Professor Philip Armstrong

Postgraduate Co-ordinator (English) University of Canterbury

“Animals & Us offers students and teachers options for engaging with the curriculum by attending to issues that will seem most urgent and vital to young people now; questions of power, violence and justice; the quandaries of consumerism and globalisation; the challenges of animal rights and welfare, and of environmentalism; the impact of technological and scientific manipulation of organic nature. In these ways, the resource helps prepare students for life after secondary school – whether they are planning further study at tertiary level (where these issues are increasingly to the fore in a range of disciplines), joining the workforce, beginning a family, travelling or pursuing any other direction as mature, informed, thoughtful and compassionate members of New Zealand society.”

Marc Bekoff

Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado

“As long as our society continues to keep others species confined for human entertainment, we need to understand better the effects on animals of depriving them of the company of their own kind, of crowding them in confined spaces and of removing them from the rich interactions of their natural environment. We need to ask what animals experience when we replace the challenges and excitement of their daily lives in the wild with the stifling, human-designed routines of day after day in a cage or tank. We also need to think about what we’re doing when we take our kids to seen animals confined in enclosures, or performing on stages, and tell them that this is what an elephant is like, this is how a lion behaves, this is how we preserve and respect nature. I'm delighted to recommend this resource is an excellent introduction to the wealth of new material that addresses these questions.”

Heather Bryant

Assistant HOD English - Whangarei Girls’ High School

“Thank you for the set of Issue 3 Animals on Show which I have just received on behalf of the English Department at our school.It is an excellent resource and will be ideal for a top Year 10 class that I teach.It fits ideally into an extension programme where we can look at current issues and attitudes. It will also be useful for reading transactional texts at Level 2 English and for Social Studies units. This is an excellent publication – well set out and relevant and well-researched resources. Brilliant.”

Jeffrey Masson

Best-selling Author on the emotional lives of animals

“There is a growing movement in America, in Europe and now in New Zealand to think about our relationship to animals more carefully than we have in the past. The collective values of our Western society are changing rapidly; ecological sustainability is important for the maintenance of human life on our vulnerable planet. The ways we treat animals play a major role in this emerging ethic. Similarly, when we think about equity today we are more inclined than ever to consider the wider community of sentient beings, that is, all other animals, and not just the human animal. We are all embedded in social, cultural and environmental webs that are rapidly expanding; no longer can we simply look to our own personal good without considering that of all other beings who inhabit our planet.”

Jonathan Balcombe

Ethologist Scientist Author

“This beautifully produced manual presents creative and colourful ways to get students thinking critically about a pressing issue. Industrial egg production has significant implications for ethics, ecology and human health. For chickens’ sake, and our own, we can ill-afford to continue treating these birds—thinking, feeling creatures with wants and needs—as if they were so many blocks of wood. The New Zealand education system is fortunate to have this excellent resource, and I look forward to seeing subsequent issues in this series.”