MYRTLE BEACH — Even with little previous in-school instruction addressing the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Myrtle Beach Middle School sixth-graders say they have a basic idea of what happened on that day that changed America.

Myrtle Beach Middle principal Roger Gray said 9/11 had not previously been taught at the school.

“We teach South Carolina history and world history,” he said.

This school year, however, the curriculum was updated to include discussing Sept. 11 in fifth and seventh grade, as well as in high school, said Jeanie Dailey, Horry County social studies learning specialist for middle and high school.

“In fifth grade students have to explain the impact of Sept. 11 … and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. It’s also part of the seventh-grade curriculum,” she said. “And it’s taught in global studies, which is typically offered to sophomores in high school.”

Americans will mark 11 years since the terrorist attacks killed thousands in New York and Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, and the 11-year-old students said they have picked up information about what happened in 2001 from a variety of places. Most said they first learned of the events of 9/11 in school.

Shawnteena Melvin, 11, said she first learned of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, when she was 4 years old.

“My mom was talking about it and so then when I went to school there was videos about it and we learned about it in kindergarten,” she said.

Students cited being in third, fourth or fifth grade when first hearing about the attacks. Austin Fowler, 11, said he first learned the details of what happened the night before he found out he’d be interviewed by The Sun News.

“Wikipedia,” he said when asked where he learned about Sept. 11. When did he get the information? “Yesterday. … I’ve been studying all night.”

Others had prior knowledge of the events and what they meant to the country.

“It was about a man called Osama bin Laden, and he instructed a gang called al-Qaida to hijack a few planes at an airport and crash them into the Twin Towers,” Michael Van, 11, said.

All of the students said they were sad when they found out what happened that day 11 years ago.

“I was like, ‘Those poor people died for no reason,’ ” Alaa Ismail, 11, said.

Even though they were just months old – if that – when the attacks occurred, many of the students said they felt the attacks changed the way the nation and the world operated.

“[When] the Twin Towers got hit, people started not liking the kind of person that took over the plane. And it changed the world because a lot of people that got killed, their loved ones were really hurt,” Zackary Wallace, 11, said.

And Austin’s Wikipedia search gave him a different take.

“If that incident never occurred, we wouldn’t have sent troops into Iraq,” he said.

Contact MAYA T. PRABHU at 444-1722.