Hi, there are grave issues with the information conveyed in the "Explore farm animals" activity. These can cause or continue discrimination, violence and cruelty against these creatures. Some examples: Level 1: - The animals in the main picture have a smile on their faces. This does not reflect the harsh reality most of these animals face in modern animal production facilities in the western societies. In order not to expose the young user with the true horrors these animals must endure one could at least depict them with a sad face. - Detail information on the cow: "They graze all day in the meadow". This is false. Most of farmed cows in the world a locked in industrial barns and never see a meadow in their (shortcut) lives. Level 3: - "You can drink the milk this animal produces" => Currently, the only valid answer is cow; but this is not the only of the clickable animals. In reality, we can drink the milk of all mammal animals. In the picture this would be dog, horse, cow, sheep, cat, pig. A good question could be why in the western culture it is normal to choose mostly cow's milk? This would highlight that there is not only one culture in the world and not only one way to treat animals. - "This animal lays eggs" => Currently, the only valid answer is chicken; which is not complete. Also ducks lay eggs. Also the bird on the barn lays eggs. Chickens are birds and all birds lay eggs. - "You can ride on the back of this animal" => You cannot only ride on horse's back but on nearly every animal's back. Depending on its strength it would hurt them more or less. E.g. there are feasts in some rural areas in the United States where children shall ride on the pig's backs for fun. The educational question here would not if you _can_ do it but if you _should_ do it. Would it be appreciated to disable this activity until these issues (which have the potential to prolong needless animal suffering) are resolved?
Thanks for your report. I'm not sure that depicting animals with a sad face would be better, as it could have the opposite side effect to make children think that it's normal that animals have to suffer in a farm. Same for "They graze all day in the meadow" : some farms still do it this way, and I guess that's the best way for a cow in a farm... Some farms are more respectful to animals than others. I think it's better to show that having animals with a happy life in a farm is possible and that people should aim for that. It potentially gives a better example for the future. About the other points, they are all valid, so we should review and fix those questions to make sure they actually have a single answer and are not too much culturally biased. And maybe improve some descriptions to be less biased. I've opened a task to get this done before our next release: https://phabricator.kde.org/T15768
Git commit d6f9b388b1228b3195ae87db81c5c86a27bf630a by Timothée Giet. Committed on 17/11/2022 at 23:19. Pushed by timotheegiet into branch 'master'. explore_farm_animals, update text update the descriptions and questions to fix several issues, and make them less culturally biased remove the rooster to avoid potential issues/confusions with the chicken entry M +0 -8 src/activities/explore_farm_animals/resource/animals/README D +- -- src/activities/explore_farm_animals/resource/animals/rooster.ogg D +0 -1 src/activities/explore_farm_animals/resource/animals/rooster.svg D +- -- src/activities/explore_farm_animals/resource/animals/rooster.webp M +22 -34 src/activities/explore_farm_animals/resource/board/board1.qml https://invent.kde.org/education/gcompris/commit/d6f9b388b1228b3195ae87db81c5c86a27bf630a