Teenager refuses to kill her chicken for a class project

[rebelcowboysnb]

Course Description:

This one year course offers an introduction to animal agriculture and will investigate careers such as animal breeder, veterinary science, nutritionist, meat specialist, feed sales representative, animal marketing and additional related fields. The emphasis will be given in the areas of: handling, breeding, aqua culture, feeding/nutrition, facilities, species, breeds, pasture management, and marketing. Biology concepts will be integrated along with traditional classroom/laboratory instruction. Units will be reinforced by field trips and exploratory activities.​

 

[Ferrret]

BUT...what about killing animals at school in the first place?

If the class is set up properly and the instructor has made sure the students understand what they are doing, then there shouldn't be a vast problem. Allowing students to do the act is taking it a bit far, but by high school teens should know how to behave and pay attention. If I were in charge of the class that had slaughter in the class room, I would handle the act and students would have the choice of watching. It is useful knowledge, even if you never have to use it.

what about offending large groups of people and traumatizing a handfull of students? what about parental permission?

There is where the school should have been more informative. Permission slips should have gone home, the class description should have included information about the slaughter and parental consent should have been given. Students that did not wish to participate in the project for personal reasons and beliefs should be given an alternate project.

health and safety of the kids?

Again, if the project is carried out correctly there should be little health and safety issues. Teens know that knives are sharp, many handle them on a daily basis. Regular science class dissections let teens handle scalpels, regular science classes expose teens to various chemicals. Wood and auto shop have teens around potentially dangerous machinery and even art class has paints and cleaners that give off fumes that could make a student sick. Physical Education is by far the most dangerous class you can be in. If you go down the list of things you are allowed to be around and use in high school you'll see that it has the potential to be a very unsafe place, but students are expected to behave properly at that age when they are exposed to a situation in which someone could get hurt.

cruelty toward the chickens?

Chickens get killed for food. From all the descriptions the teacher was going to have students slit the throats or behead the chickens, which is a fast and relatively painless death. It is a much more humane death than beating the bird against a desk or plucking it alive. There have been few reports on how the birds were raised so I can't really say if they were brought up in a cruel manner, but I have doubts about that. Marking the birds with a permanent marker is better than the alternatives of punching holes in the webbing of their feet or clipping bands on their wings. The only other less painful marking I can think of would have been leg bands but those would need to be changed as the birds grew.

I understand why you did what you did. I don't think it was the best route of action and making a bigger deal out of it through groups that are known to have a bias and to have volatile overreactions is not the best route to get people informed of what happened. You did have a chance to mention it at home when you were told of the project, you shouldn't have passed it off as 'there will be a lack of funding'. You also had a chance to bring it up at home again when the chickens arrived. Your parents and other concerned parents could have had a sit down with the school and discussed the project. You had 5-7 weeks to debate and fight the school to not let it happen. My self and my siblings have been in spur of the moment situations in which the school has violated out rights, and we have always managed to get the school to understand why they were in the wrong.

I do hope you are not intending on forcing the school to get rid of the program. I, and many others, see it as a useful program and necessary knowledge for all people to have whether they use it or not. Make the school send out permission slips, make them give an accurate description of events in the class, but don't try to make them get rid of the program.​

 

[Ferrret]

Quote:

Nothing there expressly says 'Slaughter of a Live animal", which should be included to assure students know what is going on. Lab instruction could be anything from examining an already dead animal to running a computerized dissection. Exploratory activities and Meat Specialist fall under the same idea, no hands on work just a field trip and a lecture.

 

[Kat's Silly Chickens]

Quote:
By Adults not children

I don't get this..

Do you realize children at the age of 10 can Deer Hunt with a gun? When I was a kid it was when your parents thought it appropriate for your age and disposition.. then they went with the whole hunter safety and regulating the age? Here's something to think about...

Parenting -
"Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the activity of raising a child rather than the biological relationship.[1]
In the case of humans, it is usually done by the biological parents of the child in question,[2] although governments and society take a role as well. In many cases, orphaned or abandoned children receive parental care from non-parent blood relations. Others may be adopted, raised by foster care, or be placed in an orphanage.
The goals of human parenting are debated. Usually, parental figures provide for a child's physical needs, protect them from harm, and impart in them skills and cultural values until they reach legal adulthood, usually after adolescence. Among non-human species, parenting is usually less lengthy and complicated, though mammals tend to nurture their young extensively. The degree of attention parents invest in their offspring is largely inversely proportional to the number of offspring the average adult in the species produces."

Promoting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child......... So teaching a kid how to raise his own food is going to make them a serial killer eh? I know that isn't exactly what you were saying but that is how I read into it.

Parents need to quit being their child's BFF.. They need to be the child's oracle, teacher, mentor and jedi master all wrapped up with a slightly sadistic streak. You have to have that streak, otherwise the kids will learn how to get around the rules or know there is no consequences.

Now for Whitney, not knowing what you were getting into and not being able to opt out I completely understand and empathize with your plight.

Ok, in the 1st place boyd, some children aren't raised in a hunting/farming background. Not all parents farm, not all parents hunt. No matter where this took place if the child wasn't raised to kill an animal then falsely naming a class w/o the proper description of what the class entails, then turning around when it's to late to drop out to me is unethical. If some teacher handed my son a chicken and told him to raise it, he'd look at said teacher and ask if it was out of it's mind.
Then to hand a knife to a school age child, (which by the way is against the law now) 5 wks later and told to kill that chicken I would expect my son to walk out of the class with chicken in hand, also.
My son was raised to be kind to animals, and if he read a class title "Animal Science and Food Production" w/o a proper description of the class he would have thought it was a class that taught you how to care for animals.
So not teaching my son to hunt or kill animals was not Bad Parenting.

