Silence and stillness

I work in education. Over the last fifteen years I have had the good fortune to work with some very interesting colleagues. I have also taught a lot of amazing children.
A dominating idea in education in the UK is that if there is a classroom full of children and if there is silence, then it follows that the behaviour must be good. Good children are quiet children. I have lost count of the number of times I have noticed a colleague pleading with a group of children to be quiet, and wondered why he or she was asking. Do we need silence in a corridor, or is it just an assumption that the rule must be upheld because our Victorian predecessors insisted on it?
I have been thinking about the lives of some of the children from the school in which I work. Some are ignored or shouted at in the family home, and coming to school is a welcome relief. When they do arrive, they spend a whole day being shouted at to make them silent. Is it any wonder they find the experience of school gruelling?
There is a time for silence in a school. In a religious setting it is important in order to show reverence. In an examination setting it is important so that communication between candidates is prevented. And how those in power love to examine our children. However, I see very little benefit to children in insisting on silence for vast chunks of their school days in every other situation.
The thing that I think many people with whom I work have missed is that stillness is more important than silence. Children live hyper-charged lives and are bombarded with stimulation from a bewildering range of sources. The stimulation usually takes the form of information in one form or another. They are also stimulated by ever-more refined foods that are doing amazing things to their young brains.
I think stillness is important because for some children moments of stillness in school may be their only experience of it. I fear for over-loaded brains, and think providing an opportunity for resting those brains is overlooked.
Our Secretary of State for Education, Mr Gove, is driving rapid change and doing a fabulous job in dragging British Schools into the Nineteenth Century. Such a revolutionary idea as allowing children to rest and have some stillness is absolutely against what he stands for, as it does not help in the process of producing good, compliant little robots to feed into the government's industrial machine.
Stillness in schools allows children to piece together and make sense of various madnesses to which they are exposed.
It also works for adults.
My resolution for the New Year is going to say 'Be quiet' less, and 'Be still' more.