How should we understand “Student Silence”?

All this thinking about “Student Voice” as a “good thing” makes me wonder about what our response to a call to value “Student Silence” would be.

To ask ....

How should educators learn to understand “Student Voice”?
How should educators learn to understand “Student Silence”?

I guess the answers will depend in part on what we assume from the silence of others and on how we understand or see “Student Silence” in the context of school.

I think I have seen silence ..... in some profoundly moving and breathtakingly beautiful images in a book about to be published by photographer David Maisel, Library of Dust.  Link and exerpt from Geoff Manaugh's  BLDGBLOG

Each canister holds the remains of a human being, of course; each canister holds a corpse – reduced to dust, certainly, burnt to handfuls of ash, sharing that cindered condition with much of the star-bleached universe, but still cadaverous, still human. What strange chemistries we see emerging here between man and metal. Because these were people; they had identities and family histories, long before they became nameless patients, encased in metal, catalytic.

In some ways, these canisters serve a double betrayal: a man or woman left alone, in a labyrinth of medication, prey to surveillance and other inhospitable indignities, only then to be wed with metal, robbed of form, fused to a lattice of unliving minerals – anonymous. Do we see in Maisel’s images then – as if staring into unlabeled graves, monolithic and metallized, stacked on shelves in a closet – the tragic howl of reduction to nothingness, people who once loved, and were loved, annihilated?

After all, these ash-filled urns were photographed only because they remain unclaimed; they’ve been excluded from family plots and narratives. A viewer of these images might even be seeing the fate of an unknown relative, eclipsed, denied – treated like so much dust, eventually vanishing into the shells that held them.

It is not a library at all – but a room full of souls no one wanted.

It disturbs to imagine/know that no one “listened to their silence" until Maisel,
... and if he had arrived earlier or later we would never have been able to listen to/ value their silence either.  

Ivan Illich allows us to appreciate silence in a different way from Maisel’s photographs and Manaugh's text ... his  meditation on silence provides some significant new thinking for educators wanting to understand the language of “Student Voice” - (This meditation is designed for  a group of missionaries learning Spanish in a way that allowed them to “attune their ears and open their hearts to the anguish of a people who were lonely, frightened and powerless”)

 “The science of linguistics has brought into view new horizons in the understanding of human communications. An objective study of the ways in which meanings are transmitted has shown that much more is relayed from one man to another through and in silence than in words. Words and sentences are composed of silences more meaningful than the sounds. The pregnant pauses between sounds and utterances become luminous points in an incredible void: as electrons in the atom, as planets in the solar system. Language is as a cord of silence with sounds the knots - as nodes in a Peruvian quipu, in which the empty spaces speak….”

“It is thus not so much the other man’s words as his silences which we have to learn in order to understand him.  It is not so much our sounds which give meaning, but it is through the pauses that we will make ourselves understood.  The learning of a language is more the learning of its silences than of its sounds.” 
"The Eloquence of Silence" in Celebration of Awareness – A call for institutional revolution 1969.

I didn’t understand the significance of silence in understanding another until I read Illich ...
Before Illich I saw student silence as a challenge, silence as a pejorative notion, silence as a communicative pathology, I wanted my students to talk, to discuss, to argue, to debate with each other ... I didn’t want them mute ...

I guess I had imagined “Student Silence” as failure akin to the interpretation in Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound Of Silence ...

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Understanding silence as a communicative pathology is probably not far off the mark for many of us the context of school.  For example, I saw “Student Silence” in school in simple terms ... as in there are times to be silent and times to talk ...

I think we are encouraged to see “silence” in simplistic terms because our institutional power over students means we indicate these times of student silence and student voice in much the same way we might switch a room light on or off.

For example, there are times in school when teachers expect “Student Silence” and there are other times when teachers expect “Student Voice”.  In both cases a refusal to oblige on the part of the student is frustrating to the teacher who is orchestrating the soundscape. To be met with “Student Voice” when you have asked for “Student Silence” or to be met with “Student Silence” when you have asked for “Student Voice” can precipitate a teacher rage out  entertaining enough to be worthy of posting on YouTube    

Which makes me suspect that when we ask for “Student Voice” and are met with “Student Silence” many of us assume that this “Student Silence” is a failure to communicate that means that students are not thinking (not learning).

For if we saw “Student Silence” as communicating that students are thinking deeply about something (aka learning) then instead of insisting through elaborate questioning strategies on Student Voice we would pause and embrace the silence.

I guess to be fair our response also depends on whether we assume that “Student Silence” indicates that students are thinking/learning about something related to what they have just been reading, watching, doing or listening to (intentional learning outcomes)?

Or whether the thinking/learning is about something tangential to what they have been reading, watching, doing or listening to (unintentional learning)?

