All this zombie notoriety seems either gratuitous or at its worse, depraved. But these days my thoughts have turned to using this zombie-craze as a way to say something that I hope to be worthwhile.
Zombies are not aware. Zombies don't pay attention. They move about in the world doing things, working, speaking, but they don't really see.
Zombies are with someone in a conversation and there are words going back and forth but the zombie is not 'really' listening to the other.
This is an unfortunate thing. It is a common thing. We see it in our relationships with the ones we love, we see it with the freeway driving behavior. We see it as a way to cope. It is a way to shield us from the wall of sights and sounds and thoughts that assault us everyday.
Sister Wendy talks about living like a zombie as the "one fatal thing". (You can see her with much better articulation than I here at about the 6:02 minute part). A zombie is a person who is not attentive to the things around them. She sees art as a way to de-zombify ourselves. "Art demands our attention" Sister Wendy shares that art can free us.
There are zombies in schools too-I know you've seen them.
Teaching will not have any effect if there are zombies in the room. A good teacher can be a zombie. They would teach content and go home without a thought to the effects on his or her classroom. Bad teachers who are zombies perpetuate all that is poor and hasn't a clue that they are poorly doing it.
Teachers who are not zombie fight the temptation to go to auto-pilot. They struggle to be painfully aware of themselves and their surroundings. They have aroused themselves so that they are able to see the whole picture. They also can identify the intermediate steps and communicate those steps clearly to others. Once they can do this, they can teach and train others well.
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