A new textbook that helps teach the next generation how to love animals was recently introduced in primary and high schools in Xiamen, Fujian Province.

The textbook, the first of its kind devoted to animal protection in the country, is written by the Xiamen Animal Protection Association in February and sponsored by the Hong Kong-based Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Xiao Bing, director of the association, told the Global Times Sunday that he hopes the textbook can teach students the relationship between human beings and animals.

About 5,000 students in 14 schools in the city have been given the textbook. It is estimat-ed that over the next four years, a total of 35,000 students will receive the textbook, Xiao said.

The book focuses on animal protection and animal welfare.

"Biology textbooks teach you how to protect wild or exotic animals, while the new one draws students closer to the animals living around them, such as cats and dogs," Xiao said.

Xiao got the idea of writing a textbook on animal protection a few years ago when a 10-year-old boy told him that he wanted to kill all the dogs in the world, even though he was never bitten by a dog.

"Then I started to think about why a child who has never been hurt by an animal hates animals that much?" he said. "We never teach them how to love animals and respect life."

Schools receiving the textbook will devote a lesson once every two weeks to teach animal protection. Teachers will take students outside the classroom for learning activities.

"We hope our students can learn through entertainment. We don't want to put pressure on them," Chen Tingting, a teacher at the Wushipu primary school in the city, told the Global Times Sunday.

She said students are attracted by the new textbook.

"They fired questions like, Why do people eat cats and dogs? and Why do they torture homeless animals?" she said. "And we teach them to turn in these people and stop these wrong behaviors."

"The goal of teaching animal protection is to pass along knowledge but also to spread the idea of loving animals," she added.

(Global Times May 17, 2010)