Twenty-five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Tom Tiffany wants to make sure Wisconsin students know what happened that day — and why it still matters.
On Friday, the Republican candidate for governor called for Wisconsin schools to be required to teach students about the September 11 attacks, the nearly 3,000 Americans who were killed, and the acts of heroism and sacrifice that followed.
“Twenty-five years ago, America was forever changed when terrorists attacked our country,” Tiffany said. “We must never forget the 2,977 innocent lives taken, the first responders who ran toward danger, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back, and the Americans who answered the call to serve our country in the years that followed.”
For millions of younger Americans, however, 9/11 is no longer a memory. It is history–a history that is infrequently being actively taught in many Wisconsin schools.
About one-third of Americans were not yet born when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001, crashing two into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members fought back against the hijackers.
And as the generation that remembers watching the attacks unfold gets older, Tiffany says Wisconsin should make sure the lessons of that day aren’t lost with it.
Wisconsin currently requires schools to hold a “special observance” of September 11, but state law does not actually require schools to teach students about the terrorist attacks.That puts Wisconsin behind a number of other states that have already made 9/11 education part of their requirements for schools.
An Associated Press review published ahead of the 25th anniversary found that numerous states have requirements related to teaching September 11, as educators increasingly grapple with how to teach an event that none of today’s K-12 students–and even many of today’s teachers–were alive to witness.
Tiffany says Wisconsin should join those other states to ensure that Wisconsin students receive in depth education on one of the most defining events in modern American history.
“As the number of Americans with a personal memory of 9/11 grows smaller, our responsibility to teach its history grows greater,” Tiffany said. “Future generations must understand what happened on September 11 so that America never forgets.”
The passage of 25 years marks a turning point in how Americans remember the attacks. For older generations, September 11 is a vivid memory — where they were when they heard the news, the images of smoke pouring from the Twin Towers, and the stories of first responders running toward danger as others fled.
But for many Wisconsin students, it’s merely an event that occurred in a distant past — a couple of lines in a history textbook, a five-minute classroom acknowledgment each September, or an obligatory moment of silence for nearly 3,000 people whose stories they may have never actually been taught. For others, their introduction to 9/11 may come not from a teacher at all, but through a 30-second TikTok clip, an edgy conspiracy video, or whatever an algorithm happens to feed them that day.
Tiffany argues that the memories of that day have to be passed down to the next generation. That means teaching not only the horror of the attacks themselves, but the stories of the Americans who sacrificed their lives to save others, the passengers aboard Flight 93 who fought back, and the sense of patriotism and national unity that swept the country in the days that followed.
“Never Forget” has been America’s promise for a quarter-century. But for a generation of Wisconsin students born long after the smoke cleared over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, keeping that promise increasingly depends on making sure they are taught what happened — and why America vowed never to forget it.
