Los Angeles Unified School District’s Budget Crisis Prompts PETA Appeal
Group’s Humane Education Division Calls for Replacement of Cruel and Costly Animal Dissection With Modern Computer-Based Teaching Tools
For Immediate Release:
September 13, 2018
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is reportedly on the brink of financial collapse, prompting TeachKind—PETA’s humane education division—to send a letter offering the LAUSD superintendent a surefire way to cut costs: Replace expensive and ineffective animal dissection with superior, non-animal teaching methods, such as interactive computer software.
As TeachKind points out in its letter, computer-based programs are cost-efficient, as many need to be purchased only once, whereas animal dissection entails recurring expenses that typically cost school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. TeachKind is also offering to help LAUSD with teacher training, professional development, and the selection of cutting-edge, non-animal software and materials—if it agrees to end all classroom dissection.
“Crude and archaic animal dissection has no place in the modern classroom,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “TeachKind is calling on LAUSD to reevaluate its budget with an eye toward ending these gruesome exercises, which are a terrible waste of both educational resources and animals’ lives.”
Every year, the formaldehyde-preserved bodies of tens of millions of animals are carved apart in classrooms around the country. Fetal piglets are cut from the wombs of mother pigs killed in slaughterhouses, and frogs are taken from the wild—a practice that wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. TeachKind (whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”) notes that non-animal teaching tools have been shown to teach biology as well as—and, in many cases, better than—animal-based methods.
TeachKind’s letter to LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner is available upon request. For more information, please visit TeachKind.org.
