John Francis is a really motivated learner and educator. He walked the world for 17 years silently. Yes, without speaking. And today he is most definitely talking about it. What he says contains a lot of messages—there’s certainly one in there for you. [I heard him speak at the Digital Earth Symposium, held at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007.]

In 1971 he witnessed two tankers colliding, creating an oil spill in San Francisco Bay, and decided to give up riding in motorized vehicles. He began walking everywhere he went. “I thought that if I started walking, everyone would follow.” So on his 27th birthday, he decided he would stop speaking for just one day “to give it a rest.” “I have to tell you it was a very moving experience…for the very first time I began listening.” He realized that (as a regular speaking human) he listened to only the first few words or sentences when someone was talking, and then “my mind would race ahead” thinking about what “I was going to say in response.” He decided to do this for another day, and another day, and this stretched to a year, and then lasted 17 years. [Continue reading and you can also view the TED talk given by John Francis in 2008…] [Read more…]