Yesterday, my 14-year-old sister came home from school in a state of disbelief. All day at school, she watched reports of airplanes flying into the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse, and into the Pentagon, together killing thousands. She watched as President Bush was flown from spot to spot across the country for protection.
With all her questions, hurt and confusion, I realized how little she knew of the world.
In school, they teach us history. To many, that is all we see it as – history.
Yes, my sister knew of Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the assassination of President Kennedy. Yet, in her lifetime, she has never been able to fathom an event of this magnitude. She will never be able to understand the reasons and causes for Tuesday’s events, because she has not been taught the differences in cultures of people around the world. As many of us think we can, but really cannot, she has no way to know or even imagine what life would be like to live in another country.
So, does this justify what happened yesterday? Absolutely not.
However, it was certainly a wake up call to many of us.
Tuesday, I realized how much we take for granted. My home feels so safe and secure to me. My family, my friends, my religion, my education, my job, everything that is sacred to me, I now realize could be swept away in an instant. But, it is the foundation of our democracy that has provided these sacred things to me, and for that I will be forever thankful, and will learn not to take my life or my country for granted any longer.
Even here in Tennessee, it is hard for me to fathom what the people in New York and Washington are going through.
I hurt and sympathize, but I will never really know what it would feel like to be there. To lose a loved one in that way, or to feel the fear the passengers felt in their last moments on those aircraft.
I watched today as names of faceless people went across the television screen, one after the other. I saw names of families, children, students on a field trip, a television producer, rescue workers and many more.
“Imagine all the knowledge we have lost,” my mother said last night. Those words cut like a knife, for they ring so true.
But now as a country we must do the only thing we can do, we must pull together and stand firm.
We must find some way to memorialize those we have lost, and learn from this situation.
We must educate our students with more than just statistics. We must teach them about humanity, and to value all human life.

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