Speaking up for Silence

Abstract

This essay explores the complex ways that silence can function in both early childhood and teacher education classrooms. Over the past 25 years feminists have used the metaphor of voice to describe the struggles of women to speak the truth of their lives. My own history as a gay teacher attests to the way I have benefited from the contemporary focus on voice and the identity politics in which it is embedded. But educators also need to examine the negative connotation we so often assign to silence, and our uncritical celebration of voice. I argue that teachers at all age levels need to become as adept at reading silences as they are at interpreting words, as comfortable with the pause as with the articulated statement.