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.(I am tempted to make an analogy to thenGov.Lester Maddox s statement some years ago about prison conditions inGeorgia We ll get a better grade of prisons when we get a better grade ofprisoners but I shall refrain.)Giving an F where it is deserved would force concerned parents to get 7themselves away from the TV set, too, and take an active part in their children seducation.I realize, of course, that some parents would not help; some cannothelp.However, Johnny does not deserve to pass just because Daddy doesn tcare or is ignorant.Johnny should pass only when and if he knows the requiredmaterial.Giving an F whenever and wherever it is the only appropriate grade would 8force principals, school boards, and voters to come to terms with cost as a factorin improving our educational system.As the numbers of students at various lev-els were increased by those not being passed, more money would have to bespent to accommodate them.We could not be accommodating them in the oldsense of passing them on, but by keeping them at one level until they did intime, one way or another, learn the material.Insisting on respecting the line between passing and failing would also re- 9quire us to demand as much of ourselves as of our students.As every teacherknows, a failed student can be the product of a failed teacher.Teaching methods, classroom presentations, and testing procedures would 10have to be of a very high standard we could not, after all, conscionably giveF s if we have to go home at night thinking it might somehow be our own fault.The results of giving an F where it is deserved would be immediately evi- 11dent.There would be no illiterate college graduates next spring none.Thesame would be true of high-school graduates, and consequently next year s col-lege freshmen all of them would be able to read.I don t claim that giving F s will solve all of the problems, but I do argue 12that unless and until we start failing those students who should be failed, other 194 5 / THE SINGLE-SOURCE ESSAYsuggested solutions will make little progress toward improving education.Stu-dents in our schools and colleges should be permitted to pass only after theyhave fully met established standards; borderline cases should be retained.The single most important requirement for solving the problems of educa- 13tion in America today is the big fat F, written decisively in red ink millions oftimes in schools and colleges across the country.WHY ANIMALS DESERVE LEGAL RIGHTSSteven M.WiseA specialist in animal-rights law, Steven M.Wise teaches at a numberof institutions, including Harvard Law School and Tufts UniversitySchool of Veterinary Medicine.Active in the Animal Legal DefenseFund and the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, he isthe author of four books as well as the article on animal rights inEncyclopaedia Britannica.This article appeared in the Chronicle ofHigher Education.For centuries, the right to have everything that makes existence worth- 1while like freedom, safety from torture, and even life itself has turned onwhether the law classifies one as a person or a thing.Although some Jews oncebelonged to Pharaoh, Syrians to Nero, and African-Americans to George Wash-ington, now every human is a person in the eyes of the law.All nonhuman animals, on the other hand, are things with no rights.The 2law ignores them unless a person decides to do something to them, and then, inmost cases, nothing can be done to help them.According to statistics collectedannually by the Department of Agriculture, in the United States this year, tens ofmillions of animals are likely to be killed, sometimes painfully, during biomed-ical research; 10 billion more will be raised in factories so crowded that they reunable to turn around, and then killed for food.The U.S.Fish and Wildlife Serviceand allied state agencies report that hundreds of millions will be shot byhunters or exploited in rodeos, circuses, and roadside zoos.And all of that is per-fectly legal.What accounts for the legal personhood of all of us and the legal thing- 3hood of all of them? Judeo-Christian theologians sometimes argue that hu-mans are made in the image of God.But that argument has been leaking sinceGratian, the twelfth-century Benedictine monk who is considered the father ofcanon law, made the same claim just for men in his Decretum.Few, if any,philosophers or judges today would argue that being human, all by itself, issufficient for legal rights.There must be something about us that entitles usto rights. STRATEGY ONE: ARGUING AGAINST YOUR SOURCE 195Philosophers have proffered many criteria as sufficient, including sentience, 4a sense of justice, the possession of language or morality, and having a rationalplan for one s life.Among legal thinkers, the most important is autonomy,also known as self-determination or volition.Things don t act autonomously.Persons do.Notice that I said that autonomy is sufficient for basic legal rights; it obvi- 5ously isn t necessary.We don t eat or vivisect human babies born without brains,who are so lacking in sentience that they are operated on without anesthesia.But autonomy is tough to define.Kant thought that autonomous beings 6always act rationally.Anyone who can t do that can justly be treated as a thing.Kant must have had extraordinary friends and relatives.Not being a full-timeacademic, I don t know anyone who always acts rationally.Most philosophers, and just about every judge, reject Kant s rigorous con- 7ception of autonomy, for they can easily imagine a human who lacks it, but canstill walk about making decisions.Instead, some of them think that a beingcan be autonomous at least to some degree if she has preferences and theability to act to satisfy them.Others would say she is autonomous if she cancope with changed circumstances.Still others, if she can make choices, even ifshe can t evaluate their merits very well.Or if she has desires and beliefs and canmake at least some sound and appropriate inferences from them.As things, nonhuman animals have been invisible to civil law since its in- 8ception. All law, said the Roman jurist Hermogenianus, was established formen s sake. And why not? Everything else was.Unfortunately for animals, many people have believed that they were put 9on earth for human use and lack autonomy.Aristotle granted them a few men-tal abilities: They could perceive and act on impulse.Many Stoics, however, de-nied them the capacities to perceive, conceive, reason, remember, believe, evenexperience.Animals knew nothing of the past and could not imagine a future.Nor could they desire, know good, or learn from experience.For decades, though, evidence has been accumulating that at least some 10nonhuman animals have extraordinary minds
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