Memorial visits & the impact they had?

My fiancée and I had a very spur of the moment conversation about memorials after my class went to one today. I’m 36F, he’s a 37M.

We both recalled really different experiences as students visiting places like Arlington, 9/11 memorials, Holocaust, etc.

Even as a kid, I recall finding places like that as sacred, serious experiences and being hung up with thought on those experiences long after they were over.

He recalls them as more fake feeling experiences with everyone standing around, pretending that they cared or felt something when they didn’t, and he just generally hoped to get them over with as quickly as possible.

I was a pretty serious, sensitive, and introspective kind of kid, but I remember feeling deeply affected by these trips.

I just wonder if others found these experiences similarly? I’ve been surprised in my last years of teaching to see a lot more parents (5th-8th graders) pull their kids from these kinds of things, and the kids who do attend seem to fall into the category of vaguely indifferent, to joking inappropriately, which of course is a coping method.