PETA Bribing Cash Strapped Schools to Promote Ads

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is on a nationwide campaign offering cash incentives to school systems in exchange for support for their cause. Even in these lean times, schools across the country are hesitant to accept the offer.

Some schools, however, have taken the group up on its offer of free software that allows students to perform digital "dissections," Gonzalez said.
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You know, I generally hate PETA. Frankly the lot of them should be arrested for the crap they pull. Not to mention they are massively hypocritical in their stance.

That said, If the software is accurate I really see no issue with digital dissections. While digital is no replacement for those going in medical, the stuff in HS really does not teach much. Naturally their ads on the matter are their typical extremist bullshit, but this is one time i don't disagree entirely with them. There really is little viable reason for dissection in HS. It didn't gross me out or anything, but it certainly did not teach me anything either.

for the record, I would of rather been eating what I was dissecting. It just seemed like a waste of something perfectly edible to me. :D
 
Dekoth-E- said:
for the record, I would of rather been eating what I was dissecting. It just seemed like a waste of something perfectly edible to me. :D
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We dissected fried chicken in Jr. High science class. Really. And then we ate it afterwards. We did have to dissect a frog too, but the only thing I remember really learning from that is that eyeballs bounce.
 
[B said:
Pythagoras[/B], mathematician] "For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
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char min
 
Pythagoras said:
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
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3 char min
 
Starcrossed said:
Dude, I've never heard that one before. Clearly a novel mind.
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I give Kyle credit for introducing me to that line. If you wanna get mad, feel free to take it up with him. :p

After which he will probably take you out in his back yard, hunt some animals with his 50cal gun, clean them himself, cook them on his grill, and feed you.
 
How do marketing agencies spew propagada (political or corporate) to a generation used to adblock? Buy school administrators. Frankly, I suspect there are few things cheaper than bribing a school administrator.

The problem is that once somebody finds a source of funding, they won't ever let go. You would have to be a pretty old fart not to have seen this (I don't remember it being there in the 80s), but productizing schoolkids is old hat. While the usual buyers remain fast food and soda companies, more controversial groups (PETA, coal) have been making news.
 
I've been a vegan for going on six years now. I find a lot of PETA's promotional strategies problematic, even unethical at times, but they do earn some respect from me for championing a very unpopular cause.

Taking PETA out of the equation, the issue of having elementary/high schools teach biology with software instead of real dissections is one I can wholeheartedly support. I don't see the justification for killing millions of frogs/chickens/whatever so a bunch of disinterested teens can poke and prod their corpses. A lot of kids find dissections objectionable in the first place; here is a clean and ethical alternative.
 
N2OInferno said:
We dissected fried chicken in Jr. High science class. Really. And then we ate it afterwards. We did have to dissect a frog too, but the only thing I remember really learning from that is that eyeballs bounce.
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My thought too, I opted out the frog dissection way back when (20-25 years ago) because I thought it was gross. Looking back on it, I doubt there really was anything that I'd learn from doing it. Seems like something more suited for an anatomy class than a general science class in jr high/high.

I really don't see a problem with this, not that I see "unethical treatment" of things like frogs. In fact I'm happy they're getting money like this rather than getting payoffs from corporate sponsors to bring junk into the school like soda and fast food.
 
How do marketing agencies spew propagada (political or corporate) to a generation used to adblock? Buy school administrators. Frankly, I suspect there are few things cheaper than bribing a school administrator.

The problem is that once somebody finds a source of funding, they won't ever let go. You would have to be a pretty old fart not to have seen this (I don't remember it being there in the 80s), but productizing schoolkids is old hat. While the usual buyers remain fast food and soda companies, more controversial groups (PETA, coal) have been making news.
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Just an example, my high school was desperate for funding, so did something that I thought was very evil. The government would give money to schools who had a lot of "special" students with learning disabilities. My high school didn't have one, so they made their own basement classes. I had poor grades, so they had me evaluated. BAM, I had a learning disability, even though I just never studied or did homework. Unless being lazy was a learning disability.

I ended up in classes that taught me how to add, subtract, and cross roads. Even had classes to fill out 1040EZ. It was extremely silly, but some people did belong in that class, and some were like me where they didn't care about school and got poor grades.

Then one day I got pulled from lunch to take a test. Was a silly test that had me answer rudimentary questions, like if I folded this paper what should would it look like. Where I was expected math history and english tests, I got simple questions that I had to answer as fast as I can.

All I remember was the lady was impressed, and that I scored above average. I didn't pay any attention to it, and went back to reading my computer magazines, like I usually did in lunch. Months later, my principals walks down the hallway at me, and screams and curses me off. I had no idea what was going on, so I thought I had done something to upset him.