Or whether we assume that when students are silent they have disconnected from what they have been reading, watching, doing or listening to and have retreated to a happy/ safer place, daydreaming, woolgathering?

And there are many reasons for students to disconnect when they feel marginalised, or coerced into providing a “Student Voice” that makes them vulnerable if they respond in a way that is different from the norm. 

But as Illich’s meditation on silence when learning a foreign language suggests that silence is much more than the Sounds of Silence lyrics indicate.  He classifies four forms of silence that missionaries need when learning Spanish ... in school we only recognise the first when trying to understand the language of “Student Voice”  ....  and we do that grudgingly. 

[Note to self: suspect there are some analogies to be drawn with Illich’s classification and the rhythm of blog commenting and responding on Artichoke .. all those times when a comment is left in silence while I wait for words that are worthy to sit alongside it. ]

1.  The silence of the pure listener.

“ ....the silence through which the message of the other becomes “he in us”, the silence of deep interest. “  Which he contrasts with  “... the silence of indifference, the silence of disinterest which assumes there is nothing I want or can receive through the communication of the other.”

2.  The silence of syntony,”

“It is the silence which closes man in on himself to allow him to prepare the Word for others.  .... the silence in which we await the right moment for the Word to be born into the world. This silence too is threatened, not only by hurry and by desecration of multiplicity of action, but by the habit of verbal confection and mass production that has no time for it.  It is threatened by the silence of cheapness which means that one word is as good as another and that words need no nursing. .... This is a silence before words, or between them; the silence within which words live and die.”

3.  “The silence beyond words,”

“The silence that does not prepare any further talk.  It is the silence which has said everything because there is nothing more to say.  This is the silence beyond a final yes or a final no.  This is the silence of love beyond words, as well as the silence of no forever; the silence of heaven or of hell.”

The last category is harder to imagine in a school classroom where timetables mean that the time shared in voice and silence may be only 55 minutes ... still I will leave it in because some educators work outside of the classroom world of the tame and form different conversations of voice and silence in the world of the wild ... where maybe this silence is possible.

4.  “The silence of the Pietà”

“There is still another silence beyond words, the silence of the Pietà . It is not a silence of death but a silence of the mystery of death. It is not the silence of active acceptance of the will of God out of which the Fiat is born nor the silence of manly acceptance of Gethsemane in which obedience has its roots. The silence you as missioners seek to acquire in this Spanish course is the silence beyond bewilderment and questions; it is a silence beyond the possibility of an answer, or even reference to a word which preceded. It is the mysterious silence through which the Lord could descend into the silence of hell, the acceptance without frustration of a life, useless and wasted on Judas, a silence of freely willed powerlessness through which the world was saved. Born to redeem the world, Mary’s Son had died at the hands of His people, abandoned by His friends and betrayed by Judas whom he loved but could not save - silent contemplation of the culminating paradox of the Incarnation which was useless for the redemption of at least one personal friend. The opening of the soul to this ultimate silence of the Pietà is the culmination of the slow maturing of the three previous forms of missionary silence.”

“The Eloquence of Silence” by Ivan Illich in Celebration of Awareness – A call for institutional revolution 1969. P46 to 51

Comments

[Janet Hawtin]

Silence is some kind of quantum state.
Like the moment before an athlete tests themselves.
Silence is some kind of stasis
at least in the dimension of voice.
Some people write a blog
you do craft a colloquium.
There are at least 5 bloggers who's silence is a part of this pattern for me.
Some it is a choice.
One is stepping between worlds.
Some are in places where it may be that they have become a silent key.

Michael Doyle's Bee lesson is a nice example of silence, awe, observation:
http://doyle-scienceteach.blogspot.com/2008/08/mack-cleared-his-throat.html

Art Garfunkel walking.
This is here because I feel like walking like this
and the synchronicity made me smile.
Garfunkel has undertaken several cross-continental walks in his lifetime, writing poetry along the way. In the early 1980s, he walked across Japan in a matter of weeks.[6] From 1983 to 1997, Garfunkel walked across America,[7] taking 40 excursions to complete the route from New York City to the Pacific coast of Washington. In May 1998, Garfunkel began an incremented walk across Europe.[8]

And a poem:
A single word can brighten the face
of one who knows the value of words.
Ripened in silence, a single word
acquires a great energy for work.

War is cut short by a word,
and a word heals the wounds,
and there's a word that changes
poison into butter and honey.

Let a word mature inside yourself.
Withhold the unripened thought.
Come and understand the kind of word
that reduces money and riches to dust.

Know when to speak a word
and when not to speak at all.
A single word turns the universe of hell
into eight paradises.

