Listening to the voices of voiceless
How can we include the voices of voiceless people? This question ‘popped up’ while I was reading Christine Hockings’ article on ‘Hearing voices, creating spaces: the craft of the ‘artisan teacher’ in a higher education system’. I am sure you can assume what I am pointing towards.
From the article, I understand many different theories and concepts that can be utilised to address the voices – the voices of loud, the voices of quiet and, of course, the voices of average. In my life, I have met many people with loud voices, medium voices, low voices and without voices. As a teacher, I have seen many students without voices.
I often answer not asked questions. Answering those unasked questions could be a way of addressing voiceless people in many situations. Like we, teachers, often do by assuming what (and how) they share facilities like the university they choose, the books they pick, the place they live, the transport they use and the kitchen they share.
Do they really share the question? Maybe not. Do they share the experience? Most probably not. You may think drawing a line between similarities and dissimilarities is easy. However, it must be quite tricky to figure out where precisely the fence line sits.
Despite sharing the facilities, I have seen people with differences. That means people sharing a room, kitchen, house, library, university, and city have many dissimilarities within those known similarities. Therefore, I wonder how a teacher can address the diverse needs of dissimilar students. Addressing the asked questions and resolving the seen problems may seem interesting. However, there could be many unasked questions to answer and unseen problems to resolve.
As a teacher, I have to answer many questions of viceless learners. Do you have any recommendations for me about finding questions of those students who do not have voices?
I am thinking of digging a little bit more while waiting for your thoughts.