The Other Side of Silence: Toward a Theory of Listening

Jean McNiff, Independent Consultant

3 Wills Road, Branksome, Poole, Dorset, UK

Paper presented at the International Conference,

Self-Study in Teacher Education: Empowering our Future,

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, England August 5-8, 1996

 

The Other Side of Silence: Toward a Theory of Listening

Dear Colleagues,

This is not a well-formed paper. It is a way into an area that I would like to develop. I have offered opinions about why I think the area is important, and how its importance might be justified, but I am only now beginning to research it seriously. I would therefore like to take the opportunity of our conversations at the Castle Conference to share ideas with you and invite you to give me feedback on the work so far, as well as suggestions as to how it might be taken forward. Thank you.

 

Introduction

This paper arises out of my present circumstances. I am working mainly in professional education contexts, and my research has much to do with issues of justice and power. My work as a teacher educator is currently taken up with trying to introduce practitioner-centred forms of educational research into a community that seems to be resistant to the idea and what it stands for.

 

I am clinically deaf. I have minimal hearing in one ear, and I experience intermittent hearing loss in the other. The experience of deafness has made me aware of what it means to be ‘different’ and therefore marginalised, usually because of lack of awareness and care on the part of other people. These are experiences also in the lives of teachers, children and many other groups who are casualties of unaware and uncaring systems. In all my contexts, I know that care lies at the heart of the quality of our lives. My commitment these days is increasingly on how I can promote an epistemology of care in learning and teaching situations, such that people will be seen for who they are rather than what they are - valuable persons, each with strengths and limitations, rather than objects who do or do not measure up to hypothetical systemic norms. If this view were to be seen as the basis of human interactions, such that we strengthen ourselves as a caring society, we would need to learn to experience each other’s life world in such a way that we could clearly see another person’s feelings from within. In my view, one of the most powerful resources for promoting care as the basis of human interaction is teachers; but if that were the case, I believe that the responsibility for reclaiming teaching as a caring profession would lie with administrators, managers and teacher educators, who arrange the conditions of learning such that the values of care and compassion may be realised in all educational contexts.

 

Issues of power in discourse

The work of Foucault and others (e.g., Foucault, 1974) tells us that discourses are largely to do with power. This involves issues such as what is said, who is listened to, who is allowed to speak, and who decides all these issues. Revisionists such as Chomsky (e.g., Chomsky, 1989) uncover the hidden infrastructures of relationships within communities that distort meanings through the manipulation and control of information systems. Critics such as Edward Said (1984) demonstrate the need for criticism to be in the world, so that people do not engage in critique as an academic pastime but use it constructively to investigate the social practices of which they are a part.

 

As we all do, I observe the power relationships in the everyday discourses in which I take part. Two areas in particular touch my life today, and the contexts converge and impact on me in identical ways. One is where people do not listen to me as a practitioner in education, because they do not want to hear what I have to say. They do not want to hear this because the message is unwelcome and threatening. They therefore strive to silence me by not hearing me. Theirs is a deafness of convenience. They do not engage their ears or their commitment, and they do not attempt to sign to me, either at a personal or institutional level, to indicate that they are interested in what I wish to share. They turn away. The other area is that people do not listen to me because they are unaware of the effort that is necessary to enter my world and help me to enter theirs. This is my daily experience of interaction with others who do not understand what it is to be deaf. Because I am a problem, they would rather pass me by, would rather give up on trying to communicate because it means finding new ways of sharing, new ways of reaching out, and that means personal effort and commitment, and taking on a new way of life to accommodate the other. Both contexts are underpinned by uncaring practices that leave me bewildered, angry, and frustrated enough to want to reverse the situation.

 

At the same time, I understand how they feel. I understand because I have been in the worlds that they inhabit, and I bring with me to my new world of silenced voice my own legacy of how I used to think and act. I know what they are feeling because I have walked around in their slippers ( Lee, 1984). I also used to ignore people who wanted to be acknowledged for their practical wisdom. These people were largely the children for whom I was responsible, but it also included parents and many other teacher colleagues; they had their knowledge, profound and drawn from their own experience; yet I did not recognise this, and rested complacently in my own world of academic knowledge, smiling the ‘sweet, indulgent smile’ (Holt, 1969) that said they must try harder to come up to the established norms of the system which judges them by the conventional standards of numerical and verbal ability. I made them feel failures, and consequently I failed them. I failed to recognise the power of their own contribution, what Gardner (1983) and others have called the ‘other intelligences.’ There is a substantial literature now on how children’s multiple talents and strengths might be encouraged through new ways of teaching and learning interactions.

