Friday, September 07, 2007

Those That Can't, Teach

The carnivores are out to get Dave Warwak, according to him. The middle school art teacher has been given a suspension by his bosses, the meat-eating cretins. He was only trying to convert his young charges to his religion, to show them the glory of vegetarianism, and for that he's to lose his job?

Since he saw the light in January, Mr. Warwak has avoided consuming dead animals. He went so far as to construct an exhibit in his classroom, out of candy to appeal to his target audience, that depicted animals in cages and animals squished into pulp on the motorway. How cruel it is to eat meat, he wanted his students to know. This is the way to live, my way, dead flesh free. The way your parents live, scarfing down animal proteins, is wrong and dangerous and evil. Can I get an amen, somebody?

Mr. Warwak thought he might indoctrinate the young minds put in his care by having them read a different Bible, the one that touts the vegan lifestyle. "It's probably one of the most life-changing books a person can read," the teacher has said about The Food Revolution. But he's not entirely obsessed with animal cruelty. "It's about how we're destroying the planet with pollution from factory farming. It's about health. It's about living longer."

Just because he's an art teacher, getting eleven and twelve-year-olds to express their creative side, doesn't mean he's not qualified to teach science. He's teaching art, but art can be anything, not just oils and pastels and gouache. And just because he's dealing with kids at an impressionable age doesn't justify his suspension by a bunch of flesh-chewers. He has a responsibility to warn these children about the dangers of meat, the threats to their health and the threat to the planet's future.

Where is the American Civil Liberties Union or the Illinois Education Association? They have no opinion on the case, or at least none that they have expressed publicly. 'Sweet Jesus, what a feckin' eejit' is nearly impossible to parse into legalese.

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