Since we're on the subject of 10-yo, I'll tell you about the big event of his day today. Fourth grade were having their first taste of dissection. Oops. Unfortunate turn of phrase.
I've had the note home, with the permission slip to be signed. We've had the conversation about where they get the hearts from (dissection number 1 is a cow's heart, dissection number 2 is going to be a cow's eye). We've had the discussion about whether the cows died naturally or by other means. This led to a discussion about animal rights, in which 7-yo declared that she just doesn't think about the fact that meat comes from animals when she eats it, so she feels like a vegetarian, even though she isn't one. "I do FEEL like a vegetarian." Hm. Not sure you can really be an honorary vegetarian, but it'll do for today. She IS only just 7...
Anyway, in the car on the way home from school, 10-yo was showing me how big a cow's heart is. "This big... no, maybe a bit smaller... this big... well, perhaps a bit smaller... um... this big" (during which he moved his hands from about 2 feet apart to a size that still looked to me unbelievably large for a cow's heart, but this IS America where everything is big, so after we'd exchanged a mutual "seriously?" "yup, seriously", I agreed that wow, a cow's heart is pretty big. (Not that my son is prone to exaggeration.)
10-yo told me that he had felt a bit sick while he was waiting for his turn, but thought he would feel better once he was actually doing the dissection himself. "And I was right. I did feel ok when I was using the scissors." This child has good intuitions. He may be right in his next observation too.
"I don't know why they make you wear gloves and goggles. The gloves were really hot, and I can't see the point of the goggles. Perhaps they thought they'd make us feel scientific."
Gloves, yes, I can see the reasoning behind that. But goggles? Seriously? So that you don't get a squirt of cow's blood in your eye? Or in case of over-enthusiastic scissor use by your class-mate? (In which case, why not goggles for art projects?) Yup. I'll go with 10-yo's "make us feel scientific" insight.
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I always wear glasses when I want to appear smarter, so I think he's on to something.
ReplyDeleteI think it is actually to avoid goop squirting in the eyes. Have done quite a bit of dissection in my life and can safely say goop in the eye is best avoided!
ReplyDeleteI think it's to avoid vomit - as Geeky says, it's probably to prevent goop in the eye and I can tell you right now, if that happened to me I'd throw up on the spot. Everywhere. Immediately.
ReplyDeleteYes, definitely a shield against eye goop. Yuck. I can remember the smell of dissecting a cow's eye in school. Stomach churning. We didn't have gloves and goggles though, stuff and nonsense. My 2 year old is vegetarian, not through any ethical choice (that would be advanced) he just hates meat and fish. I'm now going to go off and worry about his diet.
ReplyDeleteYour daughter's comment reminds me of the time that my sister (at about the same age) declared she was a vegetarian 'in between meals'....
ReplyDeleteWhen I was dissecting in the midwest, animal bits were preserved in formaldehyde. That made me a bit sick, but was the reason we were given for the goggles. Cow heart. Yum.
ReplyDeleteEw. I never did dissecting. Think I went to recorder lessons instead. No need for goggles there though it prob sounded as though we were playing in gloves...
ReplyDeleteLOVE 10 yo...
xxx
love Josephine
Goop & general safety requirement (you know how "Health & Safety" are...). I'm still traumatized by the safety film they showed us in high school Chemistry.
ReplyDeleteI didn't do my first dissection until...junior high, I think. We started with (really big) earthworms. For the first day or two, I thought, "Gee, I'm worried I'll be sick; maybe I shouldn't eat breakfast, so I won't throw up." Sure enough, I felt queasy. But it was when I finally did eat breakfast that I didn't feel queasy during that day's dissection.
I had to run out of the room when we dissected a frog in Grade 9... not sure what was worse, the smell of formaldehyde or the ooze... I had already opted to be a vegetarian 2 years earlier; 35 years on I still am, even between meals...!
ReplyDeleteDo they still do dissection? I thought that was officially not allowed any more, like the brilliant experiment where you put your own cheek cells under a microscope (B, the ex-biology teacher has definitely confirmed that one's off the menu (as it were) these days, but he's out at the moment so I can't check on dissection).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, for us it was a frog, ready spatch-cocked. I'm not sure if it was the frog, the innards, or, as Sparx says, the smell of formaldehyde that did it for me...
ps should have checked my facts. Cheek swab test now allowed again. But not the self-blood-test which B says he did at school (although I didn't).
ReplyDeletepps and again from the oracle, apparently a cow's heart is about the same size as a smallish football, or a child's crash helmet. So he probably wasn't exaggerating. This time.
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd got over my wimpiness at school and dissected something. You could get your parents to sign you out of the cow's eye, and other bits of animal, cutting and those who opted out, mainly girls, got to sit in the corridor where they could giggle about boys and Duran Duran. I could have been a vet. Ahem.
ReplyDeleteBleurgh. Sorry, but BLEURGH. I completely refused to be close to any kind of dissection. This is the closest I ever got to one. I think I feel like a vegetarian, too.
ReplyDeleteThat is such a clever 10 yr old. Such a brilliant thought about making them feel clever.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm with your 10 yo. after all, it's not as if the things you dissect are warm out of the animal, to the chance of squirt of blood - like ketchup coming out of a bottle - seems comical but unlikely...
ReplyDeleteWearing Gloves and Goggles in dissection is very much important.We all know why to use gloves.But in our time we were getting the preserved animal for dissection.Its not possible for me do the dissection of fresh animals..
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