Pfizer Deploys Mobile ‘School of Science’ to Teach Kids the ABCs of Pandemics and Vaccines  

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is crossing the country with a mobile science “escape room” — complete with a robotic dog — to provide students in rural communities with a “science-based learning experience.”

In the process, students are “exposed to a multi-national company” and they get to meet Pfizer employees.

In its promotional video for the “School of Science Mobile Experience,” students in rural Sanford, North Carolina, are greeted by a Pfizer robot dog, which makes several appearances during their field trip.

Students enter the Pfizer mobile trailer for a “fantastic, interactive, escape-room-like experience,” where they work with Pfizer employees to solve a mystery about a pandemic outbreak that starts with people showing up in doctor’s offices with scaly, lizard-like skin.

As they move through the pandemic tabletop exercise, proceeding through different rooms in the trailer, the children learn different lessons. They learn about antigens in one room, about vaccine manufacturing in another, and more.

North Carolina mother Beth Secosky told The Defender she wouldn’t want Pfizer teaching science to her children or anyone’s children.

“Pfizer has paid billions in penalties for false claims and safety violations,” she said. “Why would schools invite a corporation that is notorious for putting profits over people to teach their children ‘science’?”

Michael Kane, New York City educator and founder of Teachers for Choice told The Defender he was struck by the fact that the experience would highlight antigens and manufacturing as part of science education for young people.

“It’s definitely crossing a line from education to directly marketing or promoting their products to kids,” he said. “It just feels so wrong.”

The hands-on learning modality is great for kids learning, Kane added, but even in the short video, it’s clear this is just an attempt to promote their vaccines. “It kind of blows me away.”

The robotic dog was especially concerning, Kane said. Police departments across the country and the world have controversially begun deploying robot dogs to surveil citizens with cameras, sensors and microphones and militaries are starting to weaponize them for military applications by mounting them with machine guns.

“They are bringing these dogs to the kids in such a disarming way — showing how cute this robotic dog is when it looks precisely like the dogs that they’re putting out into police departments and into the military,” he said. “That is very frightening in terms of what they’re programming these children to be used to and to think is cool, and to think is normal.”

The video was released a couple of weeks ago. The comment function for the video on Pfizer’s YouTube channel is turned off, so viewers have not been able to share their thoughts.