The words in the title are those of a former student at Culpeper High School in Virginia. Her name is Brynnan. She was a new student at the school at the time. At home, she is very close to the family cat Sparta. Clearly, she loves her cat and has an emotional connection to her cat companion.
I’m sure that in the anatomy class, which she was keen to attend, there were also a good number of other students who are emotionally connected to the family cat. And yet, despite this being obvious to anybody with a modicum of intelligence, the school wanted her to skin and dissect the carcass of a cat which may well have been someone’s pet and which may well have been euthanized at a local shelter.
In a bizarre twist, the schoolteacher conducting the anatomy class told the students that if they had a black cat at home they should pick a white cat from the dead cats which were available to them and vice versa in order to, I suppose, dissociate themselves from the emotional connection that they have with their own cat. As if that suggestion would make it easier for the students.
“The teacher told us if we have a black cat at home, pick a white cat and vice versa. Like the colour of their fur changes how I feel about ripping the fur from a cat who, no matter what, will remind me of my baby Sparta!” (Brynnan when speaking to her mother).
Her mother, Tamira Thayne, was horrified and has started a petition on the change.org website to request that the Culpeper County Public Schools, the school in question and others, ban cat dissection in their classrooms.
Her mother had to make a very difficult decision. As mentioned, her daughter had recently started a new school and therefore she did not want to kick up a fuss and quite possibly be alienated by other students and create friction with the teachers and administrators. That would have made matters worse. The alternative was to allow her daughter to carry on dissecting a cat in the anatomy class which was traumatic to her daughter.
In the event, her mother decided, reluctantly, to pull her daughter from the school and I presume to find a new school for her. The mother wisely states that her first duty is to protect her daughter.
As an outsider, I find the decision of the particular school in question and the education authorities in this area to insist that students dissect cats to be wholly incorrect, insensitive and thoughtless. Although it has to be admitted that some students don’t care and disrespect the cat reflecting an attitude amongst some sections of society which is not conducive to animal welfare.
As there are alternatives to actual physical dissection in the classroom such as computer simulations and 3-D models, there is no justification in 21st-century to request young women and young men to dissect someone’s pet cat.
There was another high profile story similar to this one not so long ago. I wonder how prevalent this is across America.
Love it when people compare cats to cows. I happen to be vegan but telling someone that eating a burger is the same thing as a child cutting up a companion animal for a grade is ridiculous. Recent studies say the brain is not fully developed until age 25. Do we really need to encourage children to perform gruesome acts to learn absolutely nothing? No. We already know what is inside of these animals so the information can be pasted on in other ways.
Well it seems I’m being trolled here and on the website Picture Of Cats,I replied to a post about cats being dissected in schools and got a notice in my email I had a reply to my comment,I could if I wanted could go on a rant but ye know wot I wont because whomever ye are is only trying to paint me as a horrible pet parent,a scammer for asking for help through campaigns for my pets and I love ye false allegations,ye are either still here on my page or ye seeked me out after I had ye banned from this page and ye have more than 1 fb page so as ye can troll and spew ye lies,I have nothing to hide from anyone and ye must be so bored and unhappy in ye own personal life that ye just have to try and bring others down to ye level,well good luck with that,I may never find out who ye are but someone is watching ye activites and one day it will come back to bite ye where it will count.
I suppose that the point you are making, obliquely, is that humans eat meat and in doing so the animal has to be killed and skinned. You are saying that that is no different to a teenage girl being requested to skin the carcass of a domestic cat in the classroom. Personally, I see a complete difference in the two. The differences are almost too numerous to enumerate. The obvious difference that in the first instance professionals are killing livestock to government standards in abattoirs to feed people whereas a teenage girl has been asked to strip the skin from a dead cat that could have been a pet. The girl is not a professional. The girl is sensitive to these things. There is no need to have this sort of anatomy class where dissection takes place. I could go on but I won’t because the differences are so obvious and to make a comparison as you have is foolish and shows a complete lack of awareness and clear thinking.
Oh, this is a must-read for ANYONE that is associated with this….
This comment has been deleted because it insults a regular contributor to this website. I will not allow other visitors to insult regular visitors. If you go on writing this sort of comment you will be banned and I have made that clear before in the past on numerous occasions. (Admin)
Yogi needs to skin and dissect a cow or two before he ever buys another burger or feeds his cats any cat-food. LOL
Because when you take your cat in to have it sterilized or have a bowel-obstruction operated on or have its leg pinned from being broken by a moving car or caught from in a fan-blade … its so much better if we all get to first practice these techniques your live cats.
LOL
(Just another nail in the coffin to make all pet-ownership illegal worldwide. LOL)