On an article in TIME FOR KIDS
“A WHALE OF A DEBATE” – Very Biased Educational Material
Last October, my 5th grader brought back this issue of TIME FOR KIDS (5-6 EDITION), which stunned me in not a good way at all. Very biased. Not suitable for an educational material. That was my first impression. I wrote about it in my Japanese blog, to which one of the very knowledgeable readers responded with so much frustration. He explained fully to me how right my first impression on this article was and how unfair whatever the author of this article wrote there was.
Immediately after that, I translated his comment into English and send it to my son’s teacherS, TIME, and TIME FOR KIDS to complain about the article. Neither TIME nor TIME FOR KIDS responded to me. So, here it is – let me introduce what they said in the article here.
http://www.timeforkids.com/photos-video/video/whale-debate-189001
In the meantime, here is my complaint letter to TIME and TIME FOR KIDS. If you have any comment on this matter, I am all ears! Send me your comment. Thank you!
[TIME FOR KIDS EDITION 5-6/NOVEMBER 7, 2014/VOL.5/NO.8]
*This is a long-lasting discussion for decades. What this magazine says in this issue is totally misleading and brainwashing kids in the US. One of my blog readers in Japan provided me with the information down below to help me show American kids the real truth in this matter.
- There are some whales, such as river whales, which are on the verge of extinction while there are other whales, such as minke whales, which have been increasing in number for the last few decades. This is because their numbers has been under the strict control.
- According to the official statistics, once the numbers of those whales are restored, they start eating 3 times to 6 times more than entire human beings all over the world eat.
- Especially, particular kinds, such as minke whales, prefer to eat sardines or Pacific sauries rather than krill, which can directly cause substantial conflict in provisions of those fish for human beings.
- Suffice to say that international researches on whales haven’t been progressed at all without ones done by official Japanese researchers.
- In addition, it should be noted that Japanese research teams work only in the areas approved internationally.
- It is essentially critical to understand that “fatal researches” and “non-fatal researches” do complement each other. For example, it would be next to impossible to figure out how large or how old a particular whale is if it were not for catching it. How would you be able to guess its nutritive condition if you simply “observe” it?
- The primary reason that whales almost became extinct in the past was that the US and European countries did commercial whale fishing so recklessly in pursuit of whale oil.
- It is absolutely unreasonable for those countries to take pity on whales now and keep blaming Japan just because they no longer have to count on whale oil as the usage of petroleum has become very popular worldwide.
