The Silent Teacher: Aesthetic Education According to Ursula K. Le Guin
Abstract
What is the pedagogical place of silence in the Anthropocene classroom? Should we as teachers—particularly as teachers involved in the education of aesthetic sensibilities—understood our classrooms as sites in which awareness of our Anthropocene predicament is spread, sites in which a general sense of the urgency of our times is disseminated? And is this awareness not best spread via explicit facts and data, the key story of climate change and biodiversity loss, with these themes serving as the background against which we interpret the symbolic abstractions of aesthetic objects?
This paper follows Ursula Le Guin's example to a conclusion that perhaps differs from the consensus. Our overall argument is that cultivating a certain sort of silence relative to the Anthropocene can be profoundly educational for our students, if-- of course-- that silent teaching is done artfully.