A sigh of relief for animal lovers!
With numerous cases been filed against animal cruelty every day, all an animal lover can hope for is a way to teach people to love their fellow beings. An adult who indulges in animal abuse must have been taught to do wrong to other species in his childhood. What a kid is taught in his early years is what he does when he grows older. Worst of all, people who do wrong to animals do not feel bad about what they did. To end animal cruelty in the future, the director of the Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training has issued a statement instructing all the schools to use PETA India’s humane-education programme, ‘Compassionate Citizen’ for the students from the age 8 to 12 years. The program has been endorsed by the Animal Welfare Board of India and the Central Board of Secondary Education.
The program, which is an Indian version of PETA US humane-education programme, ‘Share the World’, aims at sensitizing children to be kind and compassionate to all animals.
“It’s said that when you teach a child to be kind to a mouse, you do as much for the child as you do for the mouse. Respect and compassion are vital because they are essential to the effort to stem violence in society at large.” says Puja Mahajan, senior education coordinator, PETA India to IBN Live.
If kids will learn to respect other beings, they will automatically become kind to them. Lack of respect and concern results into insensitivity towards them.
It is well documented by psychologists, sociologists and law-enforcement officials that violence against animals by children is often an early warning sign of future acts of violence towards humans.
The programme includes a teacher’s guide, reproducible activity sheets, a reading unit with adaptations from true animal stories and a 28-minute video.
Nearly 25,000 private and government schools have decided to use the programme in their schools reaching 5 million children across India.
The programme will ensure a safe and healthy environment for animals and human beings and embarks the beginning of a healthy relationship between the two.
News Source: IBN Live
