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.
LMAO,good point Dee 😉
Tis all good Michael,that nutter is under my carpet now like dust 😉
You probably realise that I have banned these trolls. They pop up from time to time. They are difficult to control but eventually and quite quickly, in point of fact, they are banned. I hope that you do not take things personally. Trolls by nature wish to upset people and the best way to beat them is not to be upset.
Well said, Mary. I totally agree with you as you no doubt know. It is ridiculous, as you say, to compare eating livestock and dissecting cats in the classroom. However, this is the kind of desperate measures that cat hating people resort to, to try and get their point over. They look stupid. They are stupid.
You are correct of course. We should ignore Woody. It is a weakness of mine that I wish to try and educate him! I feel I need to defend the cat and criticise him but more often than not I ban him and delete his comments and ultimately the comments of his followers if those followers are not in fact Woody himself.
Something that I’ve heard a few times in my life, Irish…
Question: What can you do with a whirling dervish?
Answer: Just let him whirl
Ignore Woody. He’s mindless and meaningless.