‘That’s just my own homeland security instinct’: teaching terror in times of war

Abstract

ABSTRACTFollowing the 11 September attacks, the United States exponentially expanded educational opportunities related to the global war on terror. The United States, for example, created hundreds of degree-granting college programmes in national security, high school homeland security studies programmes, ‘spy camps’ and online modules for children, and guidelines for teachers to identify students who may embrace extremist ideologies. I argue that these shifts in US public schooling contribute to what sociologist Jackie Orr (2004) calls the ‘militarization of inner space’, a process that ‘enlist[s] the psychological life of US citizens as a military asset’ in the on-going service of the global war on terror (455). Reorganized to meet the demands of a war increasingly fought in the spaces of everyday life, US schools serve as a key staging ground for the global war on terror.