Italian
teaching at all. More important, I had never known what learning was. I had merely instructed students in a subject without taking into consideration the richness and the complexity of their minds. The real strength of The Silent Way is in the fact that the techniques used are extremely precise while being extremely flexible. I had to understand that in order for The Silent Way to work I had to make it my own, for my language and for my classes. After attending a workshop in Spanish, I tended to take whatever I saw as a model for my own classes, but I soon discovered that I was betraying the whole idea of The Silent Way because I was not taking into consideration the reality of Italian in relation to my class. This is one of the reasons why I don’t think it would be possible to work out a teachers’ guide: the beginner teacher, overwhelmed by the novelty of the approach would tend to rely heavily on the guide and therefore on the techniques rather than developing his or her own way to use the materials offered. Instead, one should become aware that there is no magic in the materials per se and that, if necessary, they could all be thrown out and replaced. Nothing is sacred in The Silent Way not even the silence, and to follow the “letter” of the approach (using the rods, the charts, being silent etc., etc.) is no guarantee of really using The Silent Way. It is the “spirit” of The Silent Way that needs to be grasped and followed — as Dr. Gattegno once pointed out — if one wants real learning to take place.
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