Abstract
Learning about animals has been an integral feature of education. Voluntarily or involuntarily, directly or indirectly, animals contribute to education, which means that humans have been the prime beneficiaries of studying animals, in terms of learning about animal anatomy and behaviour. But human–animal relations have the potential of being educationally significant in other ways, too, in that interactions can be mutually beneficial. Pedagogical and educational encounters between humans and animals also have the potential of benefiting animals. Human beings can learn to interact and engage with other animals in morally defensible ways, to appreciate their abilities and respect their needs and interests, to coexist with them in a caring, non-invasive fashion.
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Notes
- 1.
As I will explain in Chapter 6, appeals to kindness and injunctions against cruelty constitute a basis neither for morality nor for moral education. Most importantly, embodying as they do reference to agents’ mental states, motives or intentions, they fail to account for our positive and negative duties. At most, such appeals and injunctions characterise a virtue ethic’s identification of ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’, respectively, without these necessarily translating into action.
- 2.
There is a persistent worry that the punishment meted out in response to the abuse and torture of animals is either applied inconsistently or does not even begin to fit the crime, or both. The argument runs that large-scale animal abuse remains legal—pertaining especially to the food, biomedical and clothing industries.
- 3.
Lyons et al. (2017) provide a comprehensive account of Noddings’s ethic of care (1984, 1995) and how it might be employed in science education in particular. I discuss Noddings’s ideas, as well as ecofeminist positions, in Chapter 12.
- 4.
In Chapter 10 I argue that rights share certain features with entitlements, claims, etc., but that they cannot be viewed as synonymous with any of these (see also Horsthemke 2010: 231–237).
- 5.
What remains unclear, however, is how Nussbaum’s verdict that “research using animals remains crucial to medical advances, both for humans and for other animals” (Nussbaum 2006: 403) is to be squared with her capabilities approach. While she emphasises, in this context, “the dignity of animals and our own culpability toward them” (Nussbaum 2006: 405), her verdict is based not only on a factual error (see Horsthemke 2010: 91–104) but also appears to be normatively inconsistent.
- 6.
In this regard, Lloro-Bidart and Russell (2017: 47) point out that “critical environmental education research demonstrates … that when political aspects of environmental learning (such as policies guiding animal treatment) are engaged, learners emerge with [a] greater sense of responsibility for caring for other animals”. The authors advocate a “more politicised ethic of care” (48), in science education as elsewhere. Bentley and Alsop (2017: 80) examine scenarios where “pedagogy becomes a kind of care-giving, in that care, especially effective care, cannot occur without learning and vice versa”.
- 7.
Kahn Jr. suggests “that similar manifestations of nature occur across diverse locations and that such similarities help explain children’s similar environmental moral constructions” (Kahn Jr. 2002: 105).
- 8.
I use the term ‘interpersonal’ to include both human beings and companion animals. Whether or not (some) animals are ‘persons’ could be the topic of classroom discussion; see below.
- 9.
On the use of books, see Melson (2001) and Krueger and Krueger (2005). Obviously, one ought to distinguish between children’s anthropomorphic projections of their own instinctual drives and children’s identification with non-human animals as an indication of a deeper, trans-species connection.
- 10.
This question refers to the following thought experiment: if a lifeboat can only accommodate four individuals, but there are four humans and a large dog, then who should be sacrificed? I return to this and related puzzles in Chapter 11.
- 11.
Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts are the respondents. Amy Gutmann is the author of the introduction to Coetzee’s novel.
- 12.
See Horsthemke (2010: 59–63).
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Horsthemke, K. (2018). Moral Education and Animals. In: Animal Rights Education. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98593-0_4
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