Animals in Schools explores important questions in the field of
critical animal studies and education by close examination of a wide
range of educational situations and classroom activities. How are
human-animal relations expressed and discussed in school? How do
teachers and students develop strategies to handle ethical conflicts
arising from the ascribed position of animals as accessible to human
control, use, and killing? How do schools deal with topics such as zoos,
hunting, and meat consumption? These are questions that have profound
implications for education and society. They are graphically described,
discussed, and rendered problematic based on detailed ethnographic
research and are analyzed by means of a synthesis of perspectives from
critical theory, gender, and postcolonial thought. Animals in Schools
makes human-animal relations a crucial issue for pedagogical theory and
practice. In the various physical and social dimensions of the school
environment, a diversity of social representations of animals are
produced and reproduced. These representations tell stories about
human-animal boundaries and identities and bring to the fore a complex
set of questions about domination and subordination, normativity and
deviance, rationality and empathy, as well as possibilities of
resistance and change.