Just sitting there...

"These kids think they can get an A in participation by just sitting there."

I overheard a colleague of mine say this on one occasion during finals week. Although I learned to participate in class because it was expected of me in high school and later because I enjoyed doing so in small, respectful classes full of people I knew in college, I felt a sting when I heard this remark. Not everyone "just sitting there" is "just sitting there." As if you couldn't be learning or thinking without talking. The saying used to be, "Think before you speak." Now the adage of the day seems to be "Talk in order to think." It seems that educators think that people think through "talking it out." OK. I see how this could be the case for some people. Even I myself often talk about a thing with a trusted friend before writing about it. But not all talking means that thinking or learning is going on. Diana Senechal discusses how the recent emphasis on measurable outcomes may be to blame for this. If students don't "produce" something (even noise), we have no proof to the business-people and politicians and others who need quick, easy "evidence," that schools are doing anything. A classroom a-buzz with activity looks like learning. (Senechal asks a key question. Is all this activity and noise "engagement" or merely "distraction"?)

Isn't it interesting that, decades ago, the stereotype was that a class full of quiet looked like learning? And then newer generations of educators came and said that they might just be bored or daydreaming or engaged in rote activities. I argue that if quiet didn't always mean learning back in the old days, then noise doesn't always mean learning in our own day. I think people who promulgate this idea are just as susceptible to stereotype as the predecessors that they laugh at, those fuddy-duddies who wanted a quiet, orderly classroom.

Sometimes thinking has no visible result to document. Sometimes thinking produces several false starts before you have anything you can use. Think of Snoopy and his typewriter and all the crumpled wads of paper on the floor.

And thinking takes time. I remember leading a meeting of the Mother-Daughter Book Club when I was a high school librarian. We were a small group, and almost everyone had spoken on an issue. I noticed one of our members had been quiet, so I did the Good and Teacherly Thing: I "checked for understanding," asking, "So, Xxxxx, what do you think?" And she replied, confidently, simply, tellingly for all introverts, "I'm still working that one out." She seemed just slightly miffed that I had interrupted her reverie. And rightly so.

I don't kid myself that the people who don't speak in class are all misunderstood introverts. Sure, some are zoning out. But others are zoning in. We are paying attention, processing, reflecting. At least there's a name for our type: the reflective thinker. While some are happy to immediately, even impulsively, reply, spar, and debate in a classroom, sometimes my best thinking gets done in the car ride home from class or in the shower that evening. I may not be ready to speak until the next day. And when you're an introvert teacher, it's hard to realize that not everyone is that way. That if you don't make them discuss it now, they will certainly not be thinking about it on the car ride home. But I wonder if this malady is as widespread as it is made out to be.

I remember a ride home from a conference with some colleagues. We had driven over and hour there and back for a day-long workshop, and one colleague still had to attend a class in her doctoral program that evening. "Boy, I hope tonight is a lecture night." The other replied, "Just want it to be easy, huh?" I objected immediately, and I still object. While I don't do all lecture myself (I try to do a lot of whole-class discussion), I don't think that it is "easy" to actively listen and process a good lecture. I think it would be just as foolish to say that reading is "easy"; sure, it's easy if you don't really pay attention and you "just sit there." But just as there is active, engaged reading, there can be active, engaged lecture-listening, and I think it's unfair that lecture has been almost universally maligned in educational discourse. Just as there are good books and bad books, there are good lectures and bad. Just as there are attentive readers, there are attentive listeners, and introverts love a good lecture. I wonder if my colleague, by wishing for a lecture after a long day, simply wanted to learn in a style that she was comfortable with, wanted to cozy up to the content as one might cozy up with a book, without all the small-talk and social posturing of the ubiquitous graduate-program group work. I resented the suggestion that people who liked a certain teaching style were assumed to like it because it allowed them to be lazy.

Why do people still like the movies? TV? Sure, while there are some shows that are somewhat "interactive" by allowing you to vote for the winner or Tweet your thoughts in the hopes that they'll be broadcast, most of the time, you "just sit there." Why? While the cynics will say it's because people are stupid and like loud noises and bright colors, I posit that some activities require quiet, focused, even rapt, attention, and that there are conditions under which people like to give this attention. TV and movies appear to be "passive," like a lecture might, but I argue that they are not. For an interesting discussion of this idea, see Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You. I might be able to Facebook and polish my nails during American Idol, but it's much harder to do so during Grey's Anatomy. Hell, who am I kidding? If I'm really attached to the contestants in a given year, I will even focus on American Idol.

Educators have often contended that it's impossible for students to like books or lecture because they feature topics that aren't like our "real lives" and we don't get to "interact" with the material. Well, let's talk about Skyfall. What does James Bond's train-jumping, secret-agent life have to do with any of us? We don't get to jump trains with him, and yet we watch. Bright colors and loud noises, the cynics will say. But I think it's something more than that, don't you?