This is an ethics quiz in which I am curious whether my certainty regarding the answer might be mistaken. It’s also a pretty silly tale.
A Calhoun City (Mississippi)High School teacher, whose name was not released by the Calhoun County School District, thought she was giving her students beef jerky as part of a class birthday celebration, but in fact the snacks were “Beggin’ Strips” or some similar form of dog treat. At least eight children took at least one bite of the stuff, according to Dr. Lisa Langford, the district superintendent. One child reported an upset stomach; the district alerted the affected children’s parents and had the school nurse check with the Poison Center.
The teacher was summarily dismissed.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Was that a fair response by the school?
For me, this is an easy one. Sure it was a fair response. The teacher fed her students a substance not meant for human consumption. It doesn’t matter that dog food isn’t poison: how careless does a teacher have to be to let this happen? How stupid does a teacher have to be for it to ever happen? I’m having trouble figuring out how it could even be an accident; I suspect that the teacher thought it would be a funny trick to pull on her students. If the teacher had fed a child of mine dog treats, I would demand her metaphorical head on a platter. I wouldn’t trust her judgement, or her ability to look after children.
Yet the reaction of the Fox News readers was almost exclusively sympathetic, other than the comments that just made the obvious jokes about the kids sniffing each other butts and going home with shiny coats.
“What’s the big deal – there’s no health risk. Firing the teacher for a mistake like this seems excessive, especially when you see so much worse often result in ‘administrative leave.'” This was the main theme of the comments, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse, or “There are worse things.” It is, as readers here know, my least favorite of all the intellectually dishonest excuses on the List. “I don’t think firing is necessary when there are teachers who are deciding kids gender without parents know and even pushing them for sex changes,” wrote another. “I’ve seen much worse done by teachers without being fired. Teacher will sue for unlawful dismissal,” says a commenter. “Would be nice if punishment and employment termination actions were taken swiftly against liberal woke teachers for promoting woke ideology to students. If this woman made an honest mistake, termination seems a little excessive due to the lack of any serious injuries” writes someone who doesn’t comprehend the principle of moral luck. The teacher fed what was not made for human consumption to students. The fact that it didn’t kill them was just luck. What if the stuff contained peanut oil, and one of the kids had peanut allergy?
“This is over reacting to an honest mistake. Nobody is going to get sick over it,” another comment goes. What’s “honest” about it? Then an alleged expert weighs in:
“This is absolutely absurd! I’m a retired food scientist who spent the majority of my career in quality assurance and food safety. Pet food has to meet strict standards just like human food, primarily because people eat pet food. It could be a toddler who gets into the kibble left for the family dog, or a poor elderly person who just has to eat something to survive. Mistakenly giving pet food to a kid is not a cause for alarm, much less termination. Get a grip people!”
You get a grip, you hack. She didn’t know it was pet food. She didn’t know what it was, apparently. It happened to be harmless, but a teacher who gives her students mystery treat is irresponsible. It just as easily could have been rat poison.
The reaction of the Vox Populi in this matter once again made me feel like my entire professional pursuit is futile. The Fox News commenters are literally incapable of sound ethical analysis.
Unless you agree with them, of course.
Ethics Alarms 
I find it hard to disagree. I cannot fathom the three lapsed judgements: 1) accidentally buying dog treats instead of human treats; 2) taking the accidental purchase to school; 3) then opening the accidental purchase in the classroom and distributing the treats to the kids. The first error might be understandable, the second one could be a bad day, but the third is pure negligence!
That only happens at elite private schools.
This has to fall in either incompetence or malice. Neither I would want holding a position of responsibility over children. Seems like an apt mention of the brand’s tagline. “Dogs don’t know it’s not bacon!”
I still love that commercial. Didn’t remember it was for Beggin Strips but I never forgot the punch line.
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But to answer the quiz, initially I was thinking, Well, it’s Mississippi, not being a dog lover may well be a firing offense.
But there’s a valid point about possible allergies that people might have and no, it’s not food intended for humans.
But fundamentally, dog treats and dog food in general are in a whole separate aisle in the grocery store. It’s labeled ‘Dog Food’, or “Pet food” and the entire aisle is devoted to various pet foods. There are no Doritos or Slim Jims on that aisle, but a lot of stuff by Purina.
So, it has to be either major incompetence or malevolent intent to get Beggin Strips instead of Jerky. Neither is a Good Thing.
Funny story, in retrospect…growing up in Northern California, back in the days when kids were actually allowed off leash to go play in the woods, we all knew what poison oak looked like, and I always got it badly several times a year. A sweet young woman came from back East and became our teacher. She was out walking and saw such lovely pink and green plants growing wild…yes, PO gets pink in full bloom and is really quite pretty….and she picked a HUGE bouquet of this lovely plant and put it in our classroom, right by the door where we all filed in. She had no idea of the pain caused by this lovely plant. When a few of us noticed what it was, and I remember running from the room, away from the dreaded plague….our teacher was surprised and embarrassed. She was not fired.
As for the dog food treats…that is just plain nasty and I agree, send her packing….
{Your first comment was stuck in moderation. I’m sorry you felt you had to post it 9X…once was enough. I just had to find it.)
Obviously if the teacher procured the dog treats or if she opened the original packaging she WOULD OR SHOULD have known that the product was not for human consumption. For that firing is appropriate.
However, it seems like a strange treat to give out for a class birthday. I am not sure whether the stuff was brought in by the teacher or was it one of several treats provided to the class by students in the class. Given this is a high school I could envision some student bringing in such a product as a joke. I remember students putting ex lax in brownies and sharing them for a laugh. Kids do stupid mean crap.
Parts of this story make no sense like why a high school teacher would be celebrating a kids birthday or why the traditional birthday treats are conspicuously absent from this tale.
I agree, Chris. This is the only way this makes sense. (Of course, not making sense doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.)
It’s also worth mentioning that it doesn’t appear the teacher was “summarily fired,” as Jack suggests. The Newsweek article says that it’s unclear whether she was fired or left for other reasons. That probably but not necessarily means that she was given the opportunity to resign.
I like to think I have a reasonably active imagination, but I can’t come up with a reasonable excuse if she in fact was the person who brought the dog treats to class. There’s no legitimate possibility for an accident. But if, as you suggest as a possibility, the first time she saw the treats was when they were presumably provided by a student and removed from their packaging, then this really is a minor incident involving a little too little scrutiny of a student prank. By the way, how was it determined that what the kids were eating wasn’t actually jerky? Somebody made that call. A student?
That also brings up a due process issue. Suspension while the situation was being investigated is reasonable. Actually firing her without appropriate fact-finding is another matter.
So… the school probably reacted appropriately, but I’m not ready to say for certain that they did. With some better journalism, it would be an easier call one way or the other. Another first, right?
I plead guilty to inaccurate adornment for “summarily.” If I were in charge, it would have been as summarily as possible, however.
I fully agree. Although I could not find the Newsweek article. The link in the post took me to Fox News. The links within the Fox article just circled back to the article being read.
If she brought the treats, she must have really poor eyesight. Otherwise, the treats could have been outside of the package and stored in an unlabeled container that she mistook for jerky.
If a student brought in the treats, perhaps it was wrong to allow them to be distributed without verifying conclusively what they were.
For some reason, I thought schools had rules about snacks brought from home being in packages for food safety reasons. I know when our son was in school, requests for baked goods turned out to be for store-bought snacks only. They would not hand out anything homemade.
When I was in high school, we brought homemade baked goods in all the time. (I gained ten pounds my senior year; every class seemed to revolve around food….)