 

I also understand the difficulties of the Hearing when confronted by the Deaf; there is not a mutual language, an immediately graspable way to communicate. It is worse than trying to communicate with a person who has not the same language; at least there you are operating in the same perceptual mode, and can use sound systems to try to construct mutual meanings. Communication between Hearing and Deaf involves other modes, since sound is not available. It involves sight, emotional engagement, inspired guesswork, a convergence of understanding to try to construct mutual meaning. Genuine goodwill is called for. A forgiving attitude is essential, not only when meanings are difficult to construct, so that mutuality in creation is essential; but also when a meaning is distorted and the wrong message is communicated and received, so that the partners in discourse have to go back a number of steps, retrieve the conversation from the point where agreement had been reached, and start all over again, reconstructing and recreating the process of making meaning from scratch. This takes enormous effort; and for those to whom this situation is unfamiliar and unnecessary, it is too challenging and easily abandoned. In fact, it is much easier for the Hearing to ignore the problem altogether, and expect the Deaf to get a more powerful hearing aid; or preferably disappear altogether.

 

Oliver Sacks (1991) tells the fearful tale of the prelingual Deaf who, in previous times, were placed in mental institutions and workhouses because they had no language, and no hope of acquiring it. Can you imagine the ultimate horror of being gifted in every respect other than in language? Yet that is what we do to people who we choose not to listen to. Perhaps in a less devastating way, but still in a highly disempowering way, society places children, teachers, women, the ‘disabled’, and other marginalised groups, in situations where they are supervised and stripped of autonomy in judgement, deliberately muted, with full personal knowledge of the power of their own contribution, yet denied every sign that they are valued or of worth.

 

I also understand the plight of the ‘normal’ - i.e. those who come up to the standard of established norms - because I was also in their world, and tried to ignore the children, teachers, disabled, those who were different from me. Equally I understand the plight of the normal when confronted with the tyranny of the weak: the blackmail that marginalised people can bring to bear on those people of goodwill who have a social conscience and genuinely try to do something about righting the wrongs. I remember, just after the accident in which I lost my hearing, being harangued vigorously by a young homeless woman, about the injustice of her situation and would I give her money. Obviously she did not know of my predicament, because my disability is not immediately discernible. She had no money for a roof over her head, while my future as a wage-earner had disappeared overnight. I understood where she was coming from. I understand what it is like to be faced with the responsibility of accepting difference; but the same is true in reverse. It is an equal responsibility of the hapless, the rejected, to understand the powerful; as Freire (1970) tells us, in the process of conscientization, in which we become aware of our own situation such that we can critique it and strive to liberate ourselves from it, we should not aim to oppress the oppressors, but liberate them from their prejudices against us so that we may all work together; but it is much more difficult to communicate that message to the wretched of the earth (Fanon, 1967). They are disempowered by their situation, and their ears are closed because of their wretchedness. On the other hand, the mighty are disempowered by their power, and their ears are closed because they are unable to place themselves at a distance from the voices they do not want to hear. While people might be inspired by the vision of the sky above, it is very difficult to see the sky with a boot on your neck.

 

‘The other side of language’

In her lovely book The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening, Gemma Corradi Fiumara (1990) tells of how discourses are structured. She speaks of the normative view of conversation as resting in each person’s right to speak. Listening is itself a marginalised practice. In our anxiety to stake our claims, we engage frequently in tennis games, lobbing and volleying opinion and counter-opinion back and forth, intent on winning, and often forgetting that we are in a game that is part of a wider life, in which it really doesn’t matter who wins or who loses; what is important is that we agree to play in the first instance. We are all stakeholders in this game, and the aim is not to score points but to enjoy the exercise together - but then, that depends on whether you make your living out of tennis, or play a Wednesday afternoon knockabout. The values you bring to the game decide your intentions about how and why you are going to play the game. So it is with discourse. If I want to impose my opinion on you, I will not listen to you. In fact, I will aim not to let you get a word in edgeways. If my value around you, however, is to learn from you, I will engage with you, and try to understand your side of the conversation rather than dominate from mine.

