Can they make me?

Hey, I'll be entering the 10th grade in about a week... and I expect that will mean dissecting...

Can they make me do this?

My friends say I'll probably be failed if I refuse... Can they do that if I tell them the honest reason?

I mean I guess they can but that's really unfair...

If they do threaten to fail me... Should I give in? I really, really hate to give in but... Ugh, I don't want to fail.. =/

Any thoughts, does anyone have any fancy shmancy legal quotations that show where I have the choice to refuse?

Any help, consolation, advice, anything is welcome <3 thank you

 

http://www.petakids.com/dissection_alternatives.html

 

It will probably be up to the teacher. I've heard of a teacher offering his student extra-credit work to make up for his F in disection.

Approach your teacher after school, or during a time when he/she can devote some time to listening to you BEFORE the subject of disection is brought up in class. Don't just spring it on him/her the day off the disection.... give him time to come up with a game plan. Don't do it publicly... do it privately. Be calm, realistic and mature about the subject, and your teacher might be willing to help you NOT fail.

Good luck... I'm rooting for you!

 

Thanks for the info crummy, I do live in Virginia, so I have a choice.

And thanks for the support icetea I plan to speak with him/her after school on the first day so I can go ahead and get this issue under control. I hope I can get an alternative instead of extra credit to make up for an F though. Either one would be great though as long as I don't have to... bleh :S

 

I agree drumminmama, I would rather not indirectly participate by watching, so you agree it's reasonable for me to not accept that either?

 

I wouldn't speak to him/her on the first day of school as things will most likely be rushed. Wait a week or so, and then bring it up.
I suppose it's just the Quaker mindset I've got, but there's this thing called bearing witness. I know that if I chose not to dissect something, I'd feel just as bad if I were watching it occur even if I weren't participating.
Before you talk to your teacher, be sure that you know your limits. If you don't want to even watch, the teacher cannot make you. You are a human being and you have the liberty to not participate.
Good luck and best of wishes.

 

My reasons are that animals are living beings and have rights... I'm a vegan for the same reasons, and use cruelty-free products.

Edit: Um, I didn't mean for that to sound arrogant if it did. =X I was just stating my reasons. Sorry if that came out wrong.

 

I got out of disecting frogs when i started to cry, but that was seventh grade, a different story.

 

I dont know...
I always refused to dissect and just took the failing grade for that day...

Maybe I SHOULD have tried to negotiate...

Too late now!

 

Explain your ethical objections to disection and then ask if the teacher knows another way for you to learn what the disection will teach you. Make it clear that you are a serious person with a serious ethical situation. Show respect for the teacher's goal of teaching you Biology. Don't preach to the teacher about animal cruelty. A decent teacher will find some way to teach you even if you don't wield a scalpel.

 

seems like yrs ago, I heard on the news about a student with the same problem. The school or teacher finally let him do something on computer with a program about dissecting frogs. That way the student didn't actually have to have a dead frog sitting at their desk.
They passed the class!

 

I'm not sure what your ethical objection is... Given that the frog (or whatever) is on the desk in front of you, cutting it up is just learning, not killing. No-one's asking you to kill it. Are they?

 

it was killed specifically for the purpose of it being dissected by this student, therefore if the student participates in the dissection hey are responsible for it's death...

 

I never had to deal with that, for all my bitching about high school at least they are enlighted enough to realise dissection is repulsive and ultimatly pointless. It's not as if you can't look up diagrams, and really how is knowing what frog guts look like going to help with a future career.

Otherwise I'd have fought against it kicking and screaming.

Hope it works out for you. Good luck

 

Sure, if the killing is done specially for the student then you have a point. But if the teacher's standing there with the frog, dead, saying "disect this", I don't see how you can object. "Eeeeeew it's like, totally gross!" doesn't count...

 

thats how they did it in my school...8th grade was better, we dissected baby pigs.

 

wow and what exactly did you learn form that experience?

 

that it is really hard to unravel pig intestines with out tearing them. I never claimed to have learned anything, although we did see where all the organs were...right where they were in the diagram.