Cruelty in the classroom

By Justin Goodman

Now that kids are back in school, parents everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief. The frantic search for school supplies is over, and most kids are settling in to their new routines. But don’t relax just yet, Mom and Dad: You still have some homework to do. Your assignment: Find out if cruelty is on the curriculum.

If animal dissections are included in this year’s lesson plan, the answer is “Yes.”

As early as middle school, most students are forced by their teachers to cut up intact frogs, fetal pigs and other animals. Only 15 states have passed laws or resolutions that allow students to opt out of animal dissections. But even in states where such laws exist, students who choose not to dissect can be ostracized or ridiculed by their peers and teachers. A New Jersey eighth-grader who opted out of dissection had the remains of a dead frog placed in her purse by her teacher and was ordered to carry a dead animal across campus.

Educators often ignore or are unaware of the abundant data documenting the superiority of non-animal teaching methods and commonly tell their impressionable young students that dissection is vital to a successful science education. Who are 12-year-olds to argue?

They don’t know that each of the more than 10 million animals who are killed and cut open in classrooms every year represents not only a life lost but also part of a trail of animal abuse. Some animals used for dissection are caught in the wild; others come from breeding facilities that cater to businesses that use animals in experiments. Or they are lost or abandoned animal companions who were sold by an animal shelter to a biological supply company. 

PETA investigators who went undercover at one biological supply company documented cases in which animals were removed from gas chambers and injected with formaldehyde without first being checked for vital signs—a violation of the Animal Welfare Act. The investigators’ video footage documents cats and rats struggling during injection. One rabbit, still alive after being gassed, tried to crawl out of a wheelbarrow that was full of water and dead rabbits. Employees laughed as a coworker drowned the animal. 

For both ethical and educational reasons, cutting up the organs of dead animals is not the best way to introduce students to modern scientific methods.

Nearly every published comparative study has concluded that non-animal learning tools, such as virtual dissection software, teach anatomy and complex biological processes as well as, or better than, animal dissection. Two recent peer-reviewed studies show that even something as simple as building body structures out of clay is superior to cat dissection when it comes to teaching anatomy to college students. Last year, the National Science Teachers Association amended its official position statement to approve the use of non-animal alternatives as replacements for dissection. 

Using non-animal science education tools also more accurately reflects what students will encounter if they go on to medical school. Today, nearly 95 percent of U.S. medical schools have abandoned the use of animals; instead, they use non-animal methods that rely on sophisticated tools such as human-patient simulators. 

Educators need to bring themselves up to date on the emerging areas of medical and scientific research that rightly view the use of animals as not only unethical but also antiquated. Concerned parents can take action, too, by urging their local school board to ban classroom dissections or at least give all students the option of doing a non-animal project. In this day and age, using dissection to train students for the modern scientific world is like preparing kids for calculus with an abacus.

Justin Goodman is a research associate supervisor for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) as well as an adjunct faculty member in the department of sociology and criminal justice at Marymount University in Arlington, Va. He may be reached c/o PETA at 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; http://www.PETA.org/dissection.

Turning kids into killers

A new Wisconsin law begs the question: How low will hunting lobbyists go?

In an effort to revive a dying sport, states across the country are loosening hunting restrictions and putting loaded weapons into younger and younger hands. The Wisconsin law, which went into effect this month, lowers the state’s hunting age from 12 to 10. Since 2004, more than a dozen other states have also changed their laws to allow younger children to hunt. According to the Associated Press, 30 states do not even have a minimum hunting age.

But teaching children how to kill can be downright dangerous—and not just to Bambi and his friends.

In 2008, the Tulsa World in Oklahoma (a state that has no minimum hunting age) analyzed reports compiled by the International Hunter Education Association of hunting-related injuries and fatalities. Of the more than 6,650 hunting accidents included in the group’s database since 1994, nearly 35 percent involved hunters who were 21 years old or younger.

An analysis by Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel found that young hunters were more than twice as likely to cause accidents as other hunters. During the 2007–8 hunting season in Georgia, four of the five fatal incidents involved children or teenagers. Among those killed was an 8-year-old boy who died after shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun.

While these were clearly accidents (“waiting to happen,” some would add), some young hunters have deliberately taken aim at other human beings. Earlier this year, the nation was shocked by news reports about an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy who allegedly shot and killed his father’s pregnant fiancée. According to the reports, Jordan Brown’s father had given his son a youth-model 20-gauge shotgun for Christmas. Jordan used the gun to win a turkey shoot on Valentine’s Day and then, allegedly, to kill 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk execution-style as she slept.

All the students involved in school shootings in recent years first “practiced” on animals, and many of them were hunters. In 1998, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Ark., took the hunting guns belonging to Golden’s grandfather and used them to ambush their fellow students, killing four girls and one teacher.

David Ludwig, who is serving a life sentence for shooting and killing his 14-year-old girlfriend’s parents in Lititz, Pa., when he was 18, was an avid deer hunter. Photos on Ludwig’s blog showed his grinning face as he disemboweled the bloody deer he had just shot. In 2006, the Pennsylvania Game Commission launched the Mentored Youth Hunting Program to encourage more young people to hunt.

It’s no secret why hunters are taking aim at state hunting laws. Hunters are fast becoming an endangered species. The number of hunters in the U.S. dropped from a peak of 19.1 million in 1975 to just 12.5 million in 2006. Between 2001 and 2006—the last year for which national figures are available—hunters’ numbers fell by 4 percent.

But is handing an immature 10-year-old a gun the answer? In a letter to the Wisconsin State Assembly, the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics says, “No.” The group reminded lawmakers that young children are not “developmentally ready to safely handle a gun while hunting” and warned that causing harm to another living being—intentionally or not—can lead to “long lasting emotional disability for the involved child.”

Putting both children and the community as a whole at risk just to boost declining hunting numbers is appalling. In this culture of escalating violence among teens and even children, do we really want to desensitize young people to suffering, give them guns and teach them how to kill?

Martin Mersereau is the director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Cruelty Investigations Department, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; http://www.PETA.org.