I was so busy in the UK, I didn’t have the time to point out this story. New curriculum guidelines in the UK are apparently going to teach children that insects–mini beasts–are akin to other animals. From the story:
New curriculum guidance says the well-being of “mini-beasts”, including bees, ants and worms, should be taught in classes as part of primary school’s “animals and us” section of the citizenship curriculum. By the age of seven, pupils will have learnt that “not stamping on insects” is appropriate behaviour “in areas where animals live”. The guidance, drawn up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, says children can learn good citizenship skills by learning about the welfare of insects because “other living things have needs and they have responsibilities to meet them”.
Well, wait a minute. Insects don’t have “responsibilities.” That is a human attribute as it involves moral duty. Insects have instinct. And doesn’t this smack of the nonsense out of Switzerland where a big bioethics panel said it was immoral to “decapitate” a wild flower?
And get this quote:
Rhiannon Pursall, a beetle expert at the Royal Entomological Society, welcomed the move, which is not compulsory. “A lot of children do not recognise insects as animals. They stamp on ants and torture spiders, but they wouldn’t kill a cat or a dog,” she told the Sunday Times. “The younger that children can learn about caring for insects the better. If they can grasp the idea that insects are just as important as animals that would be fantastic.”
No, a beetle is not as important as a dog or a cow. All animals are not equal.
I am all for teaching children to be kind to animals. Indeed, that is a matter of human exceptionalism. I also agree that we shouldn’t mess with ant hills for no good reason, and I release spiders and flies from my house if I can, rather than swat them. But given that the UK is showing increasing disrespect for the intrinsic value of human beings, the curriculum seems to me–to say the least–profoundly ironic.
November 17th, 2009 | 10:00 pm
I agree they’d have been better off with the “don’t bother them if they’re not bothering you” approach. If anything the “spiders are as good as dogs” approach may backfire on them by making its proponents look silly.
I’m thinking what may be needed is an approach that looks at how important an individual of a given species is based on some set of criteria. Reproductive rate for instance; it takes a lot longer to make a human or an elephant than an ant, so individual humans/elephants are more important. Considering total species population size and gene pool would support protecting endangered species (assuming that this would help them).
I think our homocentric emphasis on the individual is appropriate for our species. It gets out of whack when we apply that emphasis to species that as part of their species success strategy* do not value individuals highly, like bees, ants, mice, rabbits, fish, etc.
*for lack of a better word
November 17th, 2009 | 11:31 pm
Wesley, perhaps the UK Dept. for Children, Schools and Families is guilty of unclear antecedents of pronouns–fuzzy expression rather than fuzzy thinking. The department said that children can learn good citizenship skills by learning about the welfare of insects because “other living things have needs and they have responsibilities to meet them.” Perhaps the “they” of “they have responsibilities” refers to children, not insects. That would make sense: children do have responsibilities to the needs of other living things. The lesson, then, would be that we (exceptional) humans have a duty to be kind to animals, not that animals have a right to a certain sort of treatment. Teaching children to be kind and thoughtful–it seems that even a bloated bureaucracy gets it right occasionally.
November 17th, 2009 | 11:57 pm
I thought that might be the case, too. But if it were, it would mean children had responsibilities to insects.
November 18th, 2009 | 12:33 am
I agree with the consistency of the message. It bothers me how arbitrary people’s view of animals is, even of animals of comparable shapes. Dogs and pigs are about the same size, but children are often taught that one is to be loved and given his own home, while the other is to be butchered. Ditto with cats/lambs, horses/pigs, and butterflies/flies. If someone tried to kill a butterfly, (s)he’d be hollered at. But if the same person tried to swat a regular housefly, not as many people would care. And why? Because one is more colorful than the other?
I’m glad you do the catch-and-release in your home when you can, Wesley.
November 18th, 2009 | 11:32 am
It’s not all that arbitrary, bmmg. Animals that we’ve domesticated to be companions are treated as companions, and those we’ve domesticated to be food are treated as future food. Farm kids learn early, don’t get too attached to little Porky. (It helps that full-sized boars aren’t as cute and friendly as piglets.)
And butterflies pose no problem to humanity, and don’t try to invade our habitats. Meanwhile flies can create sanitary issues and love to live in our houses. Being colorful has little to do with it.
(BTW, I catch and release insects too, although I’m in the North so that’s becoming more and more a death sentence anyway as winter sets in.)
The way we treat other animals is in large part utilitarian. What is this animal going to do for or against me? Am I going to eat him, or is he going to eat me? And that’s how the other species treat us, and every other species. And that is nature.
