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Beyond Blame: Reacting to the Terrorist Attack

A curriculum piece developed by Education Development Center, Inc. within a week after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

The curriculum piece Beyond Blame: Reacting to the Terrorist Attack is being on posted this website because we believe it may be useful in alleviating the tensions that result when an all too frequent series of events occur: a terrorist attack (or similar outrage on innocent civilians) is perpetrated, and it results in a society blaming the entire ethnic group to which the perpetrator belongs.

Download a pdf version of the Beyond Blame curriculum document.

Download a pdf version of Beyond Blame in Spanish.

For more information on Beyond Blame, read the article, "Helping Students Make Sense of 9/11."

If other countries have used the materials and have suggestions or results to contribute,
please contact us.

Marilyn Clayton Felt
February 11, 2005
Our World Task Force

Adaptation and use outside the US:

In both case cited below, "Beyond Blame" was used to in relation to incident of September 11, 2001.

In Canada: An adaptation was made for Canada, by the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center

The Canadian experience of internment of Japanese in World War II was similar to that of the United States. Adaptors describe the resulting materials this way: "We have left it as intact as possible, with amendments to handouts only as necessary to create a Canadian context for the activities."

In Lebanon: An adaptation of the Beyond Blame for Lebanon by Thalia Arawi

The Lebanese experience with the Beyond Blame Curriculum was slightly different in that the curriculum was not taken in its entirely due to time limits and to the time it took to prepare the minds of the youth for such a project. At the beginning, the idea of "not blaming" was not part of the dictionary precisely because of the nature of the life of blame that their history was tainted by. The triggering events were September 11 and October 8 (the invasion of Afghanistan). Beyond Blame worked in the classroom as an end in itself and as a means for other ends of which are the following:

Creating a culture of no blame
Allowing students to reflect on numerous values
Giving students a chance to see things from another perspective. They started blaming others but eventually, after a discussion of notions pertaining to values, rights, obligations, personhood, they actually changed their minds and even stopped blaming and started to sympathize with the plights of the other, who ever the other is, simply by virtue of him/her being a member of the human race.
Giving them a chance to talk about issues in a "public safe" where they feel they are secure and hence they can voice their opinion knowing that it is safe and that they will be heard and respected, which, I think, has a cathartic effect.
The final product was a magazine that they entitled "Beyond Blame".