Going Overboard In Biology

ALMOST ANYTHING can happen in a high school science classroom, especially chemistry and biology, with physics not lagging far behind. Personally, I most fondly remember the match stick fights in chemistry; you can flip a match off the box, lighting it, then a split second later sending it flying across the room to start a fire wherever it may happen to land. One nightmarish day in 1972 a buddy of mine fired one straight at a beautiful, sophisticated girl with long thick hair; you guess it; the flaming match landed right in the thick of her hair, and a blaze commenced so quickly that it could have killed her, but for the fast acting quick hands of a couple of nearby students, who smothered the flame in their hands, preventing any real damage., miraculously. She could have lost her hair, her face, or her life. I remember how bad the culprit, a good friend of mine, felt about it, but bad enough, but bad. He was most apologetic to the girl, who was, all things considered, remarkably forgiving. I took biology junior year, willing to dissect a frog, but not advanced biology senior year, unwilling to dissect a cat. I recall the moral dilemma, and solving it through scheduling. I still have the same dilemma today, and would not dissect a cat. At some point, I realize, somebody has to dissect something. A few weeks ago a high school teacher caused a national and even international uproar by feeding a live puppy to a snapping turtle, in the classroom. The episode went "viral", as we say in our science fiction world on 2019, and the PETA came out in force. If memory serves, the teacher either lost his job, or was subjected to intense scrutiny and review, before defending his action on the bases that the puppy was terminally ill, and would not have lived long in any event. if memory serves, that salient fact saved his career. I'm not sure it should have. In what way did the advantages of learning outweigh the vicious barbarity of this behavior? Nobody learned anything; the students, since whey were in high school, already knew that animals eat other animals. A terminally ill animal deserves the mercy and decency of dying a quick, painless death, does it not> isn't that as important a lesson as any to learn in high school science? the is a moral component to scientific research, whether or not we want to or have the courage to teach it in high school science classes. I would have been shocked and appalled at this, when I was in high school, and I'm sure some of the students were. Science education seems to be inadequate in the United States in general; most American's know shockingly little about science, and misunderstand what they know. Belief in fundamental scientific facts like evolution and climate change is depressingly low in America, as Americans are fond of choosing for themselves what to believe and what ro reject, as if all beliefs are created equal, as if they have a reasonable choice in the matter. Those with the least formal education in the sciences are the most stridently, forcefully certain that evolution and global warming are fake news, invented by nefarious liberals. the least educated always seem to have the strongest opinions, particularly wrong ones. We may never get to people to respect facts until we get them to respect science itself, and the miracle science focuses much of its study on; life itself.