A walk in silence

Shortly before eight on Friday mornings at the San Vicente athletic field, 27 6th graders walk 10 paces apart single file three times around the field in a 15-minute walk of silence from the classroom to the field and back. One of last year’s assessment tests showed that the students’ worst performance was in the area of listening.

The developments of language as a communication tool involves the ability to listen, read, write, and speak. In teaching, these are often thought to be iterative, with listening as the primary entry door. The fetus’ first sense interaction is that with sound, we are told. With an obvious deficiency in the listening department, it is no wonder that our children are way behind in their reading, writing and speaking skills. To listen well, one must make friends with silence.

When we first began our weekly walk of silence, it deteriorated quickly to a riotous frolic in the park. The students would not observe the 10 paces distancing. A few started to jog. Others started to chat. Of course, this did not come as a surprise. Being an occasional walker along Beach Road pathway, I have come to identify couples who do their chatting while walking. My wife observed in amazement a couple of ladies during the last 10-kilometer run to have talked themselves through the whole length of the run. It just appeared incongruous to her that a solitary exercise like walking, jogging, and running, which requires regulated and cadenced breathing, be encumbered by talking. We seem to have become of culture that cannot handle sustained silences.

While training Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines in the early 80s, a cultural anthropologist proposed that the evolved Filipino “Jeepney” mindset abhor open spaces and prolonged silences. Thus, the intricate designs in every square inch of the vehicle, and the omnipresent blaring music player. There is much truth to this, but not only to the Filipinos. It has become worldwide in scope in the urban lifestyle that has permeated every corner of the globe.

Radio and television have defined children’s attention span, now measured at 3.5 minutes, the interval between commercials. Reading has become a boring task. Hardly does one meet people these days that relish a new acquaintance with a well-crafted word. Newspapers and magazines now make a virtue of brevity at the expense of depth. They have difficulty sustaining their reader’s interest. Newscasts thrive on sound bites. There was hope that cyber bytes may save reading through eBooks but our young would rather frequent the chat rooms.

That and text messaging have become the nemesis of accurate spelling since the evolution of abbreviated words and the use of common keyboard symbols to convey meaning.

Speaking of text messaging, I was struck one day when normally loquacious Gester (not his real name) was unusually quiet. Meekly looking down the direction of his belly like he was reading something on his lap, it turned out that he was text messaging someone in another class. Already academically smart, he even managed to help his buddy in the class by text messaging the correct answers during a quiz. Commendable in his ingenuity, and it is rumored that Gester commanded a fee for his services, he however, had difficulties with the stillness of his mind. He might have been overtly silent, but there is disquiet in his soul.

Verbal diarrhea is a rampant disease that seems to have struck many in urban society. Victims are folks who do not leave any unarticulated thought behind the recesses of their vocal chords. They annoy people in public with their loud voices and their unabashed display of their private conversations. Some public places in the continental U.S. and Europe have now banned the use of cell phones not only for their uninvited interruptions but also because it has spawned a tribe of uninhibited exhibitionists who think everyone should be privy to their loud though often poorly articulated personal thoughts.

Public gatherings where a “moment of silence” is invoked hardly get it. A minute of silence might get you a few seconds, if you are lucky, and sometimes, only after someone finally does a “ssh-h-h” to silence a non-complying discourse. Solemn occasions like funerals and memorial services are not spared the verbose assault. The ambience of meditation is foreign to our disquieted activist souls. Side conversations abound during public meetings when someone has the floor. A politician made a fool of himself (obliviously, we hope) once when, as a member of a panel, he displayed his inattention and kept jabbing away to his reluctant neighbor while someone was making his assigned presentation, to the great consternation and discomfort of the observing and listening audience. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident.

The children in the classroom are a microcosm of the society that nurtures them. We are hardly recommending here that children in social situations speak only when being spoken to, although such “proper manners” is not without merit, and understandably, some private school still adhere to the etiquette. What we are after is the development of the art of listening.

High-powered CEOs are known to begin their day with a 15-minute focused meditation. FOCUS is one of the megaskills that our public schools aim to encourage. A moment of silence to precede any activity has been known to fuel that activity a long way. The strength of the Quaker tradition is its ability to listen to the still voice of conscience. Sun Tzu’s Art of War notes that one is not to act until it is absolutely necessary, and do so just at the moment before it becomes absolutely necessary. That requires concentration and focus. The skill is birthed from the power of silence.

So, in our Friday morning 15-minute walk of silence, I tell my students to be particularly keen on what they hear. They may discover the stillness of their inner voices. They may surprise themselves when they meet their own “I am who I am” along the way. And meeting one’s inner identity, the stillness in one’s soul, has been known to fuel a life’s journey with power and might. But on Fridays, I am happy enough if after the walk, they are sufficiently focused for the learning tasks of the day.

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Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School and writes a regular column for the Saipan Tribune.