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When I started writing these pieces, I said I would not write about school issues. With apologies, I feel compelled to make an exception.

As sure as Col. Sanders, I like chicken. Our family eats chicken at least twice a week. I like it grilled, roasted, broiled, barbecued, stuffed … you name it. I like chicken and so do a whole lot of my fellow citizens. According to foodreference.com, the average American consumed (are you ready for this?) 90 pounds of chicken in 2007. That is up from 28 pounds in 1960. Obviously, very few chickens die of old age.

I also like Eric Cosman. He is a teacher at Canandaigua Academy who has been helping our students understand the environment and our impact on it for more than two decades. Coz is one of the most sensitive, student-focused teachers I have ever known. He has always pushed the edge to help students understand their place in nature. He could be found taking students hiking, on canoe trips, or running around the CA campus pointing out one ecological reality after another. His classroom is an experience. He is a great teacher who could teach my kids any day.

So I had no concern three years ago when I learned that Eric developed a unit as part of his ecology class in which students followed a chicken’s life cycle from egg to dinner. Why would I? I had taught at Letchworth Central and been a principal at Ft. Plain Central. Both of those schools had active chapters of the Future Farmers of America, who often raised livestock as part of class projects. These livestock projects did not end with the animal in question going to a nursing home. In fact, Eric’s unit on the life cycle of a chicken was such a benign issue that it did not even qualify for a full district review. It was a teacher’s chosen unit plan. Not a new curriculum.

In the case of Eric’s plan, the class was an elective and any student in the class could forgo the final piece of the unit, which is the slaughter, preparation, cooking and eating of a chicken the student had raised since it was hatched. If students (and we are talking about 17- and 18-year-olds) wished, they could take the chicken home, though they do not make great house pets. Or we would find a “home” for the chicken. I also knew that during their lives, those chickens would receive the most humane treatment possible, and they did. For the record, Coz is not the only teacher who involved students in the “circle of life.” We had a fishing club at the middle school for years … but let’s not start that controversy.

Now, I have friends who are vegetarians. Some eat no meat, others no animals including fish.  Some eat no animal products. I respect their decision. But I would be upset if they felt a right to impose their views and values on me or my children.

I eat meat, as do most Americans. The schools serve it in the school cafeteria. We give the kids the day off at Thanksgiving, knowing full well what they will do! Teaching high school students on an elective basis the full cost of raising a chicken from egg to dinner is a worthy part of a class. No student is required to do it. In fact, over the years, after seeing the entire life cycle of a chicken, a fair number of students have gone vegan. This sounds like a great learning experience. What is the big issue?

The big issue is that some people find the killing of any animal, especially by students, as unacceptable. The school has received stacks of letters in protest, but almost none from our own community. Most of these letters seem to have originated out of state, perhaps in conjunction with PETA’s call for action against the “mass beheadings” of chickens at Canandaigua Academy. They suggest that such actions encourage school violence. I can say this: When I was superintendent, the kids coming out of Eric Cosman’s class were the last kids I had to worry about causing violence. And what radical organization gave Eric this violent idea? It came out of a 4-H project — hardly the hotbed of violence in our community.

I am aware that the school district has a group of citizens studying this issue. That is a sound response to the outcry. For my two cents as a private citizen, let’s make sure we make the decision about what should happen at Canandaigua Academy. We should not allow people who characterize the actions of an incredibly sensitive, ecologically focused teacher as a gratuitous “mass beheading” of chickens to make that decision for us. People who know nothing about our community, our teachers and our students, people who view all issues through their own context, subjugating the local reality to their world view, should not have the final say in our local schools.

Canandaigua has a wonderfully thoughtful Board of Education and administration. I am happy to accept their decision as a reflection of the values and beliefs of a humane, caring community.

Canandaigua resident Stephen Uebbing is a professor of educational leadership at the Warner Graduate School of Education at the University of Rochester and was a school superintendent in this region from 1988 to 2006.

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