Monday - November 16, 2009

Citizenship lessons to teach children respect for worms AND insects too. Don’t step on bugs kids.

So I guess if during the season when they are active, if your kitchen or some other part of the house suddenly experiences an invasion of ants, the thing to do is either politely ask the ants to leave, or else carry them outside.
Or, you could threaten them with an ASBO.  Ants might be smart enough to be frightened by that, but I don’t think spiders would buy it.

I think they’re gonna have to make a special case with regard to boys whose natural inclination might be to step on almost anything that crawls.
But not to worry.  The way things are working out here now, maybe in another generation the engineers will have more boys thinking like girls with regard to crawlies and won’t go near em. 

Citizenship lessons to teach children respect for worms

I love you, Mr Worm: By age seven children will have learnt not to stamp on ‘mini-beasts’

Marie Woolf, Whitehall Editor
The Times

Good citizenship is not just a question of respect for one’s fellow humans, it seems. The government has decreed that children should be taught not to hurt a fly.

New curriculum guidance says citizenship classes should pay due regard to the wellbeing of what it calls “mini-beasts”, including bees, ants and worms.

The classes are part of the “animals and us” section of the primary school citizenship curriculum. It says children can become “active citizens” by learning that “other living things have needs and they have responsibilities to meet them”.

By the age of seven pupils should have learnt that “humans have a responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of animals, including mini-beasts” and will have been told rules for “behaviour in areas where animals live”: for example, “not stamping on insects”.
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The model lessons, which are not compulsory for schools, have been drawn up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Children are also taught that it is against the law to leave dogs in cars on a hot day or to disturb fledglings in nests.

Rhiannon Pursall, a beetle expert at the Royal Entomological Society, welcomed the move. “A lot of children do not recognise insects as animals. They stamp on ants and torture spiders, but they wouldn’t kill a cat or a dog,” she said.

“The younger that children can learn about caring for insects the better. If they can grasp the idea that insects are just as important as animals, that would be fantastic.”

Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative animal welfare spokesman, said it was important that schools had a sense of proportion. “All creatures great and small have their place in the world, but I hope children learn that swatting a mosquito is not as serious as inflicting pain on a puppy,” he said.

A spokesman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, which drew up the guidelines, said insects were included because it was “important that young people develop an awareness of the responsibilities that flow from human relationships with the natural world”.

It added: “The loss of individual organisms, however small, may have unforeseen consequences for a whole habitat.”

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 11/16/2009 at 01:02 PM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Daily Life • Government • Nanny State • Stoopid-People • UK •  
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