Girl, 16, forced out of anatomy class

Baltimore Sun ^ | 9-25-2002 | Jonathan D. Rockoff

[Cagey]

A 16-year-old student at Kenwood High School who refused to dissect a cat was forced to abandon her honors anatomy and physiology class Monday, even though her mother offered to buy a computer alternative.

Jennifer Watson, an A student from Essex who cares for a pet cat named Fluffy, resisted dissection as inhumane.

The girl wanted to remain in the class, and her mother proposed buying software for performing simulated dissections on the computer, according to the girl and her mother, Maria Watson. But the teacher threatened to fail the college-bound student if she didn't participate in the dissections.

[TightSqueeze]

You are dead wrong.

Prove it! In the age we live in only a fool blindly follows the instructions of another, especially when one is smarter that the one supposedly in charge and giving orders. I can understand where you are coming from, if you have never been a lead dog, your view is very limited.

[gc4nra]

I know, I've been an EMT and then a Respiratory Care Practittioner for nearly 30 years.

Always remember that 50% of all M.D.s finished in the bottom half of there class!

[TightSqueeze]

...then this is a nice life lesson for her. Later in life when...

she is dead she will realize just how important it was to follow the rules and deny her own expression, yeah right. The kind of ideology you spew is the reason for national seat belt laws, thank you very much.

[gc4nra]

Buy a car on credit, don't make the payments and see what happens.

She took an elective class and now doesn't want to fulfill the requirements. She should have read the fine print.


What happens in a couple of years when she decides to enlist and then tells the D.I. "Oh no I don't want to shoot the big awful gun?

I have been the lead dog in many situations, For instance I am an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor(Rifle, Pistol,Shotgun, Home Firearms Safety, and Personal Protection); if one of my students doesn't follow my instruction to keep the gun pointed down range, they are gone.


In life we have to do many things we don't want to, but what was required of her was not dangerous or unlawful.

[dread78645]

Needless to say, when David (the cow) ended up in the freezer, that was kept *very* low key with respect to little brother. . . .

LOL, indeed.

My younger sister named a calf 'Harold'. She didn't have a problem with killing & cleaning the chickens or pigs; but the steer was special.

Later when we were eating some hamburger casserole thingy --my brother said "Ohh Harry !" i went "mooo-oo". my sister got a little pale and left the table.

I figured my dad was gonna whip the tar out of both of us.
It ended with a stern talking to and extra chores ...

[PLMerite]

I graduated in '78 and we picked apart a cat in Advanced Placement Biology.

[vetvetdoug]

Be nice to Sungirl, she has a hard time with North Texans. While I was in the USAF I volunteered to assist the Pathologist at a major military hospital when he had to do nightime autopsies and got to do a lot of dissections. While a meat inspector for the USAF I got to see thousands of dissections at the Armour Meat plant on tasty hogs and cattle. I can't count the number of necropsies I have performed on dogs, cats, birds, horses, goats and cattle.

This 16 year old will make a wonderful lawyer and is an excellent prospect for the ACLU, Democrats, and PETA. I wonder what she will be doing after law school when she has become a vegan and anorexic? IMHO they ought to boot her, her family, out of the school district or give her an incomplete for the course. She knew what she was getting into, she just wants attention and be stupid about it.

[Polybius]

Always remember that 50% of all M.D.s finished in the bottom half of there class!

Always remember, most High School graduates never make it to Pre-Med and 90% of Pre-Meds never make it to that Medical School class.

[DB]

GovernmentShrinker maybe? Seems more like a male characteristic I guess....

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

I agree with your assessment of this girl and her excuses for this class. Since I have a daughter this same age, I am well aware that kids talk to each other in school, and she knew what this class required - my daughter has known since her freshman year that the class she is taking required dissecting a cat.........

Sungirl doesn't have a problem with North Texans, she lives for this stuff -

[Sungirl]

My problem is with it being in high school ...on impressionble kids. I don't like the impression it gives them ...that 'companion animals' are just lab rats.

[BlueLancer]

"...every body needs a little... KFC kentucky Fried Ca@ ???"

How about "Kentucki Fried Lizarde Parts"?
(from "Nine Princes in Amber" by Roger Zelazny)

[Orual]

"If respected medical schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Maryland don't do dissection, I don't understand why they're doing it at Kenwood High School," said Herb Morrison, a member of the board of Maryland Animal Advocates Inc.

All medical schools do dissections and research experiments using animals. This is typical of the misinformation and the outright lies made by animal rights activitists.

[general_re]

Ping!

[homeschool mama]

**I know *I* didn't hear a thing.... **

Thank you. Whew! That could get me in a lotta trouble! You don't know my MIL! LOL

[FeliciaCat]

I gratuated High School in 1989 and we used cats in Bio class then.

[gc4nra]

It was a joke, lighten up.

[ArrogantBustard]

What happened to worms and frogs in High School Biology class?

A&P is an honours class, taken Junior or Senior year; I took it as a Senior. It's traditional, in USA anyway, for A&P students to dissect medium sized mammals: cats, fetal pigs, large rats, or some such.

[discostu]

Oh please. This isn't about expression. She signed up for a class that she didn't have to and now she's not willing to do the work. In my high school we all knew in the first week of Freshman year that AP Bio dissected fetal pigs, the upper classmen told us trying to gross us out. Anybody who didn't find out then found out in January when the lab happened and stunk up the whole floor. The only way this girl didn't know the class was going to dissect cats was that she's a bleeding idiot, or this showboat was planned from the start to try to make the school change the course. Either way she shouldn't get her way.

As for my ideology A - there are no national seatbelt laws, though most regions of the nation have them so someone that's not paying attention might think it's one national law; B - I'm against all that nanny state BS; C - this bears ZERO ressemblance to any of that nanny state crap, it's about doing what you signed up to do in the first place; D - that's the kind of appeal to emotion over the top BS I expect from liberals, straighten up and fly right.