Introduction: Listening to silence in the history of education

1. Silent practices in education

2. Research into silence in current pedagogical practices

3. A critical look at existing histories of silence

4. Towards a history of silence at school and in the classroom

5. The silent self, exemplary Bobby, and history as megaphone

Chapter 1: The rise of classroom-based silence

1. ‘He squeals just like a thin pig, whose throat must be cut at once’

2. Noise and silence in the work of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle

3. Servile silence and philanthropic freedom

4. Regarding proper, exact, good, mechanical, sweet, or healing silence

5. A lesson in silence for the youngest children

Chapter 2: Maria Montessori’s rediscovery of silence

1. The first cry of the newborn child

2. Silence, discipline, and the din of falling chairs

3. Silence exercises, whispering voices, and controlled liveliness

4. The meaning of silence for (the education of) teachers

5. ‘If we want to reach silence, we have to educate them’

6. Reaching a new world through silence

Chapter 3: The silent child and the loud self

1. Silence and shyness

2. Dictation, exam questions, and observation lessons: the omnipresence of shy children in the classroom

3. The voice of the eighteenth-century Timidus: ‘I’m not mad!’

4. From good and evil to normal and abnormal shyness

5. Social Darwinism and the noisy struggle for existence

6. The successful self, the culture of personality, and the war against shyness

7. Maria Montessori, self-education and shyness as monstrosity

Chapter 4: Silent reading and the child as open book

1. The art of reading aloud

2. Silent efficiency and the economisation of education

3. The rise of silent reading in the Low Countries

4. Silent reading tests and the call for responsible selection

5. Critical noises and the triumph of silent reading

Epilogue: Silence, the chargeable self and the direction of our future