Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/10/childrens-science-book-instr.html
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I suspect this writer resents being assigned biology instead of physics.
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The first draft said “kid brother”.
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I see what you did there 
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The second said “baby sister”.
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Good $deity. I thought this was going to be another one of those “Check out the latest hijinks from Scarfolk” posts.
My next guess, of course, would have been, “Look at the new curriculum DeVos just approved!”
The closest thing I can think of that I actually encountered would have been a rather terrible science book I found during my youth, full of rather vapid statements along the lines of “Do x. What happens?” without providing any suggestion as to what one might begin to expect. Perhaps that’s the way science ought to taught, but there were some bafflingly ornate setups, like “Catch these predatory insects. Catch these prey insects. Line up the predators on one side of a piece of paper and the prey on the other side. What happens?”
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hoping the revised edition will say “shit-gibbon”
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Is this a situation where the book was translated INTO English and “kitten” was a poorly selected word ?
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So does this mean the student goes back to the end of the hierarchy (because murder) when they reincarnate, and the kitten advances one level?
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I suspect the DeVos version would involve the kitten still being alive through divine intervention, but only if it had lived a good Christian life 
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If the kitten is young enough it probably has at least six or seven lives left… right? 
Right? 
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But if you don’t open the boxes, both kittens are both dead and alive.
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It’s acceptable science if you do it with goldfish.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/22253133_Anaerobic_metabolism_in_goldfish_Carassius_auratus
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(slow clap) Nicely done on that.
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Hopefully the bad karma moves up the chain to the author and publisher.
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Printed in Texas! The only true “Murica!” state!
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I believe Priestley did it with a mouse in a bell jar. Or maybe it was Lavoisier? Google to the rescue… Joseph Priestley, last defender of phlogiston, in 1772 and 1774.
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I once worked converting text books into more accessible formats. It worked with textbooks from publishers major and minor. We found all sorts of hilarious text inclusions and mistakes. The most egregious,I wish I had a picture of it, was in the answer section of a textbook where there were interspersed rants about a former love. If my memory serves correctly, it was a math book and included text about herpes and the lovers various failings.
The number of hands that touch a book is amazing. Books often have regional editions (state, province, county, etc
). A book can have market specific editions based off needs. For instance books can be divided or combined for semester or quarter system classes. This is one place where a lot of people, often unacredited, have the ability to change, remove or add material.
While the author may be at fault, there are many hands that have access to the text before it is printed. There is also a chance that the textbook is a bootleg copy. On more than one occasion, when contacting a publisher about a miss print (likely missing or duplicated pages) we also sent them a punch list of mistakes and odd bits of text that we found. We were quickly called back and apologized to. They mailed us overnight 2 copies of the book, including a teacher’s edition. They paid for an overnight return of the book. Later I was asked a bunch of questions by the publisher. It turned out that it was text from an early gaily for a preview edition. Printed textbook piracy is a real thing and there are companies that apparently attempt to sell books to unaware schools. Book sellers offer a great price, the schools get the books, often with old, error filled or odd text and poor graphics.
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What they fail to mention is that the teacher’s edition has additional instructions to inform the state security services of which students actually attempt the exercise so that they can target them for future employment.
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Because it was harmful to children. If it’s “harmful” to children, it’s hell on kittens. People suck. Present company excepted. (But not you or… you. You know who you are.)
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