As a sophomore attending Harlan Community High School, I am currently enrolled in Biology. In this course we are expected to dissect dead rats. When I was confronted with this project, I immediately refused and my teacher respected my right to do so. However, it bothered me that this was even something I had to decline.

Animals' lives should not be treated lightly. But at Harlan Highschool, we exploit both living and non living animals in our classrooms. To elaborate, here is a list of a few "projects" provided by Harlan Community School District:  Daphnia Project (In this project, we analyze the effects of harsh substances like Everclear, Vodka, Whiskey, Caffeine, Dayquil, Tylenol, Etc. have on the heart rate of daphnia fish. As a result of testing and ill handling, Many of these fish die.),Fly Project (Flies are put in extremely small test tubes, where students decide what is placed in their new habitat. Due to an unfit environment, lack of research, and lack of general care, a vast amount of these flies die.), Rat Dissection, Fetal Pig Dissection, and even Cat Dissection. 

It is important that students are taught to value the lives of animals. During these labs, students are entirely disrespectful to animals. Students make verbally inappropriate comments, physically mistreat cadavers, and even go as far as throwing pieces of dead animal. This can be seen in an outrageous Tik Tok video made by students at Harlan Community High School. This video depicts the body of a fetal pig being manipulated to do the griddy (a tik tok famous dance). Due to its disturbing nature, this video collected a lot of internet attention, including the famous animal rights organization, PETA. However, PETA didn't only express their distaste for our schools academic failure, they offered a solution. On March 1st, PETA wrote to Principal Scott Flohlich, offering to replace our inhumane cadavers with hyper-realistic learning tools like SynFrog. Regardless of this, Harlan Community High School’s Anatomy class began their semi annual cat dissection lab today. 

An estimated six to twelve million animals are dissected in school classrooms every year. Animal dissection is both outdated and unbeneficial. High school level animal dissection is not detrimental to the education of future medical professionals. Even if it was,  ¼ of high school students refuse participation on ethical grounds. There are dozens of extremely educational and hands on projects that do not cost the lives of innocent animals.

We must stop teaching teenagers that ill-treatment of animals is acceptable. Exploitive projects like these, desensitize students to the treatment of animals. This causes an increase in the already high cases of animal abuse in Iowa. Furthermore, they fail to inform students on the quality of life provided to animals raised for dissection. As far as cat cadavers go, schools can legally remove animals from shelters and “repurpose them”. There is no difference between the cats dissected at Harlan Community School District and your pet cat. Please consider signing this petition for the removal of animal based labs at Harlan Community High School. As a community, we can teach the next generation with humane and sustainable education. Henceforth, promoting empathy and compassion in the youth of today.