What Do We Learn at a Rodeo?

The use of lottery funds by Victory Boulevard Elementary School in North Hollywood for a trip that included a Mexican rodeo can serve as a lesson for all educators whose thinking is muddled by the promoters of this barbaric business. Rodeo does not deserve perpetuation of its “heritage.” It rightly deserves to be ended, like all such deceptive cruelty.

All humane groups are against rodeo, for many reasons. One is that it teaches our children that it is admirable, sport, fun and profitable to treat captive animals cruelly. This is the opposite of what we teach: Be kind to animals.

Rodeo animals are hurt, tormented and terrorized in order to make them appear wild and the rodeo cowboys appear admirable. In the chutes, sharp sticks, wires, electric prods, pointed boots, fists, flank straps, tail twisting, etc., are used on helpless animals. In the arena, they can violently suffer every kind of internal and external injury--to “accidental” death--at the hands of the rodeo cowboys, as they brutally gamble for the rodeo money.

One of the best lessons that educators can teach children is to see past the razzle-dazzle, spectacle, flag-waving and sport to the greed and cruelty of this money-making business.

MAURINE GORDON

Newbury Park