Colleges and High Schools to Observe 9/11 By JENNIFER MEDINA CHAPEL HILL, N.C., July 24 - The 1,100 students who attend Earlham College in West Richmond, Ind., can expect to spend at least part of Sept. 10 in workshops that recreate what they were thinking and doing on that date last year - and considering, in hindsight, how narrow their views of the world were. In Normal, Ill., the 150 students at the high school, like those at dozens of high schools in other states, will set aside five days around Sept. 11 for a course developed at Brown University that discusses questions like the differences between a freedom fighter and a suicide bomber. At the University of North Carolina here, all 3,500 freshmen will be required to read excerpts from the Koran, unless they write an essay to request an exemption, to prepare for small two-hour discussion groups that all are expected to attend, beginning late next month. Across the country this summer, colleges, high schools and even a few elementary schools plan to confront and commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in ways that they say would have been impossible in the emotional time immediately afterward. The forums will afford students and teachers opportunities to explore subjects like Islam and terrorism and to debate the merits of the United States' actions around the world before and after Sept. 11. Such plans have not come easily. School and community officials have spent hours agonizing over how to deal with those topics with sensitivity. "There are some who say that we have to maintain some respect for the dead by not asking these questions," said Kelly Keogh, an international relations teacher at the high school in Normal, 100 miles south of Chicago. "But aren't we doing them a better service by not giving simplistic answers?" Last fall and spring, Mr. Keogh said, he and his colleagues spent so much time dealing with students' feelings that there was little chance to discuss United States policy in Afghanistan, for example. Now, he said, enough time has passed to embark on a more substantive approach. Many school officials have contacted their counterparts in New York City and have been surprised to learn that no elaborate plans have been made there. The New York Board of Education, after consulting child psychologists, is advising principals to observe the date in the most unobtrusive way possible. "There are students here who witnessed tremendous trauma, not just on television or in ripples, but by seeing what happened or facing their own personal losses," said Francine Goldstein, chief executive of school support services for the city's Board of Education. "All of this can drag up some very difficult symbolism for both the children and the staff." As students lined up this week in Chapel Hill to buy copies of "Approaching the Qu'ran," a translation of 35 selections from the Koran, with commentary, a lawsuit was filed to absolve them of their reading assignment. On Monday, two members of a Virginia-based Christian group, the Family Policy Network, and three unnamed freshmen sued in Federal District Court in Greensboro, saying the university had violated the separation of church and state by making the book required reading. The president of the group, Joe Glover, said he was particularly worried about the essays that students would have to write to be exempted from discussing the Koran. "Can you imagine an 18-year-old little girl required to bring a sheet of paper to a discussion group defending her most deeply held beliefs?" Mr. Glover asked. "How can that be her first academic experience?" The university chancellor, James Moeser, said reading the Koran was no different from reading the Iliad or Greek myths. "When we do that, nobody ever accuses us of proselytizing Zeus," Mr. Moeser said. University officials declined to comment on the suit. Lawyers expect a preliminary hearing to be held by the middle of next month. At Chapel Hill, as at other colleges, freshmen have been asked over each of the last few summers to read the same book at the same time. When panel of professors and students began meeting in January to choose the title for this year, there was immediate consensus for choosing something related to Sept. 11, even though members said they knew that some people would oppose the choice. On the sprawling campus, where Muslims represent fewer than 1 percent of the student body, several dozen students interviewed this week said that they were proud of the choice. "For those who say this offends them," said Jen Daum, a major in international and political science who is president of the student body, "I say, `Welcome to college.' " On the high school and middle school levels, teachers and administrators say the anniversary is a "teachable moment," a time when students will be eager to explore the events and understand their context. That, in large part, attracted Mr. Keogh and his colleagues to the five-day terrorism curriculum developed by the Choices 21st Century Education program at Brown. More than 1,000 high schools say they intend to use the curriculum, which includes background readings, case studies, examination of cartoons and a simulation involving policy options. Broaching the subject of Sept. 11 in elementary school requires more delicacy, educators say, but that does not mean the anniversary will not be discussed. Child psychologists at Yale say they have received calls from elementary schools in New York City, as well as in Connecticut, Virginia and Maryland, for advice on the anniversary. Classes will proceed as scheduled for many school districts and universities, but at least 20 colleges, have canceled classes for Sept. 11 in favor of prayer services and teach-ins. At Earlham, the most educational activities will be the day before, as professors press students to acknowledge how naïve they were on Sept. 10 last year. "We should be thinking about how we can be change agents," said the college's provost, Len Clark. "We have to think constructively, not just mourn or remember."