Schooled in Silence

This is a rough copy and paste PDF involving the format issues that this process includes (esp perhaps paragraph breaks not following the published version)-but sufficient for reading. For the good looking version please go direct to the journal: FORUM ABSTRACT This article considers silences and equality as combined from a theoretical perspective. Equality in and through chosen, deliberate and regular silence experience is seen as an equaliser: if no one is speaking no one can dominate. The article uses a bifurcated concept of silence: weak, negative forms and strong, positive forms. Only the strong forms are seen here as conducive to equality. Their opposite – a silencing – is seen as the creator of inequality. The argument suggests in order to tackle inequality in neo-liberal education a radical, cost-free, non-partisan solution of silence experience is available. The only way to fight a hegemonic discourse is to teach ourselves and others alternative ways of seeing the world. (Brodkey, 1996, p. 113)

Radical History Review, 2008

While teaching about race, ethnicity, and class from a critical pedagogical standpoint, we might not only encounter student resistance to learning about systems of domination but we should also be aware of the ways in which power, privilege, and exclusion in the larger society may be reproduced in our own classrooms. In this article, we recount how we used freewriting and discussions in an attempt to deconstruct the power dynamics in an upper-division seminar on Latinas/os and education. Though a majority of the students in the course were first-generation Latinas, several middle-and upper-middle-class White students tended to participate the most. This dynamic resulted in a situation in which class discussions were steered away from the focus on Latinas/os and unequal educational practices to a perspective that reinforced an ideology of equality and a climate that privileged dominant modes of classroom communication. Since these patterns were precisely the ones the course topics and readings were meant to deconstruct, we turned the gaze onto the classroom as we observed the reproduction of inequality there and used freewriting and discussions to uncover the unequal ways in which students were experiencing the space.

1992

In education, it is necessary to look at students who are marginalized, and excluded, who is centered or privileged, and how, through academic discourse, silences are created, sustained, and legitimized. The three papers in this collection explore the politics of silencing and voice in education. "It's More Covert Today': The Importance of Race in Shaping Parents' Views of the School" by Annette Lareau focuses on the ways in which certain types of parental culture and discourse are privileged in schools, leading to the construction of an "ideal type" of parental involvement. Parents who do not fit this construction are outside the bounds of what is acceptable for a parent, and their ideas, no matter how salient, are rebuffed. Lois Weis, in "White Male Working Class Youth: An Exploration of Relative Privilege and Loss," focuses on the ways in which white male working class identity is taking shape under the restructured economy of the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, ways in which young men are reaffirming the discourses of white male power and privilege in spite of an economy that increasingly denies them this privilege are examined. Michelle Fine, in "The 'Public' in Public Schools: The Social Construction/Constriction of Moral Communities," examines a third set of issues related to silencing, the ways in which public schools, supposed to be universally accessible moral communities, engage in patterns of systematic exclusion and yet justify these patterns as being for the common good. (SLD)

... Silence in the Classroom 281 Page 10. T a b le 1 P re d ictin g silen ce in th e cla ssro o m u sin g m u ltip le reg resssio n an a ly ses D ep en d en tv ariab les P red ictor R eg . S tats S tu d en t silen ce T each er S ilen ce V alu e of silen ce R u ral S ch o o l In n er-city sch oo l ...

Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and …, 2006

This paper arises from an online discussion project in the United Kingdom, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, in which higher education students and staff were invited to respond to a series of statements about sexual orientation in the context of schooling. This paper suggests that the silence of relative non‐participation may have been exacerbated by other levels of silence operating within the wider social, political and educational context of the project. Analysis of data from the web forums revealed the perception of children as asexual beings, the sexualisation of homosexuality, and a tendency to separate the public and private domains. We also found some political correctness reflecting the legitimised diversity discourses operating within the university context without necessarily addressing the more uncomfortable questions behind them. Participants also imagined anxieties on the part of parents, teachers or pupils and diverted the discussion to other topics of concern, which may have served to protect them from direct engagement with the issues under discussion. In combination, we suggest that these factors create multiple layers of silence that serve to support the construction and maintenance of heteronormativity as well as demonstrating the power of the heterosexual matrix in action.

2020

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

However, teachers tend to spend most of their time attending to student talk. Anthropological and linguistic research has contributed to an understanding of silence in particular communities, offering explanations for students' silence in school. This research raised questions about the silence of marginalized groups of students in classrooms, highlighting teachers' role in this silencing and drawing on limited meanings of silence. More recently, research on silence has conceptualized silence as a part of a continuum.

The Qualitative Report, 2018

Silencing appears in various avenues – classroom interactions amongst the teacher and student, hospital situations, gender/sexual identities, bullying, mental health struggles, and other forms, thus relegating individuals to the margins. This paper utilizes queer theory and critical race feminism to examine how dis(abilities) are positioned in relation to normative societal structures. Through the methodological approaches of autoethnography and narrative inquiry, we examine our stories of marginalization and silencing that have occurred in various facets of our lives. For the field of education, these stories can provide a means for other educators to invoke self-reflection on classroom practice as a way of disrupting dominant discourses that foster marginalization and silencing of students.

Silencing appears in various avenues -classroom interactions amongst the teacher and student, hospital situations, gender/sexual identities, bullying, mental health struggles, and other forms, thus relegating individuals to the margins. This paper utilizes queer theory and critical race feminism to examine how dis(abilities) are positioned in relation to normative societal structures. Through the methodological approaches of autoethnography and narrative inquiry, we examine our stories of marginalization and silencing that have occurred in various facets of our lives. For the field of education, these stories can provide a means for other educators to invoke self-reflection on classroom practice as a way of disrupting dominant discourses that foster marginalization and silencing of students.