Stupid human attitudes

Tam (although I feel uncomfortable referring to her as such, given that I don't know her) links to this article about the uproar over schoolchildren deciding to sell the lamb they raised to be turned into food.

My first response to this is: Mmmmmmmm, lamb.

There are so many other responses to this. First off, this is what people do with lambs, they send them off to be slaughtered. The only difference between this lamb and any other is that this one received publicity. It has a name, so it's a horrible thing to kill it. (As an aside, this is why some cultures don't name a child for the first week or so. It's psychological protection against infant mortality.)

But apparently there are people who are concerned about the "emotional impact" the death of the lamb will have on the children. This is one of those things that happens to living things. They die. I don't see the need to protect children from this. Better they get introduced to it via the death of an animal rather than the death of a human.

This reminds me of a recent incident near where I live. Last winter, a woman was out walking her grandchild's dog. Apparently, the dog got loose and wandered onto the surface of a frozen pond. The woman went out on the ice to save the dog. She broke through the ice and drowned. The dog eventually walked off the ice unharmed.

This was a tragedy. People in the community, however, were labeling this woman a hero for attempting to save the life of the dog. To me it seems that these people value the life of the dog higher than the life of the woman. And my question is, that night when the grandchild went to bed, who do you think he would have missed more, his dog or his grandmother?