Three Educational Problems: The Case of Eating Animals

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer asks: "What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?" (2009, p. 252). Foer is concerned with both human animals and with other animals (cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, tunas, among other species) that many humans eat. His book discusses human practices such as raising (and catching), butchering, selling, and eating such non-human animals, and it also discusses the lives of these animals that are used for human consumption. So the truth to which Foer refers is large and complex. But at the heart of this truth are several facts: before animals are eaten they almost always experience confinement, fear, and pain, and, of course, death. One other fact: in most of the modern world, humans do not have to eat other animals in order to be healthy. Yet as reported by Foer, in America alone, more than ten billion land animals are slaughtered for food each year (2009, p. 15). According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in 2009 (the same year Foer's book was published) Americans consumed over 4.8 billion pounds of sea animals (NOAA, 2010, n.p.). School lunch in modern America contributes significantly to the misery of farm animals and fish, both directly and indirectly. At a cost of over $ 1 billion per year (Farm Sanctuary, 2013), the Agricultural Marketing Service, which is the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency that buys agricultural products for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), purchases millions of pounds of meat, poultry, and fish, contributing directly to animals' misery and death. Indirectly, by serving animal flesh for lunch-typically without teachers' or administrators' comment or critique-schools help to normalize meat eating for millions of school children. Before exploring whether and/or how schools might address meat-eating practices, including school lunch, differently, I examine three types of animal eaters in connection with the truth to which Foer refers. Both parts of the discussion that follows are preliminary, to be deepened and refined in subsequent work on this topic. Types of Relations between Meat Eating and Knowledge Foer suggests a great number of important questions concerning the relation between knowledge and conduct, particularly where the consumption of meat, poultry, and fish is concerned. First are those who are simply ignorant and have no knowledge about the relation between the meat they consume and the animals from which it is derived (mostly young children). Second are those who are willfully ignorant about the meat they consume and the animals from which it is derived; they know (at least in part), but turn away from the truth to which Foer refers and continue to eat animals (mostly older children and adults). Third are those who "know the truth" and continue to eat meat, but are troubled in varying degrees by their consumption (also mainly older children and adults). It might be said that these meat eaters are incontinent, in the sense that they act in ways that go against their better judgment. There are other types of relations between knowledge and conduct among those who eat animals, but the three mentioned above are common, and it is to these I turn for further discussion. Simple Ignorance Simple ignorance, conventionally understood, is a state in which a person lacks awareness, information, or knowledge. There is nothing inherently problematic with simple ignorance; indeed, it is a necessary precondition for education. It may not be the case that human infants are bom "blank slates," but it is certainly true that they lack the knowledge upon which survival, let alone thriving, depends. It is therefore not surprising that in both formal and informal contexts, education, particularly in the elementary years, is concerned mainly with simple ignorance, as parents, teachers and other educators seek to provide what is lacking in children's awareness, knowledge, and the like. …