Jimmy raised his hand, his face concerned as he asked, "How many people are there like this?" He was referring to the recent terrorist attack on neighboring New York.

     Ms. Amy, the classroom teacher putting on a reassuring smile answered thoughtfully, selecting her words carefully. "That sort of thing is rare, so very rare. That's what made it so unexpected. It's unlikely you'll ever meet people like this. The people who did this had a rough life they couldn't handle. But even the millions who've had rough lives are by nature good, so they'd never do something like this; never mind how rough their lives."

     To her consternation Ms. Amy, an attractive young teacher with already five years experience, realized that what she had said wasn't working. The strangely blank faces of her sixth graders were staring back at her. Why had her thoughtful statement failed to reassure them? She tried again, telling them of the wonderful people who came to rescue the stricken. How they risked their own lives. But even after most of the period had been devoted to stories of "good people" the strangely blank faces of her students continued to stare at her. What was wrong? Why weren't the children getting what she was saying?

     Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before? Participation was what was needed. So she asked her students for stories of good deeds. Dutifully her charges raised their hands and produced more examples of heroism by the firemen, by the police. But her students' stories had a lackluster quality. As she told me later, it was as if the children had obediently gone through the requested ritual merely to please her. Their blank faces continued to stare at her. Finally she asked, "What is it? The chances are you'll never meet bad people like the ones that did this. So there's really no reason for you to be frightened." This reassuring statement was met with uncomfortable shuffling in the seats. She recognized the familiar shuffling. It meant that her reassurance was being questioned, and that her charges were having trouble finding the words to tell her why. They always shuffled that way when they were having trouble putting their ideas into words.

     "Can you describe what it is about the people who did this that makes them so scary?" More shuffling. However, the faces had stopped being blank. She knew she was on the right track. But no hands were raised. Was it that they didn't know what frightened them so? Or was it that they didn't want to say it? Maybe both? Finally as a shot in the dark she asked, "Do any of you know people who you think might do something like this?" More shuffling. But to her shock Ms. Amy realized that there had been a response in some of the faces. Then to her relief, before she would have to ask for more, the period was over.

     Ms. Amy is a young friend of mine. We frequently meet, including at the local supermarket malls in our small New England towns. "I don't know what this is about," was her introduction to the description of what had happened in her class that day. "These kids don't know people like those terrorists. So what gives?"

     As she told me about the strange behavior of her class I remembered vividly my own childhood. I too had similar concerns like those of her youngsters. Maybe many of us have had such apprehensions as children. And then as we grow older we push those concerns out of our minds. We forget. It is just too unpleasant a knowledge to carry around with you; a reality we do not want, or for that matter cannot face. Except there are those of us who cannot forget.

     When I was a child, would I have been able to put into words what I had understood on an emotional level? Not without a great deal of help. However, now almost half a century later I can describe what it was I had grasped emotionally, even though at the time I lacked the words: just as Jimmy and some other students in Ms. Amy's class lacked the words.

     My friend interrupted my childhood recollections with, "So what do I do?"

     How could I help her understand? What could I tell her? These were my thoughts when she again interrupted my search for words. This time with, "And stop shuffling. You're as bad as the kids." No surprise there since I had just returned to my own childhood.

     But how to explain to this dedicated young teacher what I felt sure she would not want to hear; for that matter would resist hearing. Perhaps there was a time in her own childhood when she too had understood what some of her sixth graders had grasped emotionally. But as she grew older she had probably forgotten this knowledge, or repressed it - as they say in the jargon of my profession.

     My friend repeated, "What do I do? What do I say to my kids?"

     "Why don't you try the truth?"

     She stared at me with a puzzled expression. "What do you mean? I told them about all the good things people did, about the rescuers, the firemen, the cops. Some of whom even gave their lives. And I told the children that they were safe in our beautiful New England. That no one was going to harm them."

     "But that wasn't the question. The question was about the terrorists and their similarity to people some of the kids know."

     "But they don't know anybody like that. Where could they have gotten that crazy idea? They just don't know anybody like that."

