I think I know what's wrong.

But nobody will listen.

I feel like the kid in the third grade who for once in his unremarkable scholastic career has the right answer and can't get the teacher to call on him. My arm aches from waving it at her.

Don't you love it when people offer solutions and haven't stated the problem yet? Actually I have stated the problem. Read sentence #2 again.

I think schools are just one class offering short of widespread academic and social paydirt. They need to offer a class in listening because nobody does. Listen I mean.

For decades if not centuries the term "communication" has conjured images of the one way street that feature classes in english, speech, elocution, drama, writing, self expression and languages...all emphasizing how to let the world know what you want to tell them.

Unfortunately, little or no time is spent teaching us how to take in what the world wants us to know. Classes on selective silence, concentration, categorization, prioritizing or filing incoming information are not offered.

Sure we spend time trying to cram informaiton into our kid's noggins but then we ruin it all by immediately asking them to speculate on what they think about it all. Let them cogetate awhile and mull the wonders of informational intake before making them try to spit it back in interpretive essays and oral presentations.

As a result I think we learn to speak and write with relative eloquence. We just don't listen worth a damn. Not to each other.

We do tend to listen to what celebrities say. Not because they are particularly bright but because they are speaking into a one way microphone. They couldn't hear us if we did try to speak back so we listen and give them our rapt attention. As a result we tend to think of them as authorities on subjects in which they have no particular insight, we just get used to listening to them.

The only people who talk back to movie stars are the ones who invariably take up seats behind me in the theater who wear tin foil hats and try to share their most recent conspiracy theories with each new character appearing on the screen.

Is it any wonder that the people in our everyday lives sometimes seem drab and uninteresting? Maybe it is because they do not have teams of highly paid writers putting words in their mouths.

As a society we don't really encourage listening either. We are always holding speech and writing contests. When was the last time you heard about a listening contest?

I don't know about you but I can watch people tune out right in the middle of a conversation. I can see their eyes glaze over as they start formulating their own swell comeback before I've even finished my first sentence.

There. I've eloquently stated my case for better listening.

Sorry. Did you say something?