
Photo: Ah_bin-Yul/Pixabay
If some or all the fish die, they are given new ones and the children have to learn from their mistakes in order to raise them to maturity. Any mistakes are considered part of the learning process. But while seeing the fish die because of their mistake can be hard to overcome by the children, it’s nothing compared to the decision they have to make at the endo of the program. Two weeks before the end of the Class of Life, the children at the Hamamatsu school featured on FNN were told by their teacher that they needed to decide whether they wanted to eat the fish or release it back into the ocean, where it risked winding up in someone else’s net or being eaten by other fish. As the deadline neared, children debated on the correct approach. “I think it’s better to eat them and know the value of life,” one student said.
“I think it’s better to let them swim into the wide sea than to eat them”, another countered. On the big day, tension was high, an when the teacher asked for a show of hands in favor of eating the fish, 11 children raised their hands. With only 6 students having opted for the fish to be released, a chef was brought in to turn Michael and the other flatfish into sashimi for the children who voted to eat them. In the end, some of the children who had opted to eat the fish couldn’t even take a bite, but such behavior is considered normal. While seemingly cruel, the program and the decisions young children have to make are supposed to help them grow up and understand the importance of life.
Interestingly, this isn’t the only program of its kind in Japan. A few years back, we wrote about a similar initiative at the Izumo Agricultural and Forestry High School, in Izumo, where students had to hatch eggs into chicks, raise them and then eat them, as a way of gaining a new appreciation for life and the food they consume.