Sounds are all around us, all the time. We constantly engage in listening: to the everyday sounds of the streets on our way to work, to the black-bird's soft nattering an early morning in spring, to a teacher's tiresome talk. Nature speaks to us with a thousand voices, and a place sounds of its inhabitants. Normally, we take our ability to hear as a matter of course; hearing is an implicit and mostly unreflected engagement in our daily activities. As educators, (...) however, we cannot take our students' capability of listening for granted. One problem of education, Angelo Caranfa argues, is that it fails to teach the significance of listening and silence. The present predominant focus on discourse and critical thinking... (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical study of the nature of thinking based on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner. For Heidegger, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers exemplified genuine thinking, appreciating the meaning of Being. But this kind of philosophy was soon replaced by the onto-theological approach, in which Being was reductively objectified, and the question of the meaning of Being was forgotten. Hence, according to Heidegger, we still have to learn to think. Commentators on Heidegger point to the similarities (...) between his approach to thinking and that of various mystical teachings, such as those of Meister Eckhart or Zen Buddhism. Another less well known philosopher who devoted himself to this question was Rudolf Steiner. Like Heidegger, Steiner claims that we do not know what it means to really think. Steiner was however more outspoken in insisting that only through a kind of meditative practice can we directly experience the nature of thinking. Present day materialistic explanations of thinking as caused by the brain stand in clear opposition to his spiritual conception of thinking. Drawing upon Heidegger and Steiner I argue against the materialistic understanding of thinking as jumping to unwarranted conclusions. The paper ends with describing some of the elements of Steiner Waldorf education which are intended to promote the development of living, creative thinking. (shrink)

In the article, I argue that teachers can promote their students’ audial attention, in general education as well as in science education, by drawing on musicians’ and composers’ refined listening skills. I investigate the act of listening phenomenologically by exploring listening in its multiple forms. With reference to Heidegger’s philosophy of existence, I further explore how listening constitutes our Being-in-the-world. The question whether listening to music might increase a more general readiness to audial attention is of educational interest: how can (...) the ability of audial attention be taught and reinforced and which role does careful listening play in learning? I discuss whether teaching about sound in science class promotes students’ skills of audial experience and whether attentive listening trained in music education is applicable in general education or in science education. Promoting listening skills in science education is discussed in four themes: learning from listening to sound phenomena, listening possibilities in science curriculum, cooperation between science education and music education, and teaching listening for openness. I conclude that there are no direct connections between training attentive listening skills in music education and employing them in science learning. However, fruitful conjunctions might be found when listening is regarded in a broader sense, as tuning in to each other and as awareness of the world’s own musicality. I suggest that a variety of modes of listening should form the foundation for promoting audial attentiveness in learning. Further, to include openness in science education, we need to liberate the training of listening abilities from a mere utilitarian approach. (shrink)