Words, & Silence

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968

“Tell Your Truth.” – Clint Smith: The Danger of Silence  https://www.ted.com/talks/clint_smith_the_danger_of_silence

Tonight I’m looking over my blog, which I am only just now formatting after its summertime inception. I had set it up on my phone, the only piece of technology I’d brought, and free coffeeshop wifi was too slow to bother. Since my Grade 12 students will be able to read what I’ve written (for better or for worse) as we are embarking on a blogging project, I thought I should check to see what it was exactly that I had posted.

I’ve changed nothing.

In the interest of the unit of study we are undertaking, which is, Where the Truth Comes From: Considering Journalistic Integrity, I decided to follow my own themes. So far we’ve used excerpts from Simon Sinek’s Leader’s Eat Last, and Alain de Botton’s The News: A User’s Manual, along with the film Spotlight, two Will McAvoy speeches from HBO’s The Newsroom, and Clint Smith’s Ted Talk. What I have thought about, and hope my students are catching so far includes courage, the importance of accountability, dangers related to control in media, and possible consequences of, to paraphrase Will McAvoy, an “uninformed electorate”, meaning the general public. Coming next is trustworthiness, shaming and (more) about empathy, and a little Orwellian anti-censorship awareness. All important aspects of the communication that is supposed to happen between investigative news and the viewers, and these are character building blocks, helping to answer the question “who do I want to be?”.

I would not profess to have anything of great caliber to say. At least I don’t think I’ve written anything worth reading. I hope to someday, but I’m pretty sure I have to earn that. I started a blog as part of that practice; I’m reading writing worth reading; I’m learning what is worth writing. I didn’t change anything here, because so far, I’ve chosen to tell my truth, to attempt transparency and courage, to risk vulnerability. There’s always more to learn about when to be silent, when to speak up, what is worth saying, and the balance of words and silence.