Promoting ag literacy as the antidote to PETA’s curriculum
Activists are invading public school systems through a character-building loophole that should scare producers and parents alike!
December 31, 2019
If you’ve been following this blog for a while now, you know that I’m incredibly passionate about promoting agricultural literacy in today’s youth.
Perhaps it stems from sharing a dorm room during a summer college internship in Washington, D.C. with a vegan, who abstained from meat because of a YouTube on animal abuse she had seen.
Perhaps it was my shock when my cousin came home for Christmas one year proclaiming that she was a pescatarian and only ate meat at home because she didn’t know how to cook it in her dorm room and didn’t know where the beef came from when she bought it at the grocery store.
Perhaps it’s the confusion that starts with little kids when they watch Disney movies or read children’s books that personify the animals as the heroes while making the farmers/ranchers as the villains.
Or perhaps it’s my own kids’ questions about the circle of life that has sparked my interest in this topic. In trying to answer their questions, I realized that there were very few agriculturally accurate children’s books on the shelves.
That’s what spurred me to write two children’s books (with two more on the way in 2020), and that’s what continues to drive me to travel to various elementary schools to introduce kids to agriculture and teach them about where their food comes from.
However, what fuels this passion for promoting agricultural literacy most of all is this scary reality — PETA has introduced curriculum that is being taught in public schools across the country.
Titled, “TeachKind: PETA’s Humane-Education Division,” this program is presented as a tool to teach kids empathy. However, the materials actually elevate the value of animals to have the same rights as people.
According to Protect the Harvest, PETA’s curriculum teaches students through a DVD titled, “Share the World.” The DVD proclaims:
Each and every animal is a unique and special individual.
Farmers take calves away from their mothers and they grieve just like a human mother would if her child was taken away.
Pigs are friends, not food.
Cats and dogs should all be living indoors with their owners.
Do not buy pets from pet stores or breeders because every time you do a shelter pet has to die.
Tell your parents to only buy cruelty free products.
Do not participate in animal dissections at school.
Tell your parents you don’t want to go to zoos, aquariums, or circuses.
Protect the Harvest says, “PETA is an organization that has been investigated by the FBI’s Anti-Terror Unit and has been classified in the past as a terrorist threat by the USDA. Why are we letting this group into our schools to teach our children?
“The animal rights extremist agenda has no place in our schools. If you want to make sure your school is not teaching the TeachKind program, contact your child’s teacher, principal, or superintendent.”
Read more about this program, as well as HSUS’ attempt to influence kids, by clicking here.
Find out if this is being presented at your local public school and demand that this be stripped from the curriculum! There is already an excellent character-building program in existence — it’s called Character Counts through 4-H. I can’t think of a better and more effective program to teach empathy, kindness, caring, responsibility, citizenship, fairness, respect and other important attributes than that! No PETA necessary here!
The opinions of Amanda Radke are not necessarily those of beefmagazine.com or Farm Progress.
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