Whitney did what she felt was humane in her eyes, it was better than cutting it's head off and playing with its dismembered head, (as 1 male student did).
You men need to learn a little Animal Compassion, instead of brutally killing 1 of earths creatures.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

What I don't understand is why none of these students went to their parents when they found out about the project. From all the posts and information, it seems like students knew at least *somewhat* the destiny of the chicks that arrived at the school. If so many people felt uncomfortable and appealing to the teacher did not work, why did they not go to their parents, or even people higher up in the school. And IF they did, why didn't any of these parents disapprove of the project and call up the school? This part just doesn't make sense to me.

I think what happened in this case is that a student got attached to their chicken (individual chickens probably should not have been given to each student) and didn't want it killed. However, I don't really see any difference between handing a knife to a student to kill a chicken and handing one out for dissection. These are 16 year old teenagers, not 10 year olds. They should be mature enough to handle knives. At least I know we were in 8th grade when I did my first diessection!

 

[Kat's Silly Chickens]

Quote:

Nothing there expressly says 'Slaughter of a Live animal", which should be included to assure students know what is going on. Lab instruction could be anything from examining an already dead animal to running a computerized dissection. Exploratory activities and Meat Specialist fall under the same idea, no hands on work just a field trip and a lecture.

 

[Boyd]

Kat's Silly Chickens :

Quote:
I don't get this..

Do you realize children at the age of 10 can Deer Hunt with a gun? When I was a kid it was when your parents thought it appropriate for your age and disposition.. then they went with the whole hunter safety and regulating the age? Here's something to think about...

Parenting -
"Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the activity of raising a child rather than the biological relationship.[1]
In the case of humans, it is usually done by the biological parents of the child in question,[2] although governments and society take a role as well. In many cases, orphaned or abandoned children receive parental care from non-parent blood relations. Others may be adopted, raised by foster care, or be placed in an orphanage.
The goals of human parenting are debated. Usually, parental figures provide for a child's physical needs, protect them from harm, and impart in them skills and cultural values until they reach legal adulthood, usually after adolescence. Among non-human species, parenting is usually less lengthy and complicated, though mammals tend to nurture their young extensively. The degree of attention parents invest in their offspring is largely inversely proportional to the number of offspring the average adult in the species produces."

Promoting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child......... So teaching a kid how to raise his own food is going to make them a serial killer eh? I know that isn't exactly what you were saying but that is how I read into it.

Parents need to quit being their child's BFF.. They need to be the child's oracle, teacher, mentor and jedi master all wrapped up with a slightly sadistic streak. You have to have that streak, otherwise the kids will learn how to get around the rules or know there is no consequences.

Now for Whitney, not knowing what you were getting into and not being able to opt out I completely understand and empathize with your plight.

Ok, in the 1st place boyd, some children aren't raised in a hunting/farming background. Not all parents farm, not all parents hunt. No matter where this took place if the child wasn't raised to kill an animal then falsely naming a class w/o the proper description of what the class entails, then turning around when it's to late to drop out to me is unethical. If some teacher handed my son a chicken and told him to raise it, he'd look at said teacher and ask if it was out of it's mind.
Then to hand a knife to a school age child, (which by the way is against the law now) 5 wks later and told to kill that chicken I would expect my son to walk out of the class with chicken in hand, also.
My son was raised to be kind to animals, and if he read a class title "Animal Science and Food Production" w/o a proper description of the class he would have thought it was a class that taught you how to care for animals.
So not teaching my son to hunt or kill animals was not Bad Parenting.

Whitney did what she felt was humane in her eyes, it was better than cutting it's head off and playing with its dismembered head, (as 1 male student did).
You men need to learn a little Animal Compassion, instead of brutally killing 1 of earths creatures.​

And your true colors come flying out for the whole world to see

See it's us "men" who brutally put food on the table.. Gotcha. Guess you didn't read anything else I posted on this thread... To make it easy for you go back, I have 3 posts back to back that I think explains my views on life.

Mans' been surviving off the flesh of others for millennia. It seems to have worked so far..

 

[Boyd]

Quote:
That's what I'm sayin...

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Quote:

Nothing there expressly says 'Slaughter of a Live animal", which should be included to assure students know what is going on. Lab instruction could be anything from examining an already dead animal to running a computerized dissection. Exploratory activities and Meat Specialist fall under the same idea, no hands on work just a field trip and a lecture.

Between that an this if ya didn't think Slaughter of a Live animals might be part of it then it is because you didn't want to know. I know I asked questions about every class I signed up for back in the day.

 

[Ferrret]

Kat's Silly Chickens :

Whitney did what she felt was humane in her eyes, it was better than cutting it's head off and playing with its dismembered head, (as 1 male student did).
You men need to learn a little Animal Compassion, instead of brutally killing 1 of earths creatures.

There are women that hunt and kill, and hunters of any gender do what they can to kill their food or pests quickly and humanely. Brutal killings are the work of the uneducated, by accident or an act of anger or revenge. I can't really say Human vs. Human as chimpanzees, dolphins and other 'higher intelligence' creatures will attack and kill in slow and brutal ways. Human hunters in some cases are the kindest, with weapons that can kill quickly rather than large fangs and crushing jaws that suffocate slowly, or simply disable while the group eats the still living prey.​