Friday, November 5, 2010

It's Not Just the Full Moon Any More

L.S. came up with this title as we were yukking it up about our "adventures" teaching in the public schools, so I thought I'd steal it since she, like everyone else on the planet, does not read my blog.

What the title refers to is this:

Just as ZOMBIES are the psychic manifestation or personalization of our fear that starving hordes in hand-me-down clothes are coming to devour us,

so the various contemporary story lines about werewolves, feral children and people being "bitten" by something and infected by some rabies-like RAGE virus and going mad ("28 Days Later," "28 Weeks Later," "I Am Legend," "30 Days of Night," etc.) intensely resemble - at least to L.S. and me and probably a lot of other "educators" - the kids we confront on a daily basis at all levels of the U.S. educational penitentiary.

Like those bitten and infected unfortunates, there are just so many kids out there who seem to be on some perpetual mindless treadmill of disruption, defiance, destruction and chaos. They are violently allergic to peace, quiet, order, learning, reason ... they break it up the second any of these blessed states takes hold in the classroom. One pities the poor tormented little creatures.