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The Lost Art of Conversaton

26/3/2019

 
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I spent a few decades doing "stand-up" for kids at school visits. When I first started, I noticed that they listened well enough for me to teach them about the relationship between balance and one's center of gravity. Not an easy concept to grasp. It took more than one sentence. My success depended on a give-and-take oral response from them. It kept them engaged. It also required a lot of thought, rehearsal and energy on my part. And it got harder and harder as the years rolled by because the kids were less and less able to focus. Talking didn't seem to work as well as it used to.

A conversation is a social interaction that depends on listening to what someone says to you, acknowledging that you've heard them, and responding appropriately. In colonial days, before there was professional entertainment wired into your home and accessible at the push of a button, people had to provide their own entertainment. Wealthy young women learned the pianoforte and sang. Dinner parties depended on guests who were amusing and witty raconteurs. People sometimes even retired from the dinner table to engage in "parlor" (from the French word "to speak") games.

Recently a teacher friend put up an intriguing photo of human skin matched to Pantone swatches. She tried to start a conversion about the evolution of human skin color as serving different biological purposes, to no avail. The kids got themselves trapped in making silly remarks.
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I've noticed many children don't make eye contact with me in one-on-one conversations. I have to request that they look at me when we're talking. My teenage granddaughter spent a lot of time on her phone texting her girl friends. When I was her age I spent, literally, hours talking with my girls friends on the phone. When I asked her why she communicated by text, "It's easier," was her terse reply. Yes, interacting with a complicated organism, another human being, is an important skill set that starts the moment you're born with smell and touch and eye contact among the most important interactions for a newborn and a parent. Children in orphanages who don't do these things as infants exhibit a "failure to bond" with others as adults.

Technology is teaching us new skills on how to be alone. Last Sunday's NY Times had an article about a man who spent the day with his cat avatar named Sox. It made him feel less lonely. There isa new game out to revive the art of conversation. When I watch news commentary shows with pundits, it's not just the content that interests me, it's the way they interact. They take turns and apologize when they "step on" or interrupt another speaker. The moderator develops skillful segues between speakers. They often cite one another when making a point. No one tries to dominate the discourse. I get very uncomfortable when two opposing commentators scream "talking points" over each other and I turn the show off. I just looked up talk show training on Google and there are more sites than I could count, most of them oriented on how to be a star talk show host. Good talker have the same problem as good writers:
  1. You have to have something to say. Content counts
  2. You need to know whom you're talking to. Is this person going to be interested in you?
  3. You need to speak so the other person "gets" it. You can tell if that happens by listening carefully to the response.
  4. You must make your response acknowledge what the other person has contributed. This may be in the form of asking a question and waiting for an answer.
  5. The exchange can be measured by the extent of the back-and-forth. Poor conversations just dwindle away and are forgotten quickly.
What have you observed about your own social verbal exchanges? Are you conscious about how you go about entering into a conversation? Do you like to talk to people? Why? or Why not?

Does this post make you want to talk to me? If so, please comment.






Jan Adkins link
27/3/2019 05:33:52 pm

The Irish sometimes call writers "failed conversationalists." I must believe (as a matter of desperate religious faith) that the practice of conversation and storytelling is alive, even if in Irish pubs. I'm willing to risk alcoholism for good stories.

And what is better than stories? As a journalist in science, the skill of interviewing was a constant concern. Over many years I discovered that listening wasn't enough. We're inculcated with the notion that we should listen and not talk. No so. The best way to reshape my experts' flow of talk toward a profitable explanation was to "trade stories," to build a give and take conversation, I tell this story about atomic research, Murray Gell Mann tells a better story (and he was an exceptional storyteller). Conversation isn't a game like ping pong, back and forth, when you're trying to beat or stymie an opponent. I'm sorry to say that conversation is like one of those New Age games (thought they seem Old Age, coming from the 70's) in which the game is all about perpetuating the game. Frisbee is a good example: the flight of a Frisbee is so pretty, so graceful, that scoring diminishes it, you just want to keep throwing.

Being a teacher in the Ice Age, somewhere around 1970, my job was about imparting principles of math and science to 4th graders. They listened. If they didn't, they were obliged to leave the room for a shameful time out. Now, it is to larf: 4th graders must be encouraged to find principles as if they were new discoveries and to regard the "teacher" as a fly-fishing guide in catching decimals or exponents. Lecturing on principles is outré. Sad, because I've know some damn fine lecturers in my day. Sad, too, because the art of oratory is nearly dead as an entertainment, The exception may be stand-up comedians, who seem to be successful conversationalists, and who may be (as a friend observed) "the poets of our generation."

Talking with children can be fruitless or it can be fascinating. We might cling to the Frisbee model and ask for a story, for information, for preferences, and follow with a story or data of our own – we get the disc flying back and forth. When the game's afoot, we can convey a good deal of principle. Talking with young people with any access to electronic devices, however, is like talking to statues in the park, with or without pigeons.

Laurie Ann Thompson link
27/3/2019 06:01:41 pm

As I'm relatively new to the author visit game, this is fascinating to me. It's interesting to think about how kids' attention spans, at least for the spoken word, have changed over time and how that affects us as both authors and speakers.

I also wonder about the tradeoffs being made. Yes, we may be losing the fine art of face-to-face conversation (along with long-form informational reading, sadly), but I also believe kids today are more empathetic, more globally aware, more culturally engaged than they used to be. Surely these are benefits of our device-driven "connected" society. Also, I wonder if video is so popular because it simulates human conversation?

Thanks, as always, for your insightful observations, Vicki. I'm sure I'll be talking (yes, actually talking!) about this with friends and colleagues over and over again in the months to ahead! :)

Vicki cobb
28/3/2019 09:50:41 am

Thank you both for your insightful comments. I was once a news writer for Good Morning America. One of my jobs was the pre-interview. I had to talk to everyone in the world (on the phone) to see what they had to say, so that I could script the questions for the interview for the host in a way that made sense. To elicit information I was told to treat celebrities like ordinary people and ordinary people like celebrities. Actually, I found that sharing small stories always got them talking. Once people started talking, questions kept them going.


Comments are closed.

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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