Remember the potential PETA-linked charter school in Sacramento, with its "humane" curriculum? Well, now the scientists are fighting back:
A new science-based educational curriculum has been launched to help elementary and middle school students appreciate the role of science in their lives and to counter the animal rights-based curriculum known as humane education.
"Misinformation gets skewed into the spin of those types of [humane] curriculums, and all of a sudden, kids become zealots for a cause that they really don't completely understand, and they have never been given the whole picture," M. Sue Benford, executive director of the Ohio Scientific Education & Research Association (OSERA), told CNSNews.com...
The new science-based curriculum comes at a time when "humane education," which advocates say includes compassion for animals, awareness of environmental problems like so-called global warming and overpopulation, as well as non-violence, is expanding into the U.S. public school system.
Here I was thinking that these isolated charter schools were the main problem, but no; this article notes that the "humane education curriculum" in mandated in seventeen states.
Benford is eager to challenge the animal rights aspects of humane education.
"There is a difference between us and them. We do not believe that animals have the same rights as humans," Benford said..."Kids don't understand when they are contacted by animal rights organizations such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) or any of the other groups, for every cause there is an effect," Benford said, referring to what she sees as the great benefits of animal biomedical research.
"They don't understand that if someone goes in and destroys a laboratory where maybe 20 years of research has been underway to cure, let's say, smallpox or anthrax or cancer, somebody may die for that," Benford added.
PETA, of course, believes the scientists are doing nothing other than "brainwashing" the impressionable young students. Apparently, PETA considers a science curriculum to be a sign of "desperation" and in violation of the "natural empathy" that children have for animals. PETA is also apparently afraid that, when given all the facts about scientific research and animal testing, children will not choose the politically-correct side.
And don't miss this article, in which Cheryl Spencer-Scher, the director of the National Humane Education Society, fails to show any difference between the mission of her organization and acts of radicalism:
Spencer-Scher dismissed the criticism that the humane education curriculum preaches a radical animal "rights" philosophy.
"We don't promote the radicalism, we don't really promote the protests or the throwing of red paint on the [fur] coats, although some of us in our private lives may do those things," Spencer-Scher said.
Emphasis mine. So this curriculum will be fair and balanced and will not teach kids to burn down new suburbs or bomb medical research labs - but members of this organization may very well be doing those things in their spare time. Spencer-Scher asks parents to "to really look over the curriculum and get a grasp of it before condemning it." I'd suggest they "really look over" the members of the groups who are organizing these types of schools, and this sort of curricula, as well.