It wasn't until I went to college that I find out that test helped expose my school to cheating the government, and just giving out learning disabilities to anyone with poor grades in high school, just to meet the requirement to get funded. It certainly made me happy, cause I couldn't take courses I wanted to take, due to that basement program. I was gifted in art, but didn't have any room for art classes. Was only able to take electronics course. Those soldering skills do come in handy to this day, but I still wonder what could I have done if I went after my art skills.

The point of this story is that, don't let anything entice your school. Especially when they have requirements and restrictions. Nothing is free, and there's always a price to pay. If schools were hurting back then for me, you don't wanna know what schools today with do for a Klondike bar. I'd rather schools disallow any influence of beliefs. It could be software today, but it could lead to the banning of meat products from the cafeteria. We don't need schools to turn every student into vegetarians.
 
From another viewpoint, one could say we don't need schools to turn every student into a meat-eater.
 
Professor12 said:
Taking PETA out of the equation, the issue of having elementary/high schools teach biology with software instead of real dissections is one I can wholeheartedly support. I don't see the justification for killing millions of frogs/chickens/whatever so a bunch of disinterested teens can poke and prod their corpses. A lot of kids find dissections objectionable in the first place; here is a clean and ethical alternative.
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Lot of good reasons why dissecting animals are better for kids. For one, it could lead to more people becoming surgeons. We certainly don't want squeamish doctors with a knife.

Then there's less people who get sick at the sight of blood. When an accident happens, do we really need people vomiting at the sight of blood, rather then helping?

Finally, it teaches people where they get their food. A lot of slaughter occurs to get that chicken onto your plate. If you want to be part of PETA, what better way then to start then to experience a sample of what people do in slaughter houses on a daily basis. If not, then you'll have a bit of appreciation for that meat you get to eat.

If digital blood was as good as real blood, then I'd be a mass murderer. Which obviously it isn't. So why would digital dissections be as good as real dissections?
 
Dekoth-E- said:
You know, I generally hate PETA. Frankly the lot of them should be arrested for the crap they pull. Not to mention they are massively hypocritical in their stance.

That said, If the software is accurate I really see no issue with digital dissections.
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PETA doesn't do anything extreme. You may be thinking of ALF, which is a separate group whose members will use violence against persons and property. I don't agree with many of PETA's views on animals as food (except unnecessary mistreatment/cruelty), but they are consistent in their views.

I agree about the "real" dissection. Most people don't want to do it and the experience itself is pretty pointless. Really, cutting open a worm, grasshopper, frog and pig fetus with a dull blade? That was really useful to me. :p Plus the frog and pig make you stink of formaldehyde and death.
 
Ashbringer said:
Lot of good reasons why dissecting animals are better for kids. For one, it could lead to more people becoming surgeons. We certainly don't want squeamish doctors with a knife.

Then there's less people who get sick at the sight of blood. When an accident happens, do we really need people vomiting at the sight of blood, rather then helping?

Finally, it teaches people where they get their food. A lot of slaughter occurs to get that chicken onto your plate. If you want to be part of PETA, what better way then to start then to experience a sample of what people do in slaughter houses on a daily basis. If not, then you'll have a bit of appreciation for that meat you get to eat.

If digital blood was as good as real blood, then I'd be a mass murderer. Which obviously it isn't. So why would digital dissections be as good as real dissections?
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By high school you're already either squeamish or not. If you are squeamish - 3-4 dissections over a year is not going to fundamentally change you. Anybody with an actual 'just can't handle it' biological response is already able to opt-out (teachers tend to make the opt-out alternative a painfully large amount of extra work - so only the truly squeamish go that route).

You seem to be confusing the ability to cut into a frog, and there being any point to cutting into a frog. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean it makes sense to do it. A person could be perfectly fine with blood, but still see no point to actually killing thousands of frogs just so disinterested teens can cut into them and ultimately learn nothing important from the whole thing.
 
PETA preying on schools, someone call the People for the Ethical Treatment of Children!
 
Ashbringer said:
Just an example, my high school was desperate for funding, so did something that I thought was very evil. The government would give money to schools who had a lot of "special" students with learning disabilities. My high school didn't have one, so they made their own basement classes. I had poor grades, so they had me evaluated. BAM, I had a learning disability, even though I just never studied or did homework. Unless being lazy was a learning disability.
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Sounds like the plot of "Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd"


I ended up in classes that taught me how to add, subtract, and cross roads. Even had classes to fill out 1040EZ. It was extremely silly, but some people did belong in that class, and some were like me where they didn't care about school and got poor grades.
.
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Nothing personal, but the fact your parents didn't stir up a shit storm over this, speaks poorly of their care in your education.
 
