Reflecting on my college career so far, I never thought I would have had the opportunity to take a class on zombies! Speaking of zombie classes, I came across an interesting article regarding a zombie course offered at a middle school in Oregon.
According to this article, students at Armand Larive Middle School regularly participated in an after school zombie education class. Despite being promoted as a way to get students more interested in reading and writing, parents felt that this class was too inappropriate for middle schoolers, and demanded that it be removed. It was discovered that the class was not approved by the district and was removed from the after school program.
This was the district's statement:
The use of zombie-related materials is unfortunate and was not approved in accordance with district curricular policies. We extend our regrets to anyone offended by their use. While zombies may be a contemporary topic, the inclusion of zombie-related materials was deemed inappropriate for middle school students and has been replaced with age and content-appropriate materials.
This article made me think about a discussion we had in regards to our belief systems. In our group, we discussed about how we should approach teaching children about zombies in case a zombie apocalypse did occur.
I am curious if people feel that the district made the right decision by removing the zombie class? Should "zombie education" be limited to college students? Personally, I feel that the teacher should have sent permission slips home to warn the parents/guardians about the violent nature of the course, and let them decide on whether the child should take the class or not, instead of removing it completely.
I think its an interesting choice to be taught to middle schoolers. I think that age may be a little to young, but I do like the initial goal of getting kids interested in reading and making it more enjoyable at that age.
I could easily see how it is a subject that might not be age appropriate for middle schoolers, that said, in our culture, its pretty hard not to find a zombie reference when you really start looking. A quick google search can net you zombie t-shirts, zombie related learning-to-read books, I pretty sure there is even zombie Legos. So, while Zombies, and all the cultural facets/representations associated with them, might not be the most age appropriate... im sure they've been exposed to the Zombie genre craze somehow.
Although, I do understand how zombie books may get kids more interested in reading, I think that zombie books should be introduced after middle-age school children already have an interest in reading. Kids should be able to somewhat understand the socio-cultural context of zombie literature and should be reading zombie literature to further expand their love of reading, rather than ignite it.
So my daughter went to a friend's house recently, an older child, but they're both pretty young. She came back, and I asked her what she did over there. "I played Zombies vs. Plants." I stood, silently, debating what the correct parental response was. Finally, I said, "And what did you think?" She shrugged and said, "It was weird." She's young, and I was deeply unsettled by the fact that the parents thought this might be an ok thing for our kids to be doing. I don't know if any of you have seen this game, but it's not terribly scary, just weird. It just seems like everyone is becoming desensitized to zombies, they don't seem so scary, they're made cute in children's video games.
Does she know that you're finishing up a college class on zombies?
Zombies vs. Plants is an interesting game. It's cartoonish and very cute, and the plants sort of dance around.
At the same time, it gets hard and stressful, and some of the zombie monsters are very creepy.
And at the same, same time, the premise of the game is that you can use life (plants) to combat death (or undeath, ie., zombies). It's very much a game about the reinstatement of the natural order to combat eruptions of unnaturalness.
I'm glad your daughter seemed untraumatized by the whole thing.
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.