Kids raise Marcus the lamb only to see it slaughtered
I understand that children can’t be sheltered forever and that they have to learn how things work in this world… even if those things are, on some level, disturbing. But what is the appropriate way to teach a kid about those things? Is it the way Headmistress, Mrs. Charman, chose to teach her kids where meat comes from? She had her students raise a lamb from birth; taught her kids to care for it, bottle-feed it, love it, and even named it Marcus — and then sent it off to be slaughtered.
All of this in the name of education? The children grew attached to this animal and were absolutely devastated when Marcus was sent to be slaughtered. Isn’t there a better way to teach young children how they get their meat?
Charman said “Many children don’t realise animals they probably pass every week end up on their plate in one form or another.”
Are you kidding me? The kids were hand feeding this animal. There is a right way and a wrong way to teach little ones about how things work in this world and I think Charman didn’t fully consider the consequences of her hands-on lesson and the emotional attachments children form. Shit, you take my son’s puppy blanket away from him and he is a wreck.
After my anger subsided I was trying to think rationally about the lesson she was trying to teach. I mean, kids do need to know where their food comes from, right? But do they need to hug it and squeeze it and call it Marcus? And to top things off… she was planning to raffle off the meat as a prize. Really? Come on!
Maybe I could justify this lesson if the kids were in middle school and they were told from the beginning that the purpose of raising this lamb was to eat its meat. Maybe. Am I totally off base here?
I have two kids and my mother constantly tells me she thinks I shelter them too much. Of course, her reasoning is because I won’t put Hannah Montana on for my kids. My thought is, as long as my older one is willing to watch PBS programming why introduce her to girls being obnoxious to each other — she will have a lifetime of that to endure. In terms of what goes on in the “real world” I constantly ask myself how much should I let my kids see. When the earthquake hit Haiti I wondered how much my 5-year-old needed to know. There was a collection at her school and so I needed to explain that some people got hurt and lost their homes… but does she need to know children were left parent-less and parents were left child-less? She certainly doesn’t need to see the images of the countless adults and children crying, bloodied and missing limbs. Those images were hard for me to see.
I talk to her about things we should be thankful for all the time. I explain that there are people in this world that don’t have food or fresh water; that she should be happy for what we have and not take it for granted.
What I am not going to do is take her to a farm, have her fall in love with a baby lamb, name it, visit it five days a week for nine months, and then tell her it’s time to kill the lamb and eat its meat. Does that make me seem like I am sheltering her? If it does… too bad.
Via Newser
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Yikes. How *not* to do that. You don’t name animals you’re going to eat — that’s why there are ear tags. And why start with a lamb? The cutest, fuzziest critter out there — why not chickens, which are kind of terrifying and reptilian, or even a pig (although you need a lot of room to raise a pig). I know a couple of guys who trade off the killing part — they couldn’t quite handle kiling their own meat chickens, so they swap out and each kill the other guys chickens. It’s always hard, but this seems like a lesson designed to make a bunch of sentimental vegans out of those kids.
I agree with Charlotte- Totally should have chosen an uglier pet to make this example!
I guess you did not go to a school with an FFA program. Raise it, show it, sell it for meat. People raised on farms and in rural areas that offer hunting and fishing are taught from an early age about killing animals for food. I was taught how sensless killing of animals is to be avoided. Animals should be killed for food or because they pose a threat (coyotes etc). Life is not so neat and compact that the meat at the deli just arrives in those little styrofoam trays covered in saran wrap. It is a lesson that we as people have forgotten in our Ipod, internet society.
Bah, the children weren’t traumatized. I remember seeing this story when it first broke last summer. There was 1 (one) child who was upset, the rest of the little meat eaters VOTED to send Lambchop off to the block.
The story from before the animal right’s people exploded over it:
“Supported by staff, the school council and most of the parents, pupils voted and it was agreed that one of the sheep would ultimately get the chop, with the resulting lamb steaks, shanks etc used to raise cash for school funds.
The slaughterhouse is the usual destination for the majority of male lambs and the children were told this.
Predictably, there was an outcry from soppy parents who said the children were upset. However, if television interviews with some of the youngsters were anything to go by, the children seemed quite matter of fact about the whole matter. It was the parents who were upset.”
http://www.examiner.co.uk/views-and-blogs/columnists/2009/09/19/hilarie-stelfox-full-marks-for-giving-marcus-the-chop-86081-24725959/
They didn’t learn a lesson that I didn’t learn at an early age. All farm kids learn it. You raise livestock so that you can kill and eat them.
Even now, when we pull a calf and it kills the cow, we have to bottle feed the smelly thing until it can be weened. Heck, I hate bottle feeding calves so much that I wish we had a bigger veal market.
Nah, the little urbanites needed that lesson.
I may be a bit crazy on this, but I have even gone so far as to explain to my children that if the necessity came we would eat our own pets. I explained to them that we love them but they are animals and in the end we are more important. We identified which dog was to go first. Perhaps I took it too far when I said that after we eat the animals I was going to eat them. But they appropriately responded with, “Well what if we gang up and eat you?” And naturally my response was “Bring it.”…good times.