Education and Entertainment

There is education about sheep. There is education about sheep done using entertaining means. There is entertainment provided through using sheep. So, a continuum exists. The greatest potential threat to sheep’s well-being is at the entertainment end of things. If the objective is entertainment, a sheep’s welfare and dignity can be under threat. 

To want to educate about sheep is a worthy objective. It is in sheep’s interests that humans should know about them. The hope will be that, with the obtained knowledge, humans will be treating sheep well. 

To provide entertainment with sheep may not be inherently bad. The use of an entertaining way to inform about sheep might be regarded as acceptable, provided what is done is not harmful or disrespectful to sheep, or out-of-tune with sheep’s nature. 

The problem and unacceptability appear when sheep are the chosen items for giving entertainment. Benefit is not for the sheep, it is for the providers. Towards a provider achieving an entity of appeal and income, there can be distortion by the provider of sheep’s habits and ways. Providers are gaining livelihood from what they make sheep do, and in what circumstance and environment. Meanwhile, onlookers are not having helpful benefit, because they are getting a false impression of sheep. 

It can even be wondered whether some providers - entertainers, income-earners, and business-people - do not have very much knowledge of sheep for straying from. The people may simply have ‘stumbled upon’ sheep as being - docile - items that can be used.

The difference between education and entertainment in relation to sheep is this. Educating about sheep has at its heart the wish to communicate information to humans about sheep, and so is fundamentally in sheep’s interests: though it should of course be said that the sheep industry uses the information. Entertaining deploying sheep essentially represents sheep being used as items for humans’ objectives and priorities.