Starcrossed said:
From another viewpoint, one could say we don't need schools to turn every student into a meat-eater.
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This is a valid point. From a pure economics and energy conservation point - well, the same land used as grain for cows (etc) could raise human food as well. Introducing an animal into the mixture that has to be fed and cared for over a period of YEARS before a human can consume it, to retrieve just a portion of the food energy IT consumed from the land...

...well, it's inefficiency on top of inefficiency. Whatever your moral position, a vegetarian diet is unarguably more efficient use of land, other natural resources, and energy than a meat-based diet.

Does that matter? Maybe not yet, maybe it does. Hard to tell. It will *someday*, of course. Especially when oil starts increasing in cost to the point that the necessary amount of transportation for processing animals for meat (raising, shipping to slaughterhouses, packaging, etc) becomes cost prohibitive...
 
Professor12 said:
I've been a vegan for going on six years now. I find a lot of PETA's promotional strategies problematic, even unethical at times, but they do earn some respect from me for championing a very unpopular cause.

Taking PETA out of the equation, the issue of having elementary/high schools teach biology with software instead of real dissections is one I can wholeheartedly support. I don't see the justification for killing millions of frogs/chickens/whatever so a bunch of disinterested teens can poke and prod their corpses. A lot of kids find dissections objectionable in the first place; here is a clean and ethical alternative.
Click to expand...

Peta isn't championing a cause, they are using it as nothing more then a means to make money and push their agenda. You might want to spend some time actually learning about them if you think they are doing anything even remotely humanitarian or ethical for that matter.

Ashbringer said:
Lot of good reasons why dissecting animals are better for kids. For one, it could lead to more people becoming surgeons. We certainly don't want squeamish doctors with a knife.

Then there's less people who get sick at the sight of blood. When an accident happens, do we really need people vomiting at the sight of blood, rather then helping?

Finally, it teaches people where they get their food. A lot of slaughter occurs to get that chicken onto your plate. If you want to be part of PETA, what better way then to start then to experience a sample of what people do in slaughter houses on a daily basis. If not, then you'll have a bit of appreciation for that meat you get to eat.

If digital blood was as good as real blood, then I'd be a mass murderer. Which obviously it isn't. So why would digital dissections be as good as real dissections?
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Once again, not to defend peta but there are a few things wrong with your point.

1) Potential Dr's get all the dissection on animals and human cadavers in medical school they need. HS Dissection does utterly nothing to that point.

2) No blood in a dissection, so not sure where this comes from. All the stuff we dissected was preserved. Once again a non point.

3) Has no more relevance to where our food comes from then going to the meat section in the grocery store. A field trip to a butcher shop would be far more valuable if this were the intended lesson.

4) Once again, the point of dissection is not about blood..so really none of your points even came close to making sense.

Find me a single HS kid that learned anything from a real dissection that could not be learned just as easily digitally. You won't find one, so don't bother. Again our medical Dr's is not what this is aimed at. This is nothing more then biology class in HS which is effectively a joke in the first place.


pxc said:
PETA doesn't do anything extreme. You may be thinking of ALF, which is a separate group whose members will use violence against persons and property. I don't agree with many of PETA's views on animals as food (except unnecessary mistreatment/cruelty), but they are consistent in their views.

I agree about the "real" dissection. Most people don't want to do it and the experience itself is pretty pointless. Really, cutting open a worm, grasshopper, frog and pig fetus with a dull blade? That was really useful to me. :p Plus the frog and pig make you stink of formaldehyde and death.
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See my first comment if you honestly believe PETA doesn't do anything extreme. That is almost a laughable statement.
 
dderidex said:
...well, it's inefficiency on top of inefficiency. Whatever your moral position, a vegetarian diet is unarguably more efficient use of land, other natural resources, and energy than a meat-based diet.
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unarguably? I'm sure there could be some arguments involved. Like food stock for food animals can come from land that isn't terribly fertile, or any good, also they tend to eat stuff we can't eat simply because they've evolved to eat nothing but fiberous material, where as we might eat the corn (and watch as we poop corn out unchanged :D), yet you grind up the entire stalk and they can consume most all of it. Also you can get away with less (or no) pesticides and also fertilizers when it comes to them. Finally often crops that are used to replenish lands (put nitrogen back in the soil and what not if they're not being fertilized) will end up being food for said animals at all, where as us humans are quite the picky eaters.

I will agree, that if you looked at JUST grain, its inefficient use of grain to feed animal, then eat said animals. However you're probably not getting crucial protein from grains as well. And yeah I realize there are plants that do have a high protein content as well.