      How was I going to explain to this very decent friend and teacher that her charges had drawn the same conclusion I had when I was a child? I had experienced first hand that there are people who get a kick out of hurting others. Today's kids would probably describe it as getting turned on by making awful things happen - like those high schoolers in Littleton, Colorado who tried to blow up their school and successfully gunned down some of their classmates. The affective power of the destructive turn on was so great for those boys that it included killing themselves after their attack, leaving behind videotape for law enforcement to find. The video showed them gloating in anticipation of the horror they were about to create.

     As a child I had observed that when people indulged themselves in cruelty they usually claimed they had good and necessary reasons. But I knew they were lying. I had already observed the human technique of justifying one's actions by hiding behind an excuse that would exonerate something one shouldn't be doing. Every child knows about that; because every child has done it. And you're not very old before you realize that there are adults who do the same thing. And you've also met the adult who pretends virtue when the truth would make them look very bad or even evil.

      "You're shuffling again. You really are just like the kids!" This from a friend half my age! So I tried.

     "It's not that our children know any terrorists. Of course they don't. But as their fear indicated, they do know people who, if they could find some excuse, or encouragement, perhaps even an insane leader to lead them, would send us all to kingdom come; including themselves - as did those Colorado kids and the terrorists of the World Trade Center. Such people find acts of destruction worth doing because the contemplation of the ensuing pain and mayhem gives them so much pleasure. . . "

     "No!!!" My friend almost screamed as she stomped off.

     Ms. Amy takes her teaching very seriously. So it was no surprise when she called me the next day after school. Our conversation went something like this: "I wouldn't have believed this. But when I repeated my question if any of them thought they knew people who might do something this awful I could see nods from a lot of the kids. But that's as far as I got. Everyone clammed up after that. You know this really scares me. I don't understand what this is about, but it scares me."

     It was evident that Ms. Amy's love for her charges meant that she was ready to face a horrifyingly ugly truth. So I told her:

     "It scares me too, just as it scares your kids. I think some of them have discovered mankind's terrifying secret, the one we all have trouble facing. We often pretend that the big secret is who sleeps with whom. But that isn't that big a secret. The really big horrendous secret is that hate and destruction can be satisfying, even pleasurable; like those people who danced with joy in the streets after seeing the scenes of bodies flying out of the crumbling Word Trade Center on their TV screens. What makes it worse is that there are people who get addicted to this kind of enjoyment.

     In my pre-graduate training one of my professors, an experienced professional, warned us that this particular addiction is the most malignant of all. For contrary to the other addictions like heroin, alcohol, or even gambling it is, in its virulence, resistant to therapy. In the last few years brain research findings have led to the hypothesis that the first stage of addictions is under volitional control, but once established there are permanent neurological changes, and these are the reasons for the therapeutic resistance.

     "But how could my sixth graders have even a glimmering of all this neurological stuff? Come on. These are children."

     "Of course they don't know about the possible neurological underpinnings. But what some of them do know is the emotional core of violent behavior. Just as a good watchdog knows from the movements of a person if there is hostile intent, if that is a dangerous individual, so does many a child. Such knowledge has survival value.

     While children may be aware of the destructive joy involved in terrorism, the reasons that terrorists give for their actions are frequently incomprehensible to them. Children may even perceive these justifications as phony excuses. Instead they sense the real reason, the real motivation. They have met people who are turned on by hate and destruction. And that's why some in your class recognize the sort of person who might, given special circumstances, also become a terrorist. And that intuitive knowledge is what truly frightens them."

     "But why Jimmy of all people? He's got the sweetest parents. I've met them, and have seen how they treat him. They're so proud of their intelligent son. He always struck me as such a secure youngster."

     "Perhaps that's why, from the security of his base, he was able to observe the outside world. And maybe that's why, aside from being very perceptive, he was able to draw such frightening conclusions."

     The moment I said this, scenes from my own childhood came flooding back. I had experienced first hand adults who reveled in the joy of inflicting pain. The Nazi elementary school I attended tried to indoctrinate us elementary school children in this joy. And I remembered my mother's horror when she realized what was happening. To counter the indoctrination she lovingly told me stories that gave me the secure moral base from which to deal with what the school taught. When I recently gathered my recollections under the title of COME ALL YE CHILDREN I recognized the importance of what she had done. Her battle for my soul had given me my identity. Her stories and loving concern made me aware of mankind's horrendous secret, but more importantly they established a secure moral base from which to resist it within myself. Her teachings gave me an understanding why we must be victors in our struggle against hate and destruction: why instead of destroyers we must be builders. This was an experience to be shared with other teachers and parents.

