Voices for Animals – A series of interviews with those who speak out loud and clear for all who are born nonhuman
A lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Dr. Sharyn Spicer is one of Africa's most compelling voices for animals
When Animal Voice editor Louise van der Merwe first met her, Sharyn was already determined to rescue every feral cat on campus and its surrounds. She went on to found the TufCat Project, becoming an inspiration for a kinder world to countless members of the UWC community.
This year, to mark World Animal Day, Dr Spicer invited Louise, as Director of Nature-based Education (NBE), to present NBE’s module on Animal Sentience for Senior Phase Learners to her students. Dr Spicer kindly agreed to speak further about Sentience as a crucial component in Education...
Animal Voice:
Dr Spicer, it was a pleasure to present our Lesson Plan to your students. Thank you. The questionnaire that the students filled in at the end of the presentation was eye-opening! 74% of them had matriculated without any know-ledge of animal sentience, yet 100% were in favour of including animal sentience in the senior phase curriculum. Would you agree that the analytics of the questionnaire indicate there is a gap that needs urgent attention in our CAPS curriculum?
Sharyn Spicer:
Yes, there is a clear need to include animal sentience in the curriculum. However, animal welfare needs to be linked to the concept of social justice to have an impact. Recognising sentience gives animals intrinsic value and challenges their property status. The inter-connections must be emphasised and linked to issues like poverty, environmental degradation and the rights of marginalized populations.
Animal Voice:
The reasoning behind the recent inclusion of animal welfare into the Charter of Child Rights was of particular interest to the students. (See GC26:35)
How do you see this historic step manifesting in education?
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Sharyn Spicer:
The majority of people are not ready to accept that animals have rights because this would be way too uncomfortable and would require significant societal changes. Many people feel that supporting animals and animal causes somehow takes away from humans and their struggles. They fail to see the interconnections.​
​Animal Voice:
In a ‘first’ for the African continent, students at UWC will now have the opportunity to study animal rights at LLM (Master’s) level. UWC also has a Sociology post-graduate module focussing on Human-Animal Studies, which is also a first. What an achievement!
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How do you think we should go about getting Animal Sentience into the mainstream curriculum as a component of the Matric syllabus?
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Sharyn Spicer:
It needs to be integrated into all subjects and linked to other social issues and concerns to have an impact. For example, activities could focus on the language we use regarding animals.​ What is important to note is that advances in animal welfare and rights are coming from poor countries in the Global South like India, Pakistan and South American nations. These countries have recognised the value of animals and support the ‘Rights of Nature.’ They are setting the tone for other nations to follow.
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In South Africa, we need to find ways to extend the African concept of ubuntu to include other species. There are scholars who are doing this and their work needs to be promoted. Advancing animal rights and improving their welfare needs to be seen in the context of decoloniality. Colonialism created the species hierarchy and oppressed and exploited animal others, hence part of the decolonial project should be to undo this.
What happens when Artificial Intelligence (AI) gradually takes over many of the jobs that keep us busy now, appropriating our livelihoods and purpose, and leaving us stranded in our own comparative deficiency?
The solution, say leading economists, lies in actively cultivating in our children that special thing that sets us apart from AI, the very thing that makes us uniquely human – our capacity for empathy and creativity. If we don’t, says German data scientist Andreas Schleicher who heads the Education Division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the world will be educating “second-class robots and not first-class humans.” Schleicher believes our education system is a relic of the industrial age. ​
He explains: “The kind of things that are easy to teach, and maybe easy to test, are precisely the kinds of things that are easy to digitize and to automate. The advent of AI should push us to think harder about what makes us human... our capacity to take responsibility, to mobilize our cognitive and social and emotional resources to do something that is of benefit to society.”
