Several weeks ago a TV show aired in which Bill Cosby talked with a young boy whose knowledge of dinosaurs and his fascination with them overshadowed almost everything in his life. Whatever Cosby asked him he turned into a dinosaur reference. The attraction with dinosaurs seems prevalent in many school curricula. Too often it appears that our domestic farm animals are relegated to a back page where they remain as mundane creatures with little relevance to our modern-day education.
Horses hold a particular fascination, especially for the teenager.
Dogs, cats and other household pets are cuddly at first but become bothersome after awhile when it's discovered that they need attention day after day, week after week, month after month. But the current reference for our abundant domesticated animals may be no more than a distant memory of great grandpa's farm, a cute humanizing reference in a child's book or a half-day field trip to a convenient, obliging neighboring farm. Undoubtedly many will find that, in the flesh, the animals smell different, are bigger than imagined, noisier than anticipated or just plain uninteresting. I'm a sheep farmer but grew up on a dairy farm that over the years hosted many other animals. Today we mostly ignore them in our education systems.