Victoria Loginova/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

When I was forced to study science, we had to cut up frogs. Some found this enormously thrilling. I found it like trying to reason with a bank manager.

I was never asked, though, to cut up a human being. In Russia, however, schools seem not to distinguish between animals and humans.

For here is a delightful video of a science teacher slashing a student. The purpose was not dissection, but, one assumes, elucidation.

I am grateful to Gawker's sanguine arm for spotting this quite elegant step forward in education.

Originally posted to Reddit on Monday, it appears to show a bizarrely willing young person allow her arm to be sliced by a sadist.

It's a level of trust in authority not always seen in Russia. The teacher swabs the student's forearm, as if before an injection. She then coats a knife blade in some liquid and begins to slice.

Indeed, it appears that teacher has decided to play noughts-and-crosses on the student's forearm.

What seems like blood pours out of the poor student, who herself doesn't look entirely sure that her teacher doesn't have psychopathic issues.

No one was hurt in the making of this movie, though. This was the brilliant and lurid side of science in action. At the end of the video, the teacher wipes the "cuts" away with a towel.

As a Reddit poster called mycatsaccount explained: "The color comes from Thiocyanatoiron ions. Skin was rubbed with a cotton ball soaked with a solution of thiocyanate ions, and that knife was covered with a solution from of iron(III), which has yellowish color. When solutions have combined, these ions reacted together forming blood red [Fe(SCN)]2+."

I am in no position to confirm that this is true. However, here's an explanatory video, should you wish to delve deeper into your own well of knowledge (and psychopathy).

If it is as the Reddit poster says, this was the best science lesson I've had for a long time. It's also a must to greet any children who bang on my door next Halloween.