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?
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!
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.