November 18th, 2009 | 1:09 pm
>>Dogs and pigs are about the same size>>
You demonstrate your ignorance. Full grown pigs are in the neighborhood of 500 lbs to 1000 lbs, depending on sex and breed. Even a market pig – one ready for slaughter – is about 150 lbs.
Your dogs are that big? More like a pony of the same age…!
November 19th, 2009 | 12:25 am
padraig: “Animals that we’ve domesticated to be companions are treated as companions, and those we’ve domesticated to be food are treated as future food.”
Circular reasoning.
“Farm kids learn early, don’t get too attached to little Porky.”
Indoctrination.
“(It helps that full-sized boars aren’t as cute and friendly as piglets.)”
Eye of the beholder. And “cute or not” is a rather crummy criterion for who lives and who dies, don’t you think?
“The way we treat other animals is in large part utilitarian. What is this animal going to do for or against me? Am I going to eat him, or is he going to eat me?”
I’ll keep that in mind the next time a turkey kicks down the front door and attempts to devour me.
“And that’s how the other species treat us, and every other species. And that is nature.”
Yes. And what was that about human exceptionalism — that we can treat animals better than that because we possess the compassion and the power to do so?
November 19th, 2009 | 12:28 am
bmmg39: >>Dogs and pigs are about the same size>>
“suek: “You demonstrate your ignorance. Full grown pigs are in the neighborhood of 500 lbs to 1000 lbs, depending on sex and breed. Even a market pig – one ready for slaughter – is about 150 lbs.”
For someone who easily refers to other people as ignorant, you sure do have a tough time telling the difference between “size” and “weight.” The “market pig” you described is much heavier than your average dog but similar to her in size and shape.
November 19th, 2009 | 8:39 am
[...] this blog post recognizes, these silly reclassifications serve only to diminish [...]
November 19th, 2009 | 10:00 am
‘I’ll keep that in mind the next time a turkey kicks down the front door and attempts to devour me.’
Better you should keep it in mind the next time you go swimming in the ocean. Or hiking in Yellowstone. Or, since you seem to think pigs are cute and friendly, wandering into the territory of feral pigs. Or walking down a deer trail during rutting season. (Be glad you don’t live in hippo territory, they’re the champs for killing humans.)
And I’m not the one pushing “human exceptionalism,” although I think it can be a useful concept (like “rights,” “money,” and “equality”). As far as I’m concerned humans are still part of the eat or be eaten world of nature.
November 19th, 2009 | 6:11 pm
“Better you should keep it in mind the next time you go swimming in the ocean. Or hiking in Yellowstone. Or, since you seem to think pigs are cute and friendly, wandering into the territory of feral pigs. Or walking down a deer trail during rutting season. (Be glad you don’t live in hippo territory, they’re the champs for killing humans.)”
– which means you’re still comparing apples and oranges, since most humans don’t eat sharks, bears, feral pigs, deer, or hippos.
By the way, I think if it’s known that the area you wish to hike in has wild animals, and you willingly hike there, then you have less cause to cry, “It was self-defense!” if you shoot such an animal dead. Self-defense would mean not going near them in the first place. Bring a tranquilizer gun.
November 20th, 2009 | 3:06 pm
bmm:”– which means you’re still comparing apples and oranges, since most humans don’t eat sharks, bears, feral pigs, deer, or hippos.”
Where do YOU live? I had deer last night. And feral pigs are essentially the same as domestic pork. Shark fin soup is responsible for decimation of shark populations, so somebody’s apparently eating sharks.
I suppose you have a point with hippos, although if I had an oven big enough…
November 22nd, 2009 | 9:00 pm
K, I’ll post this again: “MOST humans don’t eat sharks, bears, feral pigs, deer, or hippos.”
November 24th, 2009 | 2:27 pm
Take all domestic dogs out of the biosphere. What happens? There are less pets. Now do the same with cows. There are less obese Americans, less climate change, less deforestation and much more food for the rest of the global population in the form of the grain that would have been so inefficiently fed to the cows.
Now try taking all insects out of the biosphere and see what happens. Ecosystem collapse. Now tell me that dogs or cow is more important than a beetle. I think the point is that if children gorw up with a sense of recpect for those organisms around them that they share the planet with, may may develop a sense of environmental stewardship. This has never been so important.
December 3rd, 2009 | 11:03 pm
bmmg — I come from the Appalachian region. Plenty of folks hunt and eat deer. It is so part of the culture that we got a full week from school because Thanksgiving coincides with the beginning of deer season.
Just because it isn’t where YOU live…
Padraig, you are right (mark this day in the calendar!).
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