Lifting the Silences: Critical Conversations with Critical Children
Poet Bhanu Kapil Rider, in her work with young Indian women asks, “What are the consequences of silence?” I’d like to answer that question by starting off with why silence exists in the first place. As someone that loathed attention, who struggled to think in the moment, who felt anxiety when speaking in public, who thought about the aftermath of my words more than what they accomplished at the moment, I have felt the personal weight of silence. And there are many reasons why I have been silent. At times, it has been a purposeful act, as many of us have probably experienced, silence is read, felt, critiqued, labeled, presumed, and personified—at times, it has a far greater weight with far greater consequences than saying something. Other times, silence signals discomfort and uncertainty. I am reminded of the times when words felt inadequate and insufficient.
As a teacher, I have learned that silence has consequences. On September 11, 2001, I was a new teacher barely keeping it together in the classroom. I was much more worried about copying my worksheets in preparation for the next day, keeping with up with the curriculum schedule, trying to please my principal, or figuring out what I should wear to keep up appearances. Two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center when I was at school—something that circulated amongst the teachers in my little Midwestern town. Upon hearing the news, I didn’t know what to do as I faced my group of 4th grade students. And because I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to say, I ended up saying nothing at all. After all, my job was to teach children basic skills and show academic growth, not engage in the kind of liberatory and emancipatory education that James Baldwin speaks of, “to ask questions of the universe, and then to learn to live with those questions” as a way to “examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk.” And needless to say, I was not prepared nor willing to be a revolutionary. My silence meant that I was okay with my superficial definition of “an education”—and perhaps, I even preferred it.
There were many moments during my tenure as an educator that I deeply regret. I cared more about the “job” I was doing as a teacher more than my responsibility to children as first, human beings trying to live in a very contentious and difficult world. They would ask me tough questions all the time about race relations, about gender non-conformity, about privilege, about poverty, and after 9/11, about terrorism and war. And I guess I just wasn’t prepared to handle their questions. Instead, I read books about peace, hope, and doing your part in the world as a way to divert conversations that I thought were too much for them to handle. And perhaps these conversations were too much for me. As someone who was mostly compliant and eager to “keep the peace”, I wasn’t ready to be a public intellectual.
I distinctly remember when I was working with first graders on writing narratives—what we called true stories from their own lives. Bryan*, a Black boy, wrote a very sophisticated and perfectly executed 3-page story about his weekend. He was an excellent writer with a mastery over the language basics. I sat next to him, ready to give him feedback on his writing using a formula that I knew very well: first, compliment him on what he was doing well and then, leave with him with something to work on. His story was about how his father got arrested over the weekend accompanied by a drawing of his dad handcuffed against the wall by police officers. To add dramatic effect, he even had speech bubbles coming out of the mouths of the figures strewn across his pages. I didn’t know what to do, except for what I now see as the easy way out: I followed the curricular guidelines. I told him he did an excellent job with his speech bubbles and perhaps he can work on…and to be honest, I can’t remember what I said here. And many years later, I wish I just listened. I wish I made space for him to just talk about what happened…to process what he saw. Maybe all I needed to do at that moment was to hear him out and be present, whether it took 5 minutes or 50 minutes. But through a series of “scripted” questions, I silenced him and marginalized his story.
There is an enormous pressure put on teachers to accomplish so much in a small amount of time. We are often tasked with impossible standards and judged by student achievement and arbitrary test scores. By the time I worked with Bryan, I had become an expert on delivering standard responses and moving on to other children, fulfilling my obligations as an instructor. I was more concerned about proving my worth as a “good” teacher at the expense of children’s well-being and health. But these pressures or the demands I felt at my job are not excuses for my response or lack of it. Curriculum and assessment were obstacles, but the insistence to maintain the status quo was a choice I made. I came to be known as a really good teacher, and that was enough…until it wasn’t.
And when I completed my first research project in a kindergarten classroom, I got to see what children were capable of in between the pockets of curriculum, in the spaces they created for themselves, in their social interactions with each other, and with a teacher who was far better and open than I ever was. I witnessed first-hand a teacher who actually listened to young children, who brought attention to social issues, who made space for children to tell their stories with a freedom and flexibility that I never thought was possible. I witnessed children who were not willing to follow the script and did not suffer for it. I met children who creatively circumvented the “rules” placed on them, and still managed to produce “good” work. As a researcher, I got to step out of my teacher role and really see and hear the classroom from a panoramic view. She saw teaching as an act of love—messy, complicated, liberatory, and guided by the agenda of young children.
And in the continued murder of Black bodies at the hands of police who are professing to be “doing their jobs”, how can I not consider my own complicity in silencing Bryan’s story? Through many, many missteps of my own, I learned that teaching was an obligation to love the students that I teach, what Lamar Johnson, Nathaniel Bryan, and Gloria Boutte (2019) call a revolutionary love that is “cloaked in pain and that is bounded in action which disrupts the social constructions of anti-blackness and white supremacist patriarchy”. In other words, silence has consequences, especially for children of Color who are living in very dangerous and precarious conditions.
I learned that children’s inquiries are worth my attention, my respect, and my (even half-formed) answers. I learned that my most important role as a teacher was to engage with them in the social, political, and cultural landscape. It wasn’t to know all the answers, but to step out of my comfort zone and break silences. Whether or not I talked about it, the children still learned of 9/11 as soon as they got home. Bryan dealt with his father’s imprisonment the second he left the classroom. And he would be forced to “leave it at home” the second he came to school. If he didn’t talk about it with me, he would talk about it with someone. His life mattered, but at that moment, I would say that it (literally) didn’t. What mattered and was valued is what I chose to point out: periods, speech bubbles, alphabetic letters, narrative genres. Classrooms should not be a place where these social realities are silenced in favor of academic tasks. Unfortunately, I learned this at the cost of many students that I “shushed” along the way.
Why do I tell this story? Because silence is also something I hide behind. It is, at times, an intentional act of resistance while other times it is a cover. It is a convenient way to shield myself from confrontations, from hurt, from doing the work. As Audre Lorde says, “Your silence will not protect you”, especially from the ways we claim innocence through inaction or ignorance. Our silence may harm those who need us to be a voice. So, I return to Bhanu Kapil Rider’s original question, “What are the consequences of silence?” In all honesty, I have spent so much time defending and justifying my silence and less time thinking about what it does. As someone that has never liked calling attention to myself, silence has been one way to deflect the spotlight and to make myself less visible. However, not calling attention to myself meant that I also did not call attention to something important.
*child’s name is a pseudonym to protect anonymity
References:
Baldwin, James. “A talk to teachers”. Saturday Review. 1963.
Johnson, Lamar L., Nathaniel Bryan, and Gloria Boutte. "Show us the love: Revolutionary teaching in (un) critical times." The Urban Review 51.1 (2019): 46-64.
Lorde, Audre. Your silence will not protect you essays. Silver Press, 2017.
Rider, Bhanu Kapil. The vertical interrogation of strangers. Kelsey Street Press, 2001.
Haeny Yoon is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. She works in an early childhood teacher education program focused on equity, social justice, and “hearing children out.” Her scholarship is centered on convincing people that play is more than an early childhood thing, but an aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional experience necessary for innovation and social change. She is still learning how to listen carefully, speak up, and become an expert “player.”
