No Talking: Chapters 14–20

It’s very inventive, what they’re doing. And it’s creative, and they’re all thinking. And I think it’s mostly positive, too. They’re all exercising some self-control—which is a big change for this group.

“Actually,” Mrs. Marlow interrupted, “I think it’s more like Dave and Lynsey are sort of team captains. They’re keeping score, counting words. And it’s the boys against the girls. I intercepted a note.”

Because anybody who hangs on to stereotypes about girls and boys...shouldn’t. Especially if he’s a teacher.

On a school faculty, it’s never supposed to be girls against boys.

They felt like they had spent Tuesday night in lonely prison cells, practically in solitary confinement.

They felt like they had spent Tuesday night in lonely prison cells, practically in solitary confinement.

There was also some contest business being conducted.

As Dave received the morning confessions from a short line of sheepish girls, he felt pretty good.

So Dave lurched to his feet, scooched past his classmates, and hurried down the aisle and up the four steps onto the stage.

The kids spoke with one voice, almost shouting, incredibly loud, amazingly powerful—probably the most rousing Pledge of Allegiance ever heard in a public school during the entire history of the nation.

But there was no sudden rush of whispering, no undercurrent of talking in the auditorium, no joking and laughing—none of the usual behavior that the Unshushables were famous for.

The class sailed through the rest of the conversion problems—miles to kilometers, kilograms to ounces, acres to hectares, on and on.

He grabbed the marker from Lynsey and scrawled his work onto the board.

She was in the middle of an amazingly productive class period—and everyone was so focused, so alert, so engaged.

“No,” she said, “you’re deliberately using as few words as possible, and you are disobeying the principal.”

Like the other teachers up and down the fifth-grade hall, Mrs. Overby had to make a decision: Go with the flow—which promised to be very quiet and orderly—or call for the principal, raise a ruckus, and try to force these kids to be their regular old noisy selves again.

As a student of history, Mrs. Overby knew about the power of a grassroots movement.

She also knew about the power of civil disobedience.

–Every word counts.
–Choose power words.
–Hemingway would approve.
–Focus and narrow.
–Ideas are collapsible.

Mrs. Hiatt looked around slowly, drew herself up to her full height, and then walked briskly out of the room.

The principal held up one finger and said, “Type.” Then she held up two fingers and said, “Duplicate.” And then she held up three fingers and said, “Distribute.”

And it might be enlightening to explain how Mrs. Hiatt had changed the contest, so that the kids in kindergarten through fourth were competing grade against grade to see who could say the fewest illegal words during the next twenty-three hours—and why she thought her way was a better idea than boys against girls.

And it might be thought- provoking to explain how Dave felt about all this—how he felt that he was sort of like Gandhi, and how Mrs. Hiatt was sort of like the British Empire, and how he felt like there had been a great victory, “with liberty and justice for all”—which included Mrs. Hiatt herself.

Because with all the goodwill and the happy vibes that swirled out of Mrs. Hiatt’s change of heart, plus the excitement of having the whole school go quiet, you might think that somehow the fifth-grade boys-against-girls contest didn’t matter anymore.

And the louder it got, the louder everyone had to talk to be heard above the rising tumult, and the sound spiraled up toward that point where dogs run and stick their heads under a sofa.