Yes they are children, but they are high school students, not a 3rd grade class. The teacher wasn't asking 8-10 year olds to kill the family pet, but 13-18 year olds to kill a meat chicken.
Learning the proper way to slaughter and clean an animal (the processing part of the class) is useful knowledge. People that kill their own food are not desensitized criminals who kill anything they want. They have respect for the animal, recognize that it feels pain and swiftly end the animals life.
The article does have a slant to it. Another (that I cannot post due to rules) did state that she paid the school for the chicken, in what I imagine to be something like a materials cost. Classes do sometimes have students pay a fee for certain things provided, such as dark room equipment in a photography class or lumber for a wood shop class.
If they did not send out a permission slip to the parents, then yes the school should be punished. I still doubt that the girl had no idea in the 5 weeks of raising the chicken that it would be destined for slaughter. She had a month to object to the project and work something out with the school.
