Humane education programs that teach children empathy for animals show lasting effects on both animal welfare attitudes and broader prosocial behaviors toward humans and the environment.
Humane education works through empathy development — giving children direct experience with animals as individuals with feelings, needs, and personalities. This empathic capacity, once developed, generalizes beyond animals to other humans and the environment. Programs that integrate humane education into school curricula invest in the values of the next generation of voters, consumers, and policymakers. The long-term welfare benefit of shifting the values of children is potentially enormous.