Hearing the silence : responding to the call of children

It may seem odd to talk about hearing silence, given the noise and clamour of our everyday world - even more paradoxical to think about hearing silence in the world of the classroom. It seems that silence is a state that we often wish for, a kind of still emptiness where we might find momentary peace and succour amidst the hubbub of our modern, stressful lives. How do we understand silence - what meanings does it hold for us? Do we understand it merely as an absence of noise - a state of non-hearing? What does silence mean to a person who is deaf? Sometimes we talk of silence as ominous or threatening and other times we speak of a pregnant silence - a waiting or an expectation of something imminent. Musically, we appreciate silence in relation to sound. We respond to the juxtaposition of sound and silence often vicariously, being carried along by insistent rhythms and beats, or being lulled into a soporific stupor by less urgent and more ill-defined configurations of sound and silence. The setting in which silence occurs then is vital - what comes before it, what surrounds it and what follows, is the context by which we might appreciate its meaning.