News

I note you do not find slaughter cruel! Perhaps you have never seen what actually happens in a slaughterhouse but if you have then I would not like to see your description of cruel it certainly would not be permitted on this site!

In an ideal world there would be no need for suffering of any kind however until that time certain standards of behaviour are demanded by society one is the cause and effect phenomena. If you do something that many people think is inappropriate then you must be prepared to take the consequences which have I understand has escalated to many calls for the Heads removal.

I would suggest that some of your statements are based on prejudice towards non meat eaters by the tone of some of your comments which misses the point.

A school farm is not an agricultural environment as I understand there are few animals there and as such it is obvious children are going to bond with those animals in a way that places the interpersonal relationship in a different context to the real farm animals who are generally held in impersonal herds and logged by ear tag for milk yield and that sort of statistical data and data for farm source disease tracking and the like.

Not the sort of thing seen at a petting farm which is often sanitized for public consumption even having named cows, sheep, goats and the like available specifically for people to touch. This is as I'm sure you are aware not the real world of food production where animals are treated much the same as any commodity in a business maximum out from minimum in.

Many workers are treated the same way especially in the agricultural industry long hours, harsh working conditions and poor pay being part of the countryside. Therefore the children who attend a school in such an area will be well aware of farm reality possibly being victims of the downside of farming in general Thus a toy farm and teachers pet project which is what this appears to be would seem to be an unnecessary luxury in this climate of severe economic constraint.

However I've yet to come across a member of the teaching profession with a real grasp of financial management skills and budgetary control abilities, those sort of issues often left to some underpaid admin assistant to cope with. Your claim that the slaughter process is too scary I would certainly agree with.

However we are told a group of 14 children voted for slaughter. How was their decision then informed if they had not been told what slaughter was? It is like like going to vote in a Parliamentary election without knowing the name or political affiliation of the candidates and I rather suspect an independent adjudicator would have called foul in this case as the Head is reported as wanting this sheep killed and therefore had a vested interest in the outcome of the vote.

Clearly there was room for this bias to influence the vote as children are very susceptible to the wishes of their Head teacher and would wish to please her anyway! There also appear to be conflicting stories on the points of fact and as I have said if you don't have the courage to put your real identity up then your comments are hardly comparable in validity to those that have which ever camp they are supporting!

My comments are based on the reports read in the national and local press and various internet sites all of which state that the sheep was named Marcus, that it was treated as a pet and some of the children were upset by the slaughter decision which some contributors have likened to a small pet animal being killed.

I don't personally find any distinction in the animals size but the fact that it has been reported as being a pet and reared in a non real farm environment by children who are not sufficiently worldly wise to realise the complete significance of being asked to vote on something like the slaughter of a reported pet sheep you yourself have said slaughter is not something they should be exposed to.

I say again if that is the case why ask them to vote on something that they are disqualified from knowing the full implications of. The involvement in this apparently manipulative and underhanded way is not a good example for someone in authority to set children.

The values taken from school particularly primary school are taken through life and if those values are in any way skewed by any omissions or manipulative behaviours of teachers then those children could suffer irreparable harm and either experience trauma as result of the sheep incident or suffer the effects later which might manifest as animal or human abuse because of the installation of a value system that appears to say it is OK to dispose of your pet because you either can or someone implied a permission to treat animals and hence humans in an abusive manner the two behaviours linkage being well documented.

So the point is an education exercise carried out in an a way that may potentially harm the very people education should be nurturing and caring for. To put it crudely this stunt has backfired on the perpetrator and it is likely to haunt her for quite a while especially in this litigious society we live in where suing ones school because of problems that manifest later in life is a distinct possibility!

Chris Beal