PETA Urges Reno County High Schools to Ban Dissection

Cutting Up Animals Promotes Violence, Says Group

Hutchinson, Kan. (PRWEB) January 23, 2004 --Tomorrows violent criminals may be learning dangerous lessons in todays biology classes. Thats what PETA is warning Reno County high school principals in letters urging them to end all animal dissections at their schools and replace them with modern, humane alternatives.

PETAs appeal comes after a Hutchinson teen was charged in connection with the deaths of five dogs this month. PETA points out that violent criminals, including the perpetrators of school shootings at Columbine and other schools, often have histories of killing animals. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer openly attributed his fascination with mutilation and murder to classroom dissections. A 27-year-old man who lived with the teen was also charged.

"Violence in schools is becoming increasingly common," says PETA humane educator Sangeeta Kumar. "Educators owe it to their students to provide them with a nonviolent, technologically advanced education, and they owe it to the community not to teach students lessons of violence and disrespect for life."

PETA has also provided district superintendents and elementary school principals in Reno County with complimentary copies of Share the World, a humane-education teaching kit that teaches kids the importance of being kind to all forms of life-and to each other.

PETAs letter to Reno County high school principals follows.

For more information, please visit http://TeachKind.org.

January 21, 2004

Dear Principal:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has recently become aware of a case of animal abuse allegedly perpetrated by a teen in Hutchinson, who was charged in connection with the deaths of five dogs this month.

This tragic incident provides an opportunity for your school to be proactive in teaching compassion and empathy to students. Too often, the first warning signs of violence in youth involve animal fatalities. Your high school has a chance to act before the cruelty escalates further by teaching your students the compassion that these violent youths lacked.

Whenever a youth abuses an animal in any way, we must, as educators, take appropriate action to teach the importance of kindness and respect for life, which is why we are writing to ask that you ban animal dissections from your school. Dissection is a lesson in violence, cruelty, and death. Dissection teaches students that animals are simply convenient tools to be thrown away when they are no longer of use. Research shows that students who are desensitized to animal suffering and abuse are likely to become desensitized to human suffering.

In his last interview before his death, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer stated, "In ninth grade, in biology class, we had the usual dissection of fetal pigs, and I took the remains of that home and kept the skeleton of it, and I just started branching out to dogs, cats." Ive enclosed a factsheet about the link between animal abuse and violence toward humans for your review.

In recent years, dissection has increasingly been criticized and deemed inappropriate for modern classrooms. Studies going back as far as 1969 back up the educational merit of alternatives to dissection and show that students who use other means to learn the same lessons perform as well as or better than students who use dissection-and they do so without being desensitized. I have enclosed a list of organizations that supply free non-animal dissection alternatives to schools so that you can contact them and see what options are available for your students.

Violence in schools is becoming increasingly common. Educators owe it to students to provide a nonviolent, technologically advanced education, and they owe it to the community not to teach students lessons of violence and disrespect for life. On behalf of PETAs 800,000 members and supporters and every compassionate citizen, I urge you to remove the violent and archaic practice of dissection from your schools curriculum; to make the switch to cruelty-free, modern alternatives; and to sit down with your students and discuss the aforementioned incident, stressing to them that cruelty to animals is nothing to make light of. I look forward to hearing from you. You can reach me at 757-622-7382.

Kind regards,

Sangeeta Kumar
Humane Educator
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