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This guy stands out for a lot of reasons, most of which are unrelated to Zombies but closely related to education as a whole. I'll start with the Zombies.

“With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me,I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy,experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.”



















So, this teacher is making a bold assertion that the states' (in this case New York,) adherence to standardized test quotas and the common core curriculum is so stifling to innovation, creativity, excitement, and actual learning that it can be characterized as zombie-like. Think about what a zombie is, how it lacks affect, agency, a purpose other than to feed. Then think about public education where every teacher is teaching to a standardized test. The lack of freedom to explore a subject makes teachers disinterested, but the demand to keep kids scoring high on the same test every year keeps them panicked enough to work hard. In a lot of ways, being a zombie and being a public school teacher in New York is very similar.

Is the real zombie apocalypse happening in the classroom? Is ground zero New York's public schools? Or is this just a hyperbolic phrase used by some pissed off teacher that I'm reading way too far into?

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2 Responses so far.

  1. frankie says:

    I think our school system is becoming a breading ground for "zombie students". As the article states teachers and pressured to teach to the test, so student can get a sufficient grade. It is no longer about the learning process it is all about how much one person can memorize and cram into your brain in which you soon will spill out onto a paper. There is no time to think about context, meaning, or importance of what you are learning, all that matters is high test scores. Just like all that matters to a zombie is BRAINS!

  2. Drybones says:

    The cure for educational zombification? I wonder if it is teaching about zombies. Zombies really are far more than just a movie monster. I teach Zombies! Zombies are great to use in an educational context because of their cultural popularity, especially among the school age demographic. As a teacher in the humanities, I have found them to be fascinating philosophically and think that zombies have a lot to teach us about ourselves. I have written about the meaning of zombies at my website (the first post is at http://trentdejong.com/?p=592). This series is a little academic and quite detailed. If you'd like a lighter version I summarized it all in a post called "10 Things Zombies Tell Us About Ourselves." You can find that one here: http://www.squidoo.com/the-meaning-of-zombies2. I hope these resources can help teachers to engage their students. I will be posting the cure for zombification in general, at the my website. I don't want to give it away, but it has something to do with re-enchantment of the world.

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