 

Peter Senge (1990) recounts his learnings from his work with David Bohm. Bohm drew the difference between discussion and dialogue. Discussion is an activity, he says, where we aim to communicate opinion; dialogue is where we engage empathically with the other. Dialogue is normally thought of as happening through speech. My learning from my experience of hearing impairment is that dialogue is a holistic way of life; it operates through kinaesthetic modes, affective modes, intuitive modes, and involves the whole person trying to be at one with another. Even though the ‘I-Thou’ moments (Buber, 1937) are quintessential to human understanding, and rare, the ‘I-You’ moments are frequently engaged in by people who are genuinely striving to understand, to listen, and to allow space for others who find conversation difficult. Sadly the ‘I-It’ discourses frequently prevail, when people in difficulty are rejected, exiled to the margins, and left in the mental hospitals of non-communication.

 

Towards a methodology of listening

I am a better teacher now than I used to be, because I listen. I have discovered that listening is not just a physiological activity but something that is undertaken holistically. It is a mixture of gesture, inspired guesswork, experience, and striving to be at one with the other. It is a business of reaching out. My friend Collins, herself seriously hearing impaired, told me that the specialist said to her as a young woman, ‘Sound travels towards you. All your life you will be reaching out to hear what other people have to say to you’ (McNiff and Collins, 1994). Listening is trying to catch the unspoken words. I value the learning of the other, and I value my own learning from the other. I encourage them to value my learning from them, and theirs from me. I try to encourage mutuality of learning and mutuality of recognition of the other’s worth, not only in listening to the message in the spoken words but also the message in the unspoken values. And the actions in which the words are offered speak louder than the words themselves.

 

I am a better teacher now than I used to be because I recognise and respect difference. I have discovered that I have strengths that I was not aware of previously, and I also have limitations, often severe and potentially distorting. Therefore I have to accommodate to my own limitations, and hope that other people will do so as well; and I have to accommodate to their limitations. This means suspending my own prejudices, and inviting them to do the same. This is very difficult. My awareness of these issues is heightened these days in my context of working in Ireland. I am privileged to be working with people in cross-border initiatives, in Education for Mutual Understanding. Working in the South, I know that many people are very aware of their heritage of centuries of colonisation and domination by Britain. Until I started working in Ireland I was blissfully ignorant of such issues. My history lessons had taught me the official version that naturally I would get living in Britain. I shared this awareness with a lady from the North, who retorted in dismay that she was the victim of colonisation and domination from the South. Who wins? Whose view is right? There is no one answer, no one truth, since the situation is so complex and variable. But what is sure is that there will be no peace unless people are prepared to listen to each other and see the other’s point of view, even if ever so dimly. This is true of all complex situations the world over, from national and international struggles to the interactions between two people. Listening is at the heart of understanding. In the profession of teaching there are many methodologies, yet I do not think there is yet a systematic methodology of listening. There is increasing emphasis on the need for care in teaching, and people like Nel Noddings (1992) and Lynn Beck (1994) are doing much to bring that to the heart of educational practices. The literature of self-reflective practice is rooted in the idea of care, that practitioners make a moral commitment to improving their work, which itself arises from a commitment to act in the other’s best interest, to care.

 

Development of this paper

In the next months I will have space to reflect on what I have written here, and will attempt to bring to the meeting ideas around a methodology of listening. I intend to intensify my research and to try to show how caring practices might be characterised and explained. This is in any case a piece of the writing project I am about to undertake, in writing up an evaluation of the Schools Based Action Research Project in Ireland in which I have been involved for four years. I hope that my thinking around these issues will be a little more advanced by August. I would be grateful to you if you could give some thought to what you do when you are listening, so that we may share our ideas at the Conference. I would be grateful for your insights to help me move forward.

 

References

Beck, L. (1994) Reclaiming Educational Administration as a Caring Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Buber, M. (1937) I and Thou (trans. R.G. Smith) Edinburgh: T.and T. Clark.

Chomsky, N. (1989) Necessary Illusions, London: Pluto.

Corradi Fiumara, G. (1990) The Other Side of Language, London and New York: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1974) The Archeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Penguin.

Harper L.( 1984). To Kill a Mockingbird, London: Penguin.

Holt, J. (1969) How Children Fail, London: Penguin.

McNiff, J. and Collins, U. (1994) A New Approach to In-Career Development for Teachers in Ireland, Bournemouth: Hyde Publications.

Noddings, N. (1992) The Challenge to Care in Schools, New York: Teachers College Press.

Said, E. (1984). The World, the Text and the Critic, London: Faber and Faber.

Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, New York: Doubleday.