Silence: Golden or Grotesque?

"Children should be seen and not heard." If you grew up in the United States and haven't heard this old cliche at least once in your life, NEWSFLASH: You have been living under a rock! This idea has naturally made its way into classroom, a condensed environment reflective of society (like Campbells is a condensed can reflective of soup...j/k...I love me some Chicken Noodle). We expect students to sit quietly for hours, and speak only after they have raised their hands and been called upon. I can even recall the cafeteria ladies controlling our conversation with a traffic light during lunch (who would have thought...smh). And even after being called, we only are concerned with them adressing the topic at hand or answering the question that was asked. Adults frequently overlook the value of a child's voice. Their ideas and opinions are often looked down upon as frivolous and insignificant. How do we expect to get to know and understand them if we keep them silent, constricting their input by curriculum. I pray and hope that I am able to support freedom of speech in my future classroom. I would love my students to reach the point where they are fueling their own learning while answering each others questions. Now I know that talking is not the singular form of communication. But as demonstrated in our class chalk talk (an exercise in which a conversation is held solely through wiriting on the board), though eliminating talking can cause a student to be more reflective and concise, it can also mask things that could be beneficial to the experieince of having them in our class as well.