Was watching ET and at one part Elliot is in biology while ET is getting hammered and watching tv, and the scene involves all the kids giving live frogs chloroform cotton balls and suffocating them or whatever before dissecting. Was that actually standard practice in public school biology in the 80s and earlier?
In my biology class in 2001 or 2002 or whenever they brought in already dead and preserved/bloodless refrigerated frogs. There was clearly an entire industry dedicated to providing dead and easy to dissect frog cadavers to public schools. Did that service not exist 40 years ago? They just brought in dozens of live frogs and had the kids passively kill them and watch them slowly die before dissecting their fresh bloody corpse like little Jeffrey Dahmers?
Also did they really do that when kids where 10 like Elliot was? That’s like elementary school age. Pretty sure we were all like 13-14 when we did it 20 years later.
Yes it did happen, and it still happens (although it is incredibly rare to see). Here’s a quote from a 1975 New York Times article regarding the practice of live dissection in classrooms:
“The National Science Teachers Association, in its most recent guidelines on live animals, regards their use as essential to biology teaching and places no restrictions on their classroom use other than an admonishment that teachers and students ‘handle living animals humanely and wisely.’”
It’s clear from the article however that times were changing. Students and teachers were becoming increasingly vocal against the practice of vivisection on lab animals, something the media loosely tied with the increasingly popular vegetarian movement.
By the late 70s, 6 states had outlawed the practice of vivisection in schools and there were a number of independent school districts across the country doing the same.
The issue came to prevalence in 1987 with Jennifer Graham of California’s penalization for refusal to participate in a dissection and the ensuing lawsuit being the catalyst for the California Student’s Right Bill. This was a minor flare on news outlets nationally and the Humane Society backed Jennifer’s decision using it as a mouthpiece against the issue.
By the 1990s, more schools did either posthumous dissections or did out with them altogether than not, however contemporary news sources showed it was still a point of some contention with more veteraned teachers still arguing in favor of pithing and vivisection. By 1997, 18 states had adopted similar student rights bills to that of California, allowing students to “opt-out” of experiments like dissection and vivisection for ethical reasons. That said, there was never a solid push in the 20th century that did out with it all together, the N.S.T.A did not formally rescind their statement on vivisection until 2011.
Article on dissection today: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-animal-dissect-peta-protest-highland-park-20180530-story.html
Article on Education based Dissection and Vivisection in 1997: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/29/us/frogs-best-friends-students-who-won-t-dissect-them.html
Article on Jennifer Graham and her 1987 lawsuit against the state of California: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-17-ca-336-story.html
1975 article on Vivisection in Schools: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/20/archives/dissection-in-the-biology-lab-youngsters-for-and-against-some.html