| Don't you mean the porpoise of life? Something is fishy here...
Personally, I was indoctrinated as a child by the Catholic Church. We called people who worshipped Nature "pagans." |
Posted on 10/20/2003 3:18:35 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - A controversial curriculum focusing on "humane education," which advocates say includes compassion for animals, awareness of environmental problems like so-called global warming and overpopulation as well as non-violence, is expanding into the U.S. public school system.
Last week, a local school board near Sacramento, Calif., became the second district in the nation to create an entire school based on the humane education curriculum.
"I think it will help to create a more well-rounded, caring student," Cheryl Spencer-Scher told CNSNews.com. Spencer-Scher is the director of humane education at the Charlestown, W.Va.-based National Humane Education Society, an organization dedicated to promoting the expansion of the curriculum.
Students will learn about "endangered species, what is going on with the ozone layer, global warming," Spencer-Scher said. They will also "learn the lessons of how many people live on our planet earth today...see that there are a lot more people than there were many, many years ago, and a lot more people means there's less lands available for wildlife.
"We are depending on [the next generation] to care about the environment and animals and everything that we share the earth with, and to include those issues as mainstays in the curriculum, I think, is incredible," Spencer-Scher added.
Seventeen states now mandate aspects of the humane education curriculum, according to Spencer-Scher. In addition, two charter schools, one already open in Harmony, Fla., and another planned near Sacramento, are devoted entirely to teaching the curriculum.
But Chris Horner, a senior fellow of the free market environmental group the Competitive Enterprise Institute, ridiculed the whole premise of humane education.
"This is not preparing students in any way because the whole point here is to stick these kids' heads in the sand and teach them fantasies about how to loathe modern conveniences and prosperity and how to talk to the animals," Horner told CNSNews.com.
"They are going to be teaching alarmism, which inherently means filling their heads with untrue drivel designed to breed a new generation of modernity-loathing robots," Horner added.
The curriculum's emphasis on animal rights and welfare has prompted the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to support the new taxpayer-funded Humane Education Learning Charter School, which got approval last week from California's San Juan Unified School District.
The charter elementary school will encourage students to "examine [their] cultural assumptions regarding the inherent value of different species and nature" and help them to "explore [their] responsibility toward earth and other human and non-human beings," according to the California-based New World Vision Institute, one of the supporters of the school's curriculum.
But a parent in the California school district where the humane education charter school is scheduled to open told school board authorities that she fears the school will attempt to indoctrinate students, according to the Sacramento Bee.
"I think it's outrageous that a sectarian school like this is going to be part of the public school system and taxpayer funded," Ann Silberman said, according to the newspaper. Silberman has threatened legal action against the school district over the planned charter school.
'Nature is smiling'
The New World Vision Institute envisions using California as a model for "worldwide implementation" of humane education and challenges visitors to its website to imagine a world "at peace everywhere," where "nature is smiling" and "everyone has access to healthy food produced sustainably, peacefully, equitably and compassionately."
The institute believes the humane education curriculum can help create a world where "people eat no more than they need," where "we no longer destroy each other or the Earth," and "other species have rights to life, liberty and freedom from torture."
However, critics like Horner believe the humane education curriculum ignores science when it claims the earth is in dire environmental shape. "Every environmental indicator is positive, and they refuse to acknowledge this," Horner said.
"They are teaching [students] the opposite - I think very little of the so-called science in which they base their curriculum," Horner added.
Spencer-Scher dismissed the criticism that the humane education curriculum preaches a radical animal "rights" philosophy.
"We don't promote the radicalism, we don't really promote the protests or the throwing of red paint on the [fur] coats, although some of us in our private lives may do those things," Spencer-Scher said.
For those parents concerned about the effect of humane education on their children, Spencer-Scher cautioned them "to really look over the curriculum and get a grasp of it before condemning it.
"It would seem many of these things are going to be positive - positive things that most parents would be thrilled to know are being taught in school," Spencer-Scher said.
'Feel a rabbit'
Spencer-Scher said humane education has never been more relevant to the United States and praised the term "touchy feely," a label some of the California critics have attached to the curriculum.
"I think touchy feely can be a very good thing. Here we are in a society, very sadly after 9/11, where maybe [touchy feely] is a much better way to go, and these children get to feel a rabbit and get to know what this rabbit really needs and [what it] takes for it to have a comfortable, happy, healthy life, " Spencer-Scher added.
But Horner believes the idea of humane education is something the current generation of school children can do without.
"If 9/11 taught us anything, it is that we have serious problems facing the world, and instead of dedicating our energies to hypothetical, minimal threats like man purportedly changing the weather, we should be focusing on the serious problems that require serious attention," Horner said.
"[Humane educated students] are going to be prepared for a very ugly surprise when they graduate and realize they can't just hang out with rabbits," Horner added.
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The problem with this is we are not at peace everywhere, and in many parts of the world nature frowns at fools.
What she really meant was "By getting to these kids early and using cutesy animals as part of our regimine, We believe we can create a future generation of "Little Socialists" that will devote thier lives to the collective.
"They will be assimilated."
Is Spencer-Scher also establishing classes for animals so that bears, cougars and wolves are going to respect the lives of people and other animals?
Sounds like she's trying to play God. A lot of liberals have that characteristic.
And what about the cute, cuddly rats? Don't they deserve protection too?
Everything except other people, of course! I'll have be careful that I don't accidentally teach any of this drivel.
Imagine tuna-free dolphin! Yum.
Let me guess. There won't be anything about the purpose of life being to know, love and serve God in this life and to be happy forever with Him in the next? < /sarcasm>
You got it a bit wrong. It should read:
The only mammal that doesn't deserve better treatment than a fish is the white male human. Face it, some creatures are just better than others.
Don't you mean the porpoise of life? Something is fishy here...
Confirms my suspicions
| Don't you mean the porpoise of life? Something is fishy here...
Personally, I was indoctrinated as a child by the Catholic Church. We called people who worshipped Nature "pagans." |
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There, see that? If you had been indoctrinated as a child with the Nature-Worshipping Socialist curriculum, you would know that porpoises are not fish. They are mammals, just like women and minorities.