valuing ideological goals over historical truth.
“Fairfax County Public Schools ordered teachers to ‘leverage a critical lens’ when discussing 9/11,” Miyares posted on X. “If they want to provide the proper ‘critical lens’ on 9/11, explain to students the horror of watching 3,000 fellow Americans being executed on live television for the sole crime of being American — including the loved ones of many of your students.”
Miyares further likened the district’s curriculum to “trying to teach Pearl Harbor and leaving out the fact that we were attacked by the Japanese Empire. It’s that absurd.”
READ MCMAHON’S ‘DEAR COLLEAGUES’ LETTER: