Humane Education

The Canadian Federation of Humane Education defines Humane Education as follows:

“In its most general sense, humane education refers to all those activities designed to encourage children to “be kind.” Its goal is to help children develop empathy and compassion for other people and animals, respect for the environment, and the ability to make decisions based on the welfare of others as well as themselves.”

According to Weil (2007), the term “humane education” was first used by the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and child-protection organizations in the late 19^th century when people started to recognize the importance and see the need to educate children about kindness and respect for all people and all animals. For decades, humane education has been considered merely as elementary school programs that teach children how to treat and take care of companion animals. With the rising of global issues and challenges, humane educators enlarge the scope of humane education, which now encompasses animal-protection education, environmental and sustainability education, media literacy, character education and social justice education. Humane educators equip students with awareness and knowledge, encourage students to live with compassion for the planet and respect all creatures, and inspire students to make the informed and wise decisions which can change the future.

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The four elements in a quality humane education: (Weil 2007) 1. Providing accurate information.

2. Fostering 3Cs: curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.

3. Instilling the 3Rs: reverence, respect and responsibility.

4. Offering positive choices that benefit everyone.

The four goals of humane education: (Selby, 1995)

1. Humane education is to develop a biophyllic ethic-an ethic that loves and affirms life and living system.

2. Humane education is about interconncectedness. People need to be reminded that many things we tend to separate are actually inseparable and intertwined. (For example, human and animal)

3. Humane education is to clarify values and perspectives, to know where we and other people stand on issues and what the perspectives are.

4. Humane education is about democratic principles and processes. There is more interaction between people in classroom and more chance for students to express their true feelings and thoughts.

Mather described the things student should take home from a class on human-animal relationship. (Mather, 2007)

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1. Factual knowledge about the animals and how we interact with them in all different ways.

2. The extent to which we humans control and dictate the lives of animals-we are in charge.

3. Students exit the class having thought about the morality of what we do every day, being fully aware that we are making complex decisions of costs and benefits that need a morality behind them.

4. Respect for all the animals that we share the planet with.

Samuels (2007) posits that teaching children to empathize must also equip them with abilities to help others, otherwise they can be exposed to more suffering and eventually have to look away from other’s struggle due to helplessness and guilt. In fact, not just children, people all have tender feelings that they try to protect. After all, feeling bad for ourselves or other people is an unpleasant feeling which we want to avoid, even if it means to escape from the truth at times. A humane educator would take this into consideration, employ a variety of strategies and include actual helping activities into learning, providing successful and positive helping experiences, which reward children with sense of achievement.

In a modern and urbanized society, children have very limited contact with animals.

Other than companion animals, they can only rely on “intentional wildlife experiences”

(Melson, 2007), such as zoo, aquarium to get in touch with animals. As for wild animals, children get to know them majorly through books, movies and television programs. In

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Taipei, a heavily populated city, there are high-rises all over the city. There is no garden or yard for birdfeeders or insects, and indoor space is limited due to the high housing cost. Keeping a companion animal may be hard due to space limit. Most children’s parents are both working, thus they have limited time to participate in children’s education. Aside from their study at school, many parents send children to all kinds of cram school or hire tutors in order to learn more or achieve better grades. Children’s popular pastimes are video games and non-educational cartoons on television. Since animal contact is very limited and parent’s involvement cannot always be expected, the author believes that school teachers play a vital role in educating children systematically about animals, not just in science classes, but also humane attitudes towards animals.

More and more educators, scholars and animal caretakers see the need of incorporating humane education into public schooling and developing a curriculum on humane education for public schools.

“As humane education is integrated into curricula and as humane educators are hired by schools in the same number as math or language arts teachers, students will gain knowledge, opportunity and will to live with more respect for others…”

(Weil, 2007)

“Including humane education as part of the regular school

curriculum ensures that all children learn appropriate behaviours, not just those fortunate enough to come from stable, caring

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home environments.” (Canadian Federation of Humane Education, n.d.)

However, taken into consideration that an elementary school student in Taiwan already have long hours of schooling (7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) with 8 periods of class per day, it is more feasible to intergrade humane education into all current subjects and be taught as part of regular class instead of creating extra time.

Asione (1992) commented on the advantages of the lessons and activities included in the National Association of Humane and Environmental Education curriculum guides (Savesky and Malcarne, 1981)

1. Appeal to teachers and administrator because the materials, activities and lessons may be used as part of regular instruction in language arts, social studies, math, health, and science, and not have to be added as additional curriculum area.

2. Materials to be used on a more extensive basis than single visit by a humane educator.

In addition to passion for education, a humane educator needs to be innovative.

Shapiro (2007) mentioned that the Humane Society of the United States has been giving an annual award to the best established, new, and innovative Human-Animal Studies courses, for example, a course that teaches teachers in various fields to develop their own courses in their own field.

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However, the effort from one single teacher is limited. At times, the effort to promote humane education is not acknowledged or appreciated by the school. For example, the author once designed and implemented a humane education integrated music class for grade 5 students. Deriving from a song “Love Found Me”, the author directed the students to the concept of “adopting animals from shelters instead of buying”

and other issues related to animal welfare. The students showed high interest and participated very well in class; however, the author was later reprimanded by the Curriculum Coordinator for “not doing what a music teacher should do.” The experience learned from this incident is that, passing on humane attitudes toward animals to the young generation requires much more than one teacher’s effort and commitment. The school policies, the attitude of administrative staffs and parents are also part of the link. Adequate communication and education are needed for related personnel at school to realize the importance of humane education. Their cooperation, teamwork and support will facilitate teachers’ implementation of humane education at school.

In light of the previous studies, a one-hour intense humane education class targeted for grade 6 students was designed and implemented, and the results are discussed in the next chapter. It is understood that results can vary due to many factors such as setting, course design, implementation, and many others; however, students at different age and grade level demonstrate different cognitive developments, learning strengths and needs.

How to design and implement the humane education tailored to different grades of students, which brings out the most effects, is what humane educators dwell on. Aspects

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like duration of the class, length and intensity of the program, materials presented and used in class, presentation methods and skills, and relationship between students and the teacher are to be carefully considered.

The author had the opportunity to work with various grade levels of students in Taiwan and found that in general, younger students (grade 1 and 2), although not capable of understanding complex concepts, respond very well to love, care, attention and positive reinforcement. They are simple-minded and flexible, and they tend to take everything the teacher says (if understood) into their beliefs, especially the teacher who they have strong liking for. They show natural affinity to animals and interest in anything that moves. It is hypothesized that it is the best age to start cultivating empathy toward animals and humans, and to be introduced to and guided toward humane attitudes. Since younger students go home and tell their parents what they learn at school, messages and information can be passed on to the parents through the students.

As Jimmy Gonzalez, the Bridgeport's Chief Animal Control Officer said, “The best way is to teach families humane animal care from the bottom up.” “Educating kids is the best way to get to the parents.” (Lyle, 2011) The older the student gets, the better they can understand complicated issues and apply their critical thinking to discover and solve problems. However, older students’ personal traits become more obvious and more fixed, so do their learning habits and attitudes. From a teacher’s point of view, older students’ personal traits are harder to be molded or reconstructed. From what the author saw in her teaching experience, younger students are more willing to share what they think and feel, to volunteer and to participate, regardless of the outcome. Older students do have their own minds and likings, but not as willingly as the young students to share,

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especially in front of the class. They are selective in what to listen or who they listen to.

They have doubts and questions but do not necessarily raise them in class. They are conscious about social desirability, self-aware and yet care about comments and views from peers, seeing “answering wrong” or “asking unwise questions” as embarrassment.

From an open discussion (though with their eyes closed) with grade 5 students, even the students who know the answer restrain themselves from raising hands because they are afraid of being accused of being “attention stealers.” The older students the author saw in Taiwan definitely possess the ability to learn more advanced knowledge and skills, however they are more restricted by various concerns, more academic pressure from heavy assignment load and tests, less freedom to express personal feelings and behaviour due to culture and environment factors. The above situation is quite obvious from grade 5 above. As for high school students in Taiwan, other than their personal interests, they are occupied with studies of “main subjects”, which are graded toward and tested in college entrance exam. Very few of them have interest in and available time for humane education.

Judging from the teaching experience, it is the author’s hypothesis that a humane education program which is fun-based, more activities and movements involved, shorter class time (1 period) over longer period of time frame, more frequency, instructed by teachers who the students are familiar with and fond of working with is recommended for younger students. For older students, a program that is more intense, compact, lecture-based with intellectual work involved, longer class time (2 periods), less frequency is more ideal in current education system.

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Chapter Three

Topic I: The Effects of a One-Hour Humane Education Class on Grade Six Students

3.1 Setting and Participants

The author had been teaching in Taipei Fuhsing Private School since February 2008, with the main job content of teaching general music class to bilingual students.

Every year in April, the school holds an “English Camp” to provide Grade 6 students from other elementary schools a chance to learn various topics in English and to get to know the school. During the Camp, in addition to going to English classes of different subjects, such as music, travelling, sports, and many others; the students’ English abilities are tested. This event is also to the school’s benefit to advertise its English teaching, and to attract and enroll students who possess strong English abilities into middle school.

In 2012, the event was held on April 14 and 15. Among the hundreds of grade 6 students who participated in English Camp, 107 students (divided into 4 sessions) were assigned to “Share the World”―a 1-hour long humane education class, with the main focus on empathy towards animals. There were 51 boys and 56 girls in total.

The author had taught the class once in 2011, with similar contents and setting;

however without pretest and protest. The class in 2012 spanned two periods of 40 minutes and the breaks in between to cover the tests and materials. Since each test took

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the students around 20 minutes to complete, and actual instruction time was about an hour. The students were told to go to the bathroom whenever they felt a need to, but almost nobody left the classroom in the middle of the class. It was because most of the students were very focused and involved in class. Not having a break in between the 2 periods helped in keeping the students’ focus and attention in class. Also, since the students were gathered from different schools and they did not know each other very well, in some ways it helped the students stay disciplined and concentrated on the instruction. As mentioned in the last chapter, students in Taiwan restrain themselves from expressing their thoughts in class for multiple reasons, one of them being the concerns for classmates. In this setting, since they hardly knew each other and they were only classmates for 2 days, group discussion would have been difficult to engage and was avoided; however, it was relatively easy to encourage their individual involvement in class. To further motivate their participation, reward cards were given to the students who volunteered to express their thoughts in class. Comments were made by the instructor to encourage further thinking but no judgments of right or wrong were given.

Sharing, creative thinking, and critical thinking were encouraged.

Students in Taiwan start learning English from grade 1. Some of them start as early as kindergarten. English is considered an important subject to learn, with the same academic weight as Chinese. Most students who came to the English Camp are the ones who are highly interested and motivated in learning the language, so their English level is above average. Students’ abilities to speak and write differ individually, but they showed no difficulty in understanding the class instruction.

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All of the participants were grade 6 students, who were mostly aged 12 (range from 11 to 14). The students were from different public or private elementary schools in Taipei and New Taipei City, with 1 student from USA.

Efforts were made to reduce, as much as possible, English proficiency as a variant in the result. Even though the materials used in class and main instruction were in English. Chinese translation of key words was written on the blackboard. The key concepts taught in class were explained both in English and Chinese. Students were reminded that they could ask and answer questions in Chinese if they had trouble understanding or expressing themselves clearly in English. The main video played in class was in English, with Chinese subtitle. The other short video clips, even though without Chinese subtitle, were closely related to the topics we talked about in class, and they were quite explicit that the students could tell clearly what happened in the video clips from actions, for example, giving shots to animals (euthanasia). Students were told that they could answer the questions on the tests in Chinese if they feel more comfortable doing so, and extra time was given for the students who required longer time to complete the tests.

Kept in mind the comment Asione (1992) gave on the investigation of Cameron (1983, in Asione): “The individual who provides the instruction should not conduct the assessment to avoid potential bias.” The author, who was the instructor, had the co-teacher lead the pre-test and pro-test. Even though the author remained on site in order to provide language assistance (the co-teacher did not know Chinese), the influence from the instructor was very minimum since the students did not develop any

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bond with the instructor over such a short time. There was no obvious reason to please the instructor and there was no particular expectation set by the instructor to be met.

3.2 Materials and Methods

The most part of the materials used in the class were selected from “Share the World.” It is a free educational program presented by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation. It contains a 30-minute video and worksheets. The suggested age range for this lesson is 7 to 10.

The Program Objectives are: (Share the World, n.d.)

 To enhance the pupils’ understanding that animals are living, feeling beings to be treated with respect and compassion.

 To assist pupils in recognizing that animals often experience the same needs and feelings as we do.

 To encourage pupils to see humans and animals in context with the natural world and to explore this theme.

 To help pupils understand how humans’ regard for animals has changed and developed as our knowledge of animals has increased.

Among the worksheets that “Share the World” provides, the author included

“Making Humane Choices” and “Companion Animal Overpopulation Math Sheet”

(Teach Kind, 2012) in the class of the present study. For the video, we watched the parts

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of “Introduction-Everyone Matters”, “The Amazing World of Animals” and “Animals Have Feelings” in class, with the total length of 14 minutes among the original 30-minute video.

Other materials used in class were posters from PETA and Internet, “The 10 Commandments from a Pet's Point of View” (Rawlinson, 2003) and pictures of various shelters in good and bad conditions. Two short videos related to euthanasia were played in class. One is “Kiss the Animals Goodbye” (Discoglamgrl, 2008.), which is a 5-minute clip from the documentary “The Power of Compassion”. (Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago & Friedl, E., 1994) The video clip shows the real process of euthanizing animals at the shelter. The other one showed an inhumane way of killing animals by gas chamber.

The students were asked to complete a survey before the lesson started and then another survey at the end of the lesson. The purpose of these surveys was to:

 Explore Taiwanese grade 6 students’ pet experiences and their relationships with companion animals.

 Learn grade 6 students’ views on companion animals.

 Learn how/where the students acquire their companion animals and the reason

 Learn how/where the students acquire their companion animals and the reason