Last week was a lesson on Sports in my first grade classes, which is mainly a survey activity: teams are given a specific topic and they work together to devise three good survey questions to elicit the opinions of their classmates. Topics in sports include favorite sport, attendance at sports events, women in sports, etc. This year, gambling and game-fixing was included, due to the K-League scandal.
And Animals in Sports. I make that team ask some form of the question, Is it morally right to use animals for our entertainment? I make them ask because I want to know what Korean students think on this issue. I myself am a bit conflicted on it: I love the circus, elephant parades, dogs pushing prams and lion-tamers included, I have been to the racetrack a few times in my day, I even saw the cobra show in Thailand last month and uploaded video to Youtube! But I'm always a bit je ne sais quoi: it's one thing to use them for sustenance, another to force them to perform just for the purpose of relieving our ennui. Of course, being wild creatures, they'd probably be dead otherwise, rather than, say, populating lawn chairs at a clean yet inexpensive resort.
Interestingly, my students seem to be divided right down the middle: 50%, more or less, think it is uncool to treat/mistreat animals like this. Fast forward to today, when when one of my old (well, thirty or so) students posts the link at top on his FB--he's a horsey type from way back.
I'm wondering what my current students would think of this use of an animal, or this particular animal. What do you think? You can read more here: http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/mascreck.html
It's quite a story, but it ended pretty well for SSGT Reckless. One cannot say the same for many other animals drafted for military use, particularly bomb-carriers like the Soviet anti-tank dogs or the USA's Project Pigeon. Go to this Wikipedia article, scroll down to "As living bombs"--is a content warning here really necessary?
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