Incorporating the Real World into Fiction

the following quote was taken from an article on WashingtonPost.com titled

Wrestling With the Lessons of 9/11: Teachers Take Varying Tacks to Help Students Grasp Historical Significance

found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101171.html?nav=rss_education

Of bin Laden, students called him a fanatic who sought to build hatred toward this country. One said bin Laden disliked the United States because of its wealth and power. "It's like 'A Tale of Two Cities,' " said Goutham Peddi, 15, a junior, "the powerful against the poor."

I read this bit of the article and it made me start to wonder... could lessons or even sections of curriculum be planned around historical events in our history? It might be more work than the results would warrant, but it seems a reasonable endeavor to think about lessonplans in context of real world events like 9/11 and think of how to meld the two together. This example of how "A Tale of Two Cities" can incorporate into discussion about real world events is a good one. I think that doing this might help bring out aspects of a text that reading-unfriendly students may not have seen. For example, a student interested in politics and law might have an aversion to reading fiction... maybe instruction like this would help to bring a new light of understanding and appreciation for classic and YA pieces of literature.

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P.S. note:
Another piece to support this from this article:

Many students marked the fifth anniversary of the attacks this week with various assignments and classroom discussions. Brian Jeffrey, who teaches English at Los Osos, asked his students to write a journal entry on what their lives were like the day before and day after Sept. 11, 2001. "It's something I ask my students to do every year as a way to compare and contrast the significance of this event in their lives," Jeffrey said. According to Jeffrey, his high school students were relatively young at the time and their memory of the terrorist attacks has gotten hazy. [...] One student recently asked Jeffrey what year the attacks took place. Jeffrey, who is preparing to teach George Orwell's "1984," is hoping to incorporate the book's themes in discussions of civil liberties and the war on terrorism. The English teacher said as each year passes, his students' perspectives on world events change and they tend to be more trusting of the government.