The effects of schooling on empathy toward animals

Abstract

In Hong Kong’s schools, it is common to see meat-based lunches and snacks, photos of captive sea creatures in textbooks, dissection of animals in Science class, meat, dairy, eggs, wool in Home Economics class, animal-tested products in washrooms and so on. Schools seem to have (un)intentionally encouraged young learners’ ignorance of animal natures and ‘presumption of superiority’ over non-human animals. However, schooling may have increased the ‘moral debt’ to only some, instead of all, animals.

If empathy can be considered a skill, does exposure to education ‘upskill’ or ‘deskill’ youth in Hong Kong? Through explicit, implicit and hidden curriculum, do schools preserve/remove (if empathy is innate) or create/destroy (if empathy is acquired) empathy toward companion animals, farm animals, captive animals, wild animals, in-group humans, outgroup humans (all, some, or none)? This paper examines whether students over the age of 19 believe (to a larger extent than students between the age of 13 and 18 and/or students between the age of 5 and 12) that all species have the capacity for utility and suffering.

Assuming higher scores mean higher levels of empathy, which age groups are highly empathetic toward most/all twelve animals, and which are more prone to speciesism? Moreover, assuming in-group humans’ sub-circles are the closest to the center of each student’s moral circle, how far will other animals’ sub-circles be from these two? In addition, which emotion is the twelve animals most frequently associated with by Hong Kong students? Furthermore, according to the ranked animals in emotions in general as well as in different emotions (in each age group), what element(s) create(s) more empathy in students?