Animals in the Classroom: Lessons in Disrespect

Rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, frogs, parakeets, rats, snakes, fish, turtles, and countless other animals suffer abuse and neglect in school classrooms every year as teaching “tools” and classroom “pets.” Students can effectively learn responsibility as well as animal behavior and hands-on science without the presence of animals in their classrooms. There are far more constructive ways to learn about living beings than by holding animals captive in schools, where they are vulnerable to hazards and neglect.

Animals Are Not ‘Lessons’
Many teachers bring animals into the classroom with good intentions—to interest or amuse students, to teach responsibility, or to convey information about the animals themselves. But using animals as “learning tools” puts them at serious risk for both intentional cruelty and neglect. The following cases are just a sampling of those involving the abuse of animals in U.S. schools:

• A snake was stolen from his classroom enclosure and cooked alive inside a school’s microwave.
• Two chinchillas were beaten and left for dead.
• A rabbit in a day-care classroom showed symptoms of illness but was not taken to a veterinarian. He died without receiving any treatment.
• Four pigs had an unknown caustic chemical poured on them, resulting in painful burns to their backs, ears, and necks.
• A lamb was stolen from a school agriculture building, spray-painted, duct-taped to the outside of the building, and left there overnight in freezing temperatures.

Many “textbook” uses of animals are intrinsically inhumane. In chick-hatching programs, which are popular in elementary schools, teachers often fail to turn the eggs on schedule or custodians unplug incubators because they think that they’re appliances that were inadvertently left running. The result: dead and crippled hatchlings and distraught children.
 
School hatching projects should be replaced with modern teaching programs. Films, videos, state-of-the-art computer programs, and plastic models can demonstrate the major stages of animal development—even of chicks who are still inside their eggs. Such programs are already in use in other areas of biology education and can easily be adapted to fit classroom needs.

One school’s science project calls for students to place fish in warm water and then cold water to demonstrate the effects of the change on respiratory rates. One student’s parent was told that some of the students had made the warm water too hot, which led some of the fish to leap out of the water and then die. Despite students’ requests, the teacher failed to stop the project.

Some school districts inject male chickens with estrogen and female chickens with testosterone to show “opposite-sex mating behavior.” One witness reported that a chicken died immediately upon injection. Many chicks die in shipment for such school activities.

Programs offered by 4-H and Future Farmers of America encourage kids to lovingly raise and care for baby pigs, cows, and other animals and then sell them at auction to be killed and turned into hot dogs, hamburgers, and other meat. Worse yet, some of these animals are subjected to cruel treatment before they go to slaughter. For example, several pigs confined at Ohio fairgrounds for a 4-H exhibition were attacked and suffered “significant” injuries but were deprived of painkillers or anti-inflammatory medications because “they were headed to market.”(1)

Animals Shouldn’t Be ‘Teacher’s Pets’
An estimated 25 percent of teachers keep animals as “pets” in classrooms.(2) One former biology teacher remarked, “Teachers are like the rest of the public when it comes to animals: their brains click off.”(3) 

Once animals are in the classroom, important aspects of their nature are ignored altogether. Mice and most other small mammals are nocturnal, yet they are kept in brightly lit classrooms and removed from their cages during the day. Snakes and other carnivorous animals demonstrate “predation” to children who laugh, scream, or turn away as live mice or rats are fed to the animals. Animal safety is sometimes forgotten altogether, as in the case of a chinchilla who died from fumes when a teacher painted desks.(4) 

Animals are often neglected during school breaks and holidays. A fire or power outage can be deadly to an animal who is left alone in a building overnight or on weekends. Once summer comes or the animals get too big, they are often dumped at zoos or sent home with children who may have neither the means nor the knowledge to care for them.

There’s also a health risk. Children can get salmonella poisoning from handling reptiles.(5) The American Lung Association “strongly advises against having any kind of animal or pet in the classroom with the exception of fish” because children with asthma and allergies could be adversely affected.(6) Before you consider fish for the classroom, however, please see our factsheet on keeping fish in tanks. Fragile tropical fish suffer miserably when they are forced to spend their lives in glass aquariums.

The Lesson of Compassion
Keeping animals in the classroom teaches the wrong lessons about animals. Students might learn personal responsibility from cleaning a rat’s cage or filling a hamster’s water bottle on time, but this kind of basic discipline can easily be taught without animals. Rather than teaching broader responsibility for animals’ total well-being, allowing animals to be used as “learning tools” inevitably lowers their status in the minds of students. Young people generalize from the “do’s” and “don’ts” of authority figures, and human beings of all ages can contrive an endless variety of animal “uses” once they are taught that animals are tools.

Teaching the responsibility involved in caring for captive animals ignores the question of whether animals belong in cages at all. Teachers who want their students to learn about animals can lead discussions about these ethical issues instead of teaching by their actions that a policy that’s detrimental to animals is acceptable.
 
What You Can Do
Those who still use captive animals in their lessons are actually behind the times. There is an encouraging trend of greater sensitivity to animals’ well-being. A more respectful understanding of animals can be encouraged by quietly observing animals in their natural surroundings.
 
If your school is planning a hatching project, urge the science curriculum coordinator, the classroom teacher, or whoever is responsible to use an alternative project, such as visiting your local animal shelter or a wildlife rehabilitation center.

If your school is keeping animals—either as “pets” or as teaching “tools”—talk to the teacher, the administrator, and, if necessary, the school board. Ask your school board to ban the use of animals in classrooms.

References
1) Christina Hall, “3 Pigs Hurt in Assaults at Lucas County Fair,” Toledo Blade 30 Jul. 2005.
2) “Class Pets Provide Important Life Lessons,” Courier-Post 14 Aug. 2004.
3) Sam Dillon, “Summer Is a Perilous Time for Classroom Pets,” The New York Times 13 Aug. 2003.
4) Associated Press, “Groups Concerned About Health Effects of Animals in Classrooms,” 23 Sep. 2003.
5) National Center for Infectious Diseases, “Diseases From Reptiles,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 May 2004.
6) Associated Press.