Hi all
I promise this is the last I will post on this topic. Since Bee-L is a place where people come to learn, I think the subject of learning is at least worth thinking about. 

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Learning itself takes place quietly, as the words spoken by the teacher take root and grow inside the student, transforming not just his vision but his being, and providing him with everything he will need in the future.

Silence is a foundation for learning. The failures of education are direct results of our failure to listen. There is instead the supremacy of discourse, but without space for the unknown: whereas silence could be a source for authentic critical thinking. 

We must find ways of using silence so that our discourse does not degenerate into mere empty words but becomes a means to self-knowledge. No discourse can awaken self-knowledge; at best, it can help create an inner state of silence necessary for the expansion of our sensory, mental, moral, and spiritual frontiers. 

What dictates our discourse with each other is the ego-centered belief in the truth of our own discourse or discipline, not the silence and the unknown that remain within it. Like the interlocutors in the Socratic dialogues, we seem to speak as pretenders who think that our discourse or discipline is infallible. Therefore we have nothing to learn from encounters with others. 

It is this ego-centered discourse that tends to fragment, rather than unify, learning within one’s own discipline and across the various disciplines. And it is this ego-centered discourse that tends to blind us to the real aims of education, and also deafens us to each other and to our students. 

Only when we speak and listen from our own ignorance, can a true relationship be established or nourished between us so as to carry meaning. 

Source: Caranfa, Angelo. "Silence as the foundation of learning." Educational Theory 54.2 (2004): 211-230.

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