Follow the Way. Don't be fooled
by what you already know. Be watchful.
Reflect before you speak.
A foolish mouth can brand your soul.

Yunus, say one last thing
about the power of words –
Only the word "I"
divides me from God.

- Yunus Emre

[Artichoke]

And then there is Reginald Perrin's exploration/ exploitation of silence - 'Laryngitis In Thirty Lands'

• Reginald Perrin: This is going out tomorrow: "March was the most successful month yet for Grot. We launched our new silent LP 'Laryngitis In Thirty Lands', featuring the silence of Max Bygraves, Des O'Connor, the Bay City Rollers, the Sex Pistols and Rolf Harris - it has sold millions. Some pub landlords are even playing it as background silence. We have also introduced upright models of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leaning models of the Eiffel Tower, and rubber razor blades for nervous shavers."

[ailsa]

a beautiful post arti.
I have had my own probs on listening to silence. Not least of which involved leaving my ipod of interviews for my doctorate in Chch.
I've been reading a provocative book (John Law,After method;Mess in social science research) on research methods that reinforces for me that what is studied is often what is definite rather than what is often experienced as indefinite. Similarly we study what's coherent rather than incoherent, whats consistent rather than inconsistent. Attending to more ephemeral qualities requires a willingness to hear what could be different from whats expected.
I have been thinking about how to read silence and how to write of whats between the lines.
"The coherence of textuality makes powerful realities, but they also lose something: the non-coherent, the non-textual."
And the not spoken?
Susan Leigh Star helped me through parts of my own research in making the invisible visible, and if i take this a step further; the inaudible, audible.
Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999 ). Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8, 9-30.

[Tony Forster]

I am fortunate to be observing a number of classes as a student teacher. Often a teacher asks a question and nobody answers. Often I dont have an answer either. The teacher is often unclear in the question. Sometimes I can guess what the teacher is fishing for, sometimes I have no idea. Silence can equal bewilderment.

[Lee]

I really like your blog! Keep up the good work.

Check this out:

http://theinfluentialteacher.com

[Artichoke]

Re: Similarly we study what's coherent rather than incoherent, whats consistent rather than inconsistent. Attending to more ephemeral qualities requires a willingness to hear what could be different from whats expected.

I loved this comment Ailsa, I have always wanted to be a teacher, always, but I was seduced for a while by post grad study in science and spent two years indulging my mind in an esoteric study of the infection process and ultrastructure of the Nostoc phycobiont of Gunnera. For a short period of my lived experience I was infatuated by the struggle to understand how the reduction of nitrogen by these prokaryotic organisms in symbiosis might provide nitrogen compounds to the host organism, enabling growth in nitrogen deficient soils. In my defence I also spent ten years observing how preschoolers make meaning in the sandpit ...

What rescued me from the pursuit of a career as a scientific researcher was the observation that much of what was researched around me was not an exploration of uncertainty, but rather the “investigation” of what was already certain. When I saw academic research papers being composed ahead of the experimentation I understood that scientific research was mostly an exploration of the known ... I understood the game and wanted to play in less predetermined spaces.

I wanted to play where Luke Howard played when he attempted to label clouds ... I wanted to play in an environment that allowed the pursuit of shadows ... our public schools in New Zealand provided the most remarkable environment for this play and I have yet to be disappointed by the uncertainty they provide.

• If Clouds were the mere result of the condensation of vapour in the masses of atmosphere which they occupy, if their variations were produced by the movements of the atmosphere alone, then indeed might the study of them be deemed a useless pursuit of shadows, an attempt to describe forms which, being the sport of winds, must be ever varying, and therefore not to be defined. But this is not the case with clouds...” p3 The Invention of Clouds

And Tony you are correct in your analysis - the silence of bewilderment is part of this ... and a powerful attractant ...

[ailsa]

sadly true, seeing papers written and reinvented with minor variation to maximise publications of what seems very little import is deserving of derision.

[Bill Farren]

Always interesting thinking over here.
I too, notice how silence is disparaged. Often I think the most thoughtful are often the most silent. I observe this when working with other teachers, when most of the questions are literal recall. The ones craving stimulation simply cannot be bothered with such stuff. Those chasing grades will speak out, knowing they will earn points for doing so. When an interesting comment or question is thrown out, the quiet ones suddenly find a reason to talk.
Maybe you've seen this: http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/john_francis.html
Thanks for getting me to speak.

[Artichoke]

It is my pleasure Bill,I much value your ed4wb blog thinking

The TED Talk was interesting I enjoyed the imagining it brought about adopting a voluntary muteness ... and for such a long time.

It makes me wonder what would happen in our conversations if it was common practice to make one participant the equivalent of the "sober driver" or "the listener" throughout.

Kind of like listening for well being