“

    Over the years when I worked as an artist in elementary schools I devised an exercise for the children regarding noise and silence. I'll make a deal with you, I said—first you get to make noise, and then you'll make silence.

    The rules for noise were simple: when I raise my hand, I told them, you make all the noise you can while sitting at your desk, using your mouth, hands, and feet. The kids' eyes would grow wide—and the teacher's as well—so I'd add, the important thing is that when I lower my hand, you have to stop.

    I found that we'd usually have to make two or three attempts to attain an acceptable din—shouting, pounding, stomping. The wonder is, we never got caught. Maybe because the roar lasted for just a few seconds and school principals assumed that they'd imagined the whole thing.

    The rules for silence were equally simple. Don't hold your breath and make funny faces, I learned to say, as this is how third graders typically imagine silence. Just breathe normally but quietly: the only hard thing is to sit so still that you make no noise at all. We always had to try this more than once. A pencil would roll down someone’s desk, or someone would shift in a seat. But in every case but one, over many years, I found that children were able to become so still that silence became a presence in the classroom.

    Some kids loved it. I believe it was a revelation to them, and certainly to their teachers, that they could be so quiet.  “Let's do it again, “ they'd say. Others weren't so sure.  “It's scary, “ a fifth grader complained.  “Why? “ I asked, and I believe that he got to the heart of it when he replied,  “It's like we're waiting for something—it's scary! “

    The only time I encountered a class that was unable to reach a point of stillness, I learned the reason why when I happened to arrive early for class one day. Their teacher was shrieking commands at them—Write, don't print your name in the upper right-hand corner of the paper; set a left-hand margin and keep it; use a pencil, not a pen; line the paper up with the edge of your desk for collection. These children had so many little rules barked at them all day long by a burned-out teacher that they had stopped listening, which surely is a prerequisite for silence.

    What interests me most about my experiment is the way in which making silence liberated the imagination of so many children. Very few wrote with any originality about making noise. Most of their images were clichés such as  “we sound like a herd of elephants. “ But silence was another matter: here, their images often had a depth and maturity that was unlike anything else they wrote. One boy came up with an image of strength as being  “as slow and silent as a tree, “ another wrote that  “Silence is sleeping waiting to wake up. Silence is a tree spreading its branches to the sun. “ In a parochial school, one third grader's poem turned into a prayer:  “Silence is spiders spinning their webs, it's like a silkworm making its silk. Lord, help me to know when to be silent. “ And in a tiny town in western North Dakota a little girl offered a gem of spiritual wisdom that I find myself returning to when my life becomes too noisy and distractions overwhelm me: “Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.”

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