REMEMBRANCE

Remembrance. This is the word every adult uses on 9/11. However, the generation in schools across America today don’t remember 9/11. Instead, they were taught about it. The events on this day were some of the worst in the history of America. Schools everywhere spend this day solemnly, but the students in school these days only know what they have been taught. The day is more of a history lesson for students today than a day to remember the way America was before. September 11th is a day that will be taught and remembered as America’s biggest wake-up call.

Before the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, America lived almost separately from the rest of the world. Americans were fooled into a false sense of security, a sense of being untouchable. When the towers were hit, no one could believe that it was intentional, let alone an act of terrorism. The Americans of this time had the security to lose, and they did. The students in school today never had it in the first place.

The attacks that happened on 9/11/2001 were sixteen years ago. This does not seem like what we normally think of as history, because we are used to hearing in school about things that happened centuries ago, but it is. I was not alive when the attacks happened, and many of the students in school now were too young to remember the event. This means that anything we know about the attacks was taught to us in a classroom not through personal experience. We have no idea what life was like before America received the biggest wake-up call in history.

The events that went down over sixteen years ago are remembered solemnly by the adults of our time. However, enough time has past where the students in school today only know what they have been taught through their years of school. Students of America may not completely understand the gravity of the events and how they changed America forever.