Education
Education is one of the focal points of the AAVS and its mission. From the organization’s birth, the aspect of education has remained strong, not only in just informing the public as to what vivisection and other such medical procedures were, but also in teaching children about properly treating animals. Teaching humane treatment of animals not only helps interspecies relationships, but also creates a betterment of ideology towards all creatures. As animal rights activist Joseph Covino Jr. writes, “a kid who’s raised to acknowledge no injury or injustice in mistreating or doing violence to a cat or a dog can never be counted on to think anything wrong in mistreating or doing violence to anything weaker than himself – his own kid maybe.”
Animalearn was created in 1990 and is the AAVS’ educational department. The group intends to illustrate how science and biology can be taught in schools without actually using animals, like with dissection in the classroom. Animalearn conducts free workshops with educators nationwide to show how to teach science without the use of animals, as well as trying to incorporate animal-rights, in concept and practice, into the curriculum and educational environment of the school setting. The group has created what they call the Science Bank which is a program of “new and innovative life science software and educational products that enable educators and students to learn anatomy, physiology, and psychology lessons without harming animals, themselves, or the Earth.”
Read more about this topic: American Anti-Vivisection Society
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)