Headmistress Andrea Charman decided to teach her kids where their food comes from. They bought a lamb, the kids helped rear it and then sent it off to be made into chops.
That should have been the end of it, but unfortunately some of the local parents went mad and launched a campaign of hate using the networking site for Social Inadequates, Facebook. This obviously got to the poor woman and now she has resigned.
I still can't quite believe that the whole story isn't some elaborate hoax, but sadly it doesn't appear to be.
Result: Nutters 1 - Perfectly good Head 0
16 comments:
I agree that the parents have been extraordinarily vindictive (BURN THE WITCH) but really, don't encourage the children to treat the lamb as a pet and then kill it.
One lamb for a class load of kids? Hell, my boys would eat half a lamb each at a single sitting. Her mistake was not to get a flock in the first place, so there'd be plenty of finger-licking chops to go around.
The nutters should be sent to somewhere like Yemen for 6 months and given a job as goat herders. Then they'd see how things operate in the real world.
Unless all the parents involved were principled vegetarians, this is a classic case of NIMBYism; they want they lamb chops, but don't want to be reminded of where their meat comes from. Still, I'm with Spike Milligan:
See the little lamb of God
See him skip and hop
But the lamb I like the most
Is the lamb of chops.
From what i can understand, the kids voted to have it slaughtered, and it was the parents had a problem. Kids can be very realistic about it, I know, but townie adults seem to be the worst at accepting where dinner comes from, and these days, nearly evryone is a townie.
Tht headmistress missed out on a valuable and educational opportunity to teach the children about other cultures and their customs. She should have invited a muslim slaughterer in and have it slaughtered the halal way.....THAT would have been diversity at its finest.
I have to agree with the comment Kimpatsu made. A classic case of people not wishing to be reminded where their meat comes from. Very few city/town dwellers and nowadays country dwellers have a clue about the process that gets cute fluffy lamb from field to table.
I was lucky in that I grew up in the countryside so saw it at first hand. As a kid I had no illusions that 'Mr Snuffles' the pig in the field down the road would not be turning up on my plate as bacon in X months time. Did it make me hate the slaughterman? No, he was just the facilitator. Did I get put off meat? No but it has made me much more conscientious of wasting food.
Maybe these ignorant parents need to be taken and educated themselves before they hound a perfectly good teacher out of their job.
This would be so funny if it wasn't true. I once did a school assembly to 800 boys about survival, and began by naming Walt Disney as the man who (via Thumper and a host of other critters) had single handedly rendered half of humanity incapable of connecting their food with real life. I ended by demonstrating how to kill a rabbit on a lifelike toy bunny I'd borrowed from my youngest daughter.
A few days later I received a terribly pathetic letter from a little lad who had, until my assembly, thought Walt Disney was God. I had to see him personally and explain the relationship between hyperbole and rhetoric. Luckily he was bright enough not be have been scarred for life.
I sometimes wonder what will happen if the lights go out....I have to admit, I am a tad squeamish when it comes to actually gutting something. Skinning/plucking easy enough (I grew up as a farmers lad). I find it astonishing how divorced from reality so many people are.
I'm essential;ly a "townie" but I know where my meat comes from. I am amazed at the number of people who think me strange (or worse) for buying pheasant in feather and preparing them myself.
The fact that I'm paying £1.00 per brace and they're paying £3.50+ each for pheasant doesn't seem to matter.
To some, who are meat eaters, I'm a barbarian!
Hello! Farmers raise animals for meat, not as pets. This head teacher did the kids a real favour in buying the lamb in the first place. The kids have taken a realistic attitude to farming, and they will be better for it.
Disney has a lot to answer for.
A friend of mine flattened a pair pf pheasants some months ago - they are everywhere and sometimes just fly into your car..he got out, picked them up, hung them, plucked them (don't know in what order) and said they were delicious. Did you know that it's actually illegal to pick up your own road-kill? It is only legal for the next oncoming car to do so....
I can't help thinking that the Head made an error of judgement here, by slaghtering a class pet.
However, I really can't see the point of having a lamb as a pet - odd choice, no? Why not a cat, or a lizard?
Surely the 'punishment' of removal is too much for this faux pas. A written letter of reprimand would have been sufficient, but I see that the lilly-livered governors threw themselves at the mercy of the mob. Shame on them all!
As long as they weren't all chanting "Kill, Kill, Kill" - unless of course the school was in Andover, in which case I would understand.
How about teaching those parents who are so offended by refusing to serve their little darlings any meat at all.
Enforced vegetarianism is a powerful incentive to know exatly where meat comes from
Teaching the kids were their food comes from is a good idea, there has been many a time when stood in the butchers shop a young child has pointed to any carcass hanging and happily said "chicken",as good as her intentions were I dont think it was a good idea to rear a lamb then send it off to be slaughtered, however the reactions from the parents were extreme.
The people who want to leave Fluffikins the lamb as a useless and stupid pet are probably in favour of knocking off told and sicl people
Another victory for the mental PC brigade.
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