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Listening education: the next academic era, perhaps ...

The following is simply an idea to improve our school systems in America. A hypothesis, if you will, considering the effects of implementing listening as a fundamental academic subject. I have no credibility as an educator other than a degree in communications, but I was a student in this system and understand the difficulties associated with learning. Therefore, in order to make this “listening education” concept a reality, perhaps upon discussion we can spark some school board interest.

“Listening skillfully is difficult. To listen impeccably, with fixed, full attention is a discipline much like meditation. It requires practice, rigor, and resolve … In Western culture listening has never been a prized pursuit.”—Mark Brady, The Wisdom of Listening, 2003

Listen up! Pay attention! Sound familiar? These two phrases encompass a typical lesson to improve our listening skills and, often times, are all the instruction we’ll ever get. But how do I listen up? How do I pay attention? And, can I get better at it if I tried? None of these questions seem to be addressed in our schools. Is that a problem? Maybe. Probably.
 
Educators acknowledge the importance of listening. Improving listening skills is a common learning objective, but its implementation is merely in association with lectures and note taking. Listening, as an isolated subject, is absent in academics.

Listening is one of the first things we learn to do as infants––the only time in our lives when we truly focus on our listening skills, amidst eating, sleeping and visual intake. But once we begin speaking, reading, writing and so on, we may easily forget to reincorporate those aural roots into our daily lives. We complain about communication at home, in relationships and in the workplace, but, realizing that we’re all self-taught listeners, poor communication skills actually make sense.

Approaching listening as an improvable skill could offer students a fresh, realistic learning perspective.

“Even if we want to listen well, we’re often hampered by a lack of training. A common but mistaken belief is that listening is like breathing­—an activity that people do well naturally.”—Ronald B. Adler, Russell F. Proctor and Neil Towne, Looking Out/Looking In, 2005

A lack of listening training can be dangerous for a struggling student. Inability to keep up in the classroom and pay attention to the teacher can surely ignite some self-diagnosis to explain why all the other kids seem to excel; having a learning disability or natural stupidity are plausible conclusions, but even advanced students can get bored and lose attention in class. It is possible that inattention is normal. Most students have no say in what they learn, so while this information is forced upon them, I find it intolerable to automatically associate their inattention with any conjugation of the phrase “learning disability.” It unfortunately seems that a wandering mind is consistently reprimanded, rather than accepted and understood as a naturally involuntary action, perhaps in direct effect of poor listening skills.

Legitimate learning disabilities exist; don’t get me wrong. But what I find objectionable is that with students struggling at any level of education, a lack of listening training is never considered the justification for poor academic performance. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is comparatively a prevalent diagnosis in efforts to solve these issues. As listening training has never truly been put to the test, it is possible it could provide alternate means of increasing attention spans, as compared to taking attention-enhancing drugs such as Ritalin.

I have scoured the Internet, library books and periodicals for an indication that listening has been taught as a legitimate academic subject. I have only found classes with curriculums focused on improving listening skills in specialized situations: courses in music appreciation, classes for students learning English as a second language, at independent seminars for the professional adult workplace, and in schools for the blind. But no program has been directed for the average, everyday student. If such a class exists, it apparently hasn’t been utilized to its fullest potential.

Classifications for ineffective listeners already exist (stage-hoggers, selective listeners); reasons why we don’t listen well have been discovered (preoccupation, message overload); techniques for how to listen better have been found (talking less, looking for key ideas)—research has been done! It is time to put this knowledge to use. 

Now, should listening be an everyday class? Should it be an annual seminar for kids? Who knows, but one thing’s for sure: practice makes perfect.

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