     I shared some of these childhood experiences with my friend in our several lengthy conversations. To her surprise she started to remember some of her own childhood experiences. They made her wonder whether there had been a time when she too had been aware of mankind's horrendous secret - just like some of the youngsters in her class. After a while she wondered, "How could I have forgotten?" We agreed that human memory is a strange thing: that we sometimes forget because we wish to forget.

     We talked about the education of children. My friend raised the problematic possibility that violent films, web sites and computer games, can trigger the pleasure in destruction and hate. Were these what had started the Colorado boys on their journey that destroyed so many lives?

     We talked about the myth of Satan. How Satan not releasing the souls that have become his represents an allegory which accurately describes the resistance to therapeutic intervention that characterizes the addiction to hate and destruction. And we talked about the Hitlers of the past and the bin Ladens of the present. It was adult talk; a little too heavy for a class of eleven-year olds.

     More appropriate for her sixth graders (all of whom seem to have read the Harry Potter books) would be Lord Voldemort of the Harry Potter series whose underlings are terrorists that call themselves death eaters. Here is an allegory about the dangers as well as the seductive power of hate and destruction that children can understand on an emotional level without being terrified. And the success of Harry Potter in overcoming evil explains at least in part the popularity of the series. Stories like these and my own tales of the Vooroos, who are happy when they're unhappy as well as the story of the Purple Witch help children cope with a reality they perceive emotionally. But most important and reassuring is the implication that we can all become Harry Potters, or in my stories Vad, Mimi and Happy Cat. We can all resist the forces of hate and destruction, outside as well as within us. Which was what the heroic firemen and volunteers did in our real world.

     Finally we talked about how most of us adults have always known on an emotional level what acts of terror are about - despite our denials and lame explanations. We recognize that we too have moments of enjoying hate and destruction for which we try to find some excuse. And so we are frightened by what we sense in ourselves. Some would say we are frightened for our immortal soul. The emotional cloud that hung over us for weeks after we saw those horrendous scenes of the New York skyscrapers crashing may in part reflect this knowledge. Those scenes forced us, at least for the moment, to face a terrifying aspect of being human.

     It is this knowledge that made the response of the firemen and the volunteers so important. Their acts of love and dedication were like an anthem to the heavens: a message that they are not addicted to the joys of hate and destruction. And people from all over the country joined them and sent their love and support, raising a chorus throughout the land: "We get no joy out of hate and destruction. We are the builders, the consolers of the stricken of the world." That's what made those deeds, those feelings so important. It was a powerful communication sent by us, to us.

     It was an exhilarated Ms. Amy who called several days after our long talks. Here is a summary of what her excited voice related: "My sixth graders have been incredible. We've had the most marvelous sessions ever. We talked about myths, about allegories, about world literature dealing with violence. We talked about what we must do to block hate and destruction both outside and inside ourselves. How we can struggle against violence. The kids got all excited. I guess what had really bothered them was a feeling of helplessness, knowing that hate and destruction is a potential all around them. But once they had understood that there is a way to counter such potential ugliness, such potential evil, they stopped feeling helpless. They repeated the heart stopping accounts of the heroic firemen and the volunteers. But this time those stories meant something to them.

     "Then a funny thing happened. Remember how you and I talked about how there are scenes in the Harry Potter books that are allegorical descriptions of hate and destruction? Well, after I described to the class how allegories represent a sort of metaphor of what goes on in the real world little Melissa raised her hand and said, 'We must all become Harry Potters, like those firemen and all those people who helped.' At first everyone laughed. So she said, 'I don't mean become wizards and do magic. I mean. . . we must all get together and say no to the bad guys.' At that point the whole class decided, 'Yeah! That's right!' We had a long discussion after that. The kids were marvelous. As a teacher I was amazed that they had actually understood the concept of allegory!"

     "By the end of the week it was like a big cloud had lifted for my sixth graders. They went out excited about what they could and would do. It was like they had come to an understanding how to make this a safer and better world. And you know what? I think they will."