Choice Between Grades & Morality

Many students going in to science stream in higher schools are faced with a moral dilemma of participating in animal dissection for their course work and their own personal morals or religious beliefs. Generally those wanting to follow courses that involve studying human or animal anatomy have to participate in animal dissection though they may abhor the idea.

Thanks to PETA, that first steps are being taken in schools in Washington DC to follow alternative learning methods. Guidance is being issued to schools in the District of Columbia by their local education agency on provision of alternative courses to dissections offering a dissection choice policy.

 http://osse.dc.gov/release/notice-non-regulatory-guidance-leas-animal-dissection

PETA explain their role in this change of policy and also their offer of providing packs for helping promote this choice in other schools/authorities.

  http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2012/10/02/victory-animals-spared-dissection-in-d-c.aspx

  http://petacms.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Experimentation/dissection-lessons-in-cruelty.aspx

To help district teachers implement the new policy, PETA is offering to donate computers and software through our national educational grants program so that D.C. students have access to state-of-the-art virtual-dissection equipment. Teachers are already taking us up on the offer! Advanced computer models have proved to be more effective teaching tools than cutting up animals, and they allow students to learn compassion while learning about anatomy.

Animals used in dissection could be lost or abandoned companion animals or could be bred in squalid mass-breeding facilities and then killed. Frogs, the most commonly dissected animal, are often ripped out of their natural environments, stuffed into bags without food or water, and shipped across long distances, and many of them sustain injuries or die during transport. But states and school districts across the country are honoring students’ right not to contribute to this cruelty by implementing dissection-choice policies.  

There is software available for studying anatomy in humane way.

http://www.teachkind.org/dissectalt.asp    

If you know of authorities where such alternatives are available – it would be good to publicise those to encourage other authorities to follow suit. Alternatively you can provide the alternative information to the authority.