Learning from dead creatures being opposed

Capital News (Kelowna)
Feb 25, 2005
Virginia Balfour
Capital News Contributor

A group of Kelowna students have organized and started petitioning their peers to support a student choice policy in schools across the district ensuring students have alternatives to dissecting animals in their science lab classes.

The student choice policy would require teachers to inform students that there are alternative learning methods to dissection and provide them with the opportunity choose to not dissect an animal or insect.

Cory Davis, 17, a student at Rutland senior secondary, is ethically opposed to the dissection of animals or insects to achieve curricular outcomes.

Davis and others began petitioning fellow students about two weeks ago and will continue lobbying their peers until they have ample support for the policy change.

"It is wrong that we have to learn by using other dead creatures. I don't want to learn from that," said Davis, youth director of The Responsible Animals Care Society.

While he has not been faced with having to dissect in any of his classes yet, Davis said he is concerned students aren't aware that they have a choice not to dissect animals.

Currently, individual teachers and schools decide how they will deal with individual students who express discomfort with dissecting an animal.
This process is faulted, Davis said, because it does not inform students of their options.

Students may be forced to dissect an animal simply because they are not aware they have the choice not to.

"(Teachers) don't tell us that we're allowed to do an alternative project," he said.

"If we want to refuse we have to do that and some students are worried their grade will drop," added Carmen Crosland, 14, a Grade 8 student at Glenrosa middle school who is working with Davis on the policy.

"They have the right to advocate for themselves," said RSS principal Rick Oliver.

He said teachers are willing and open to make adjustments for students who express concern about dissecting animals whether for health or philosophical reasons.

But he said the onus is going to be on the students to come up with alternatives in their student choice policy that meet curriculum outcomes.

Crosland explains she was not informed there was an alternative to dissecting a grasshopper in her Grade 7 science class last year.

It was only after approaching her teacher with her mother and providing an alternative that she was excused from the project.

Davis recently sent a letter to school district superintendent Ron Rubadeau outlining the need for a student choice policy.

The letter included a 20-page document providing facts about dissecting animals and possible alternatives such as videos, animation, models, CDs and library research to reach curriculum outcomes set out by the ministry.

They are waiting to hear a response from the school board on the issue.

"We're hoping for a positive response," said Kelowna TRACS president Sinnika Crosland, Carmen's mother.

"Ethically we feel when students are forced to dissect animals they become desensitized to the plight of animals.

"Students should always have a choice. They should be told they have a choice."