Bottom line, efficiency isn't an issue as long as populations are in check... unfortunately they aren't, and more so, global economics has really fucked things over, because countries like the US which does not NEED to import food (obviously it does for "exotics") exports food to countries which can't feed their own people. I would rather go the dick route of things and tell other countries to fuck off and stop breeding if you can't feed your people, rather than having the fertile lands I live used to feed the rest of the world, causing me to resort to their diet as well.
 
if i had a kid and i knew their school was doing this, i'd raise about ten different kinds of hell
 
There's no substitute for the real thing. A picture in a textbook or on a monitor really isn't the same.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
See my first comment if you honestly believe PETA doesn't do anything extreme. That is almost a laughable statement.
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It just sounds like a general rant. I don't see the point of getting aggro just because some people disagree about eating meat. I disagree with that part too and just see it as a difference of opinion. Like, "good day, sir/ma'am" and all that. A respectful disagreement.

It's silly to claim that "the lot of them should be arrested". They make PSAs, get attention with rejected super bowl ads and have peaceful protests. None of those things are a crime. You are obviously confusing PETA with ALF or ELF, or possibly some convenient straw man image you buy into.
 
Personally, I believe that special interest groups like PETA have no business using money to lobby schools to adhere to an agenda. At the same time its up to the school to not give in to it.

That being said, with the level of technology now available there is no real reason for dissection in high school classes any longer. PETA should just pay for the software no strings attached and likely the school will use the free software over paying for animals to dissect. This way there is no direct influence and PETA accomplishes the goal they should be focusing on, the dissection since that is what they claim is the goal here.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
2) No blood in a dissection, so not sure where this comes from. All the stuff we dissected was preserved. Once again a non point.
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You don't know what you're talking about. Just because you used a dead frog, doesn't mean everyone does.

So all your other points are also invalid.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
for the record, I would of rather been eating what I was dissecting. It just seemed like a waste of something perfectly edible to me. :D
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The only things we dissected in HS were worms, frogs, and cow heart. I wouldn't have rather been eating them. ;)
 
BladeVenom said:
You don't know what you're talking about. Just because you used a dead frog, doesn't mean everyone does.

So all your other points are also invalid.
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I used a similar list that pxc had : tape worm, earth worm, grasshopper, fetal pig. I'm curious which school districts you are aware of that are similar to the dissection scene in E.T. (even way back then students in my district weren't killing their own frogs).

You are also claiming that this is somehow an inferior education. I'd be surprised if somehow students did better in college biology and beyond in schools were they killed their own frogs. I'd say that one thing that you learn in both methods (but I would be impressed if the digital dissection provided) is what dissection taught Dave Barry: you learn all about the anatomy of a frog and find they are filled with nothing but frog glop. Knowing the limitations of the theory you learn is as important as the theory itself. Unfortunately my chemistry labs taught me little about just how useless valence theory and the ideal gas law were, but I did learn quite a bit about the flammability of cyclohexane.
 
Albert Einstein said:
[FONT=georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif]Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~Albert Einstein[/FONT]
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Starcrossed said:
From another viewpoint, one could say we don't need schools to turn every student into a meat-eater.
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I don't see how serving meat in a school cafeteria will turn anyone into a meat-eater if they were not to begin with. Also, the vast majority of people eat meat, so there's not really much turning to be had. I'm not sure where you were going with this, besides arguing for the sake of it.
 
Meat-eating is representative of the current state of affairs. Were schools to not serve meat, at all, the status quo would likely change. Funny how civilization protects itself, right or wrong, against change, itself.
 
I guess I should say the status quo may change is schools stopped serving meat. It certainly would be more likely to change.
 
Starcrossed said:
From another viewpoint, one could say we don't need schools to turn every student into a meat-eater.
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Funny, your digestive system and anatomy disagree. Oh, right you guys didn't ever dissect anything to understand how that works out.
 
The current state of affairs being...animals eat other animals, and we are animals too. I agree with you on your statement about civilization, but meat eating has gone on much, much longer than there has been civilization. It's part of nature.
 
pxc said:
PETA doesn't do anything extreme. You may be thinking of ALF, which is a separate group whose members will use violence against persons and property. I don't agree with many of PETA's views on animals as food (except unnecessary mistreatment/cruelty), but they are consistent in their views.
He didn't say aything about extremism, he said they were hypocrites. Try this site http://petakillsanimals.com/
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DrRockzo said:
The current state of affairs being...animals eat other animals, and we are animals too. I agree with you on your statement about civilization, but meat eating has gone on much, much longer than there has been civilization. It's part of nature.
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Some animals don't meat eat at all, including some primates. Doesn't really matter how long something has been done, it doesn't make it valid.
 
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