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Reading Games: The Zombies in Our Schools
What Do Popcorn and Zombies Have in Common? Read on.
By Thomas DeVere Wolsey
Who doesn’t love zombies? They’re adorably terrifying or maybe that’s terrifyingly adorable. While the idea of zombies is rooted in the slave trade, zombies have taken on some mythic qualities recently perhaps as symbols of the uncertainty of the current era[1]. Origins aside, zombie aficionados agree on one thing: Zombies live, sort of, and they refuse to die.
After the collapse of the world economy in the late 2000s, some economists[2] looking for explanations proposed that zombie ideas about the economy just would not go away even though they are counterproductive. These included notions such as privatization can do better anything the government can do and trickle-down economics works. Neither idea is helpful, but they are convenient in some ways for some people.
“In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both.” ~Paul Krugman[3]
The truly scary part is that zombie ideas walk the halls of our schools sometimes. The Science of Reading fanatics argue that there is one true way to teach reading and all others be damned…
