To Be or To Virtually Be

By Cindy Gomez
Editor

Every year between 10 and 12 million animals are dissected in classrooms across America. Of the wild-caught animals dissected, the most common are frogs, turtles, sharks, grasshoppers, crayfish, starfish, earthworms, and fetal pigs. It is estimated that 75 to 80 percent of our country’s high school students will dissect at least one of these animals. Even elementary school kids are getting a chance to learn by dissection. The practice of slicing up dead animals to educate our children has been a mainstay in American classrooms for over 150 years. But new technology and squeamish students are changing that.

In 2004, the Star Tribune reported that Ashley Curtis, a Minnesota student, failed a lab exercise after she refused to come to class on dissection day saying, “I don’t think any animals should go through any suffering for education.” Many other students around the country are petitioning principals, school boards, and staging protests to denounce the practice of classroom dissections altogether. They argue that education doesn’t have to cause death to animals; they become too physically ill during dissection to learn; and that virtual dissection is just as valuable and more eco-friendly.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) say that “[c]lassroom dissection desensitizes students to the sanctity of life.” Read more at http://tiny.cc/Opinionhpr. They even have a group called PETA Kids that are encouraged to stand up for their convictions and refuse to dissect animals in the name of learning. Meanwhile, many teachers and parents argue that there is no simulated dissection in the virtual world that can replace the hands-on experience of real dissection.

Now, we have nothing against PETA or animals. We cringe at the idea that there are so many millions of critters killed so that tweeners can learn where the epididymus is on a rat testicle. But the folks that think hands-on experience is valuable enough to kill animals for have a point. In fact, we think they are only scratching the surface.

The same kids that need smelling salts during dissection are bombarded with thousands of images of death, sexual assault, and all manner of violence on a daily basis. They see it in video games, tv, at school, on billboards, in malls, in advertisements, on buildings, and in graffiti. And they can’t cut open a fetal pig? There is something seriously wrong with that scenario.

We’ve all become so desensitized to seeing those kinds of images that they are not alarming any more. Unfortunately, when we have to deal with real life violence and death, we haven’t got a clue how to react. In fact, we are frequently shielded from the realities of death. Look at the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When we bombed Iraq, every major network was there to cover the fireworks. Embedded journalists dressed in army gear and screaming their news reports while dodging bullets was common on the nightly news. Then, nothing. No more pictures, no more video, and no more reality. Images of the bodies of dead soldiers or civilians are common in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here, we rarely see them. Perhaps that is why it is so easy for us to shrug off the idea of how many thousands of people have died.

People have grown accustomed to saying things like “Oh, we’ve never met but you’re my Facebook friend”, and “I’ve never been but I took the virtual tour.” Ten years ago, people who met on the internet and married were freaks on the Jerry Springer show. Now, they’re just joining the masses of match.com and eHarmony subscribers. There was a time when talking on the phone was too impersonal. People can’t read you as well over the phone. Important information has to be conveyed in person to build trust and gauge sincerity. Nowadays people prefer texting to phone conversations. We don’t have to get bogged down listening to the mundane drivel we tell each other in between the important stuff.

We also don’t know how to communicate in person anymore. We don’t visit each other just to have coffee and chat. Instead we post on each other’s facebook walls and send each other forwarded “Best Friend” quizzes. Forget the handwritten letter. Snail mail is out and twittering is the way to update your peeps. What the hell has happened to us?

We need reality: real conversations, real relationships, real horror. We can’t appreciate the importance of reality until it’s gone. We are quickly becoming a bunch of zombies that can’t cope with seeing frog guts but can readily keep sending our children to foreign lands to kill and be killed. Many of those kids learned everything they know about war on a simulator. God help us.

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