A good conversation with a colleague yesterday about evaluation and learning, especially about plants. Is it really enough if young people can recognise a few plants – and colour in their copybooks correctly? Shouldn't we be seeking something more sophisticated – something more connected to their lives and to the Earth? I thought of Naming of Parts and this obsession with trivial knowledge and labling.
All this took my mind to Plants Rights, and wondered if life has caught up with satire yet. It has, as the always interesting treehugger.com confirms. It reports that
the Swiss Government's Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology concludes that plants have rights, and we have to treat them appropriately. A majority of the panel concluded that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive".
I'd say that it's only a matter of time before a more militant wing of the argument emerges, probably about equal opportunities. There will likely be much talk of speciesism, nativeism and a call for non-discrimination around bio-geography and time: so what that a species has been here for millenia? Such grandfather rights are always rent-seeking special pleading of one sort or another – the argument will go. It will then turn to disability and quotas. They may find a natural ally in Ofscoff.
Respond