A Utah middle school teacher recently awarded extra credit to students for eating grasshoppers as part of an essay assignment arguing that people should eat bugs in an effort to fight climate change.

Kim Cutler, a teacher at Spring Canyon Middle School, assigned sixth-grade English students an essay titled "Why Americans Should Be Eating Bugs."  According to the parameters of the assignment, students were supposed to argue that people should eat bugs rather than cows as their primary source of protein — as cows produce methane that damages the ozone layer.  What's more, students were not allowed to disagree with that premise.

Yum! Fried crickets.

In addition to the essay, students were given the opportunity to receive extra credit by eating grasshoppers that Nebo School District had bought from a commercial website.

When a student had the audacity to ask Cutler why students could not argue against the essay's premise, Cutler responded by saying, "Because we don't have any evidence for it."

Cutler allowed that "we don't want to eat bugs, and it's gross," adding, "But should we be eating bugs?  Yeah, because we're killing the world by raising cows and animals.  So we need to, not get rid of cows, but like, try to balance our diet so that not so much of our land is being used to raise cows, cause it's killing the ozone layer."

Killing the ozone layer?  Last I checked, it had healed up nicely.

When the student further pressed Cutler, the teacher responded by saying, "There's only one right answer to this essay.  And it's that Americans should be eating bugs.  Everyone in the world is eating them, it's healthy for the environment, and there's just, there's only one right answer."

So much for diversity, inclusion, and equity.  And prior academic concepts like open discussion and debate, the scientific method, etc.  Instead, we get "let them eat bugs."  Or, more accurately, "you will eat bugs!"

In this new day and age, students may soon get extra credit for changing genders, too.  Teachers will have to decide how many points students get for, say, lopping off a penis or breasts, taking puberty-blockers, and undergoing hormone treatments, or describing for teachers (in detail) their kinkiest sexual fantasies.  Oh, wait — they're already doing that.

Guess I'm behind the times.

But back to bugs.  If eating bugs catches on quickest with affluent white liberals, as I'm confident will be the case, will it not then be considered a symbol of white supremacy?

If so, educators would obviously have to decry the practice.

And that would surely bug them.

Photo credit: Thomas Schoch, CC BY SA license.