How do adults discourage children’s natural inclination to care for non-human animals? What role does ridicule play in children’s (and adults’) alienation from non-human animals? What moral competence do children have and how might identifying it lead us to support rather than stifle children’s compassion into adulthood? How are humane education organizations doing their part to foster children’s curiosity and think critically about animal welfare and other social justice issues? These and more questions were tackled by scholars and representatives of animal welfare organizations at the panel discussion “Where Did Our Compassion Go? Children, Adults and the Loss of the Human-Animal Bond” which took place on December 2nd, 2014 at The City College of New York (CCNY).

Sponsored by the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and organized by Genéa Stewart, Director of the Office of Engaged Scholarship at the Colin Powell School, this event grew out of an earlier collaboration between myself and Brian Shapiro, New York State Director of the Humane Society of the United States, who partnered for a service-learning course entitled Animal Welfare in Historical Perspective in the spring of 2014. (This endeavor was made possible by a Service-Learning Faculty Fellowship at the Colin Powell Center and the following people who gave this animal studies course a space at CCNY: President Coico; Deborah Hartnett; Dean Vince Boudreau; Professor Josh Wilner; and Genéa Stewart.) The course culminated with an Animal Welfare Forum which took place on May 1, 2014 and involved students giving oral and poster presentations on their research linking historical and contemporary animal welfare issues.

This visibility led me to learn more about the work of Bill Crain, CCNY Professor of Psychologywhose specialization is developmental theory and who, along with his wife and several volunteers, runs an animal sanctuary in upstate New York called Safe Haven Animal Sanctuary. With the publication of Bill’s book, The Emotional Lives of Animals & Children: Insights from a Farm Sanctuary, Ms. Stewart saw another opportunity for synergistic collaboration between my HSUS partner Brian Shapiro and another Service-Learning Faculty Fellow, CCNY Philosophy Professor Jennifer Morton, whose research relates to the development of agency in children. Our meeting led to a well rounded panel that included Dr. Nancy M. Cardwell, CCNY Professor in the Early Childhood Education Graduate Program who specializes in child development theory; Dr. Chris Parucci, Program Manager and Humane Education Instructor at Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (HEART); and Dr. Karen Davis, President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl, including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia.

Bill was our keynote speaker and his address, The Loss of Compassion for Animals, laid the groundwork for our discussion by citing the ways that children’s alienation from animals partly results from adult caretakers’ lack of encouragement for their compassion to animals. Karen’s talk,Custom Heavy as Frost and Deep Almost as Life – What Do We Mean By ‘Socialization’?, which was inspired by William Wordsworth’s Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, dovetailed well with Bill’s because she discussed the powerful effect that ridicule has on children’s burgeoning sense of themselves. Jennifer’s presentation, A Reflection on the Moral Competence of Children, delved into the reasons why these attitudes prevail. Both animals and children, she noted, are left out of ethical consideration. Because children are seen as future members of the moral community, they are seen as lacking and incapable of teaching adults. Jennifer concluded by noting that there is a need to identify what kind of moral competence children have. Identifying and articulating this competence seems like a key step in getting adults to more readily support and foster not only children’s compassion for animals, but the other ways that they, from their deprogrammed and “uneducated” positions, rightly teach us about compassion toward people of all backgrounds and the importance of being genuine and honest, to cite but two examples.

In her presentation, Compassion for Animals is Connected to Our Compassion for Each Other: A Developmental Perspective, Nancy argued for the need to contextualize animal welfare discussions given the disconnect between compassion and the many forms of violence in our society and the unequal choices we are given based on our race and class. (Interestingly, during her talk, Jennifer noted that children’s empathy toward animals is based on their perception of animals’ suffering, not an idea that animals are not different from humans – a powerful way that children once again teach us about respect for diversity.) In his presentation A Humane Education Approach to Teaching Youth about Farm Animals, Chris also discussed HEART’s efforts to impart humane education within the context of other social justice issues. He demonstrated the age-appropriate images and questions used to help students with critical thinking and pondering positive alternatives that respect for non-human animal and human lives. Brian’s presentation, The Link Between Animal Cruelty and Human-on-Human Violence, drove these issues of interconnectedness home by discussing the evidence of a strong correlation between individuals who are violent to animals and those who are later violent to humans.

It was a very fulfilling evening for those of us on campus who care about animal welfare, children, and issues of social justice. On a lighter note, it was also a gustatorily satisfying evening for many attendees who discovered delicious vegan pizza! I was tempted but refrained from having a slice so that more people could taste what might have been their first vegan treat. I have never been more gratified skipping on pizza, content in the knowledge that CCNY faculty members’ burgeoning efforts toward animal welfare are gaining momentum.