Refusing to teach

Too often in my opinion we place too much emphasis on lecture and too much focus on the teacher.  In this part of the book, Finkel discusses how a teacher can teach without speaking and actually refuses. He tells of a story of a teacher who says that certain days are for his teaching (lecture, teacher led discussion, etc) but on a particular class day each week, he will say very little. The first day = silence and only after 5 minutes does he speak but only to say that he was serious about not speaking and it is up to the class to determine how to use the class time. 

"By withholding his words, by refusing to leave, by making himself a near silent observer of the group, the teacher has magnified his own importance in the class in a strange way. The less he says, the more each word counts. The more he acts in accordance with the dictum that the class belongs to students, the more the class looks like a performance staged just for him." (p.114)

This initially terrifies me when I think about it. Refusing to say a word and letting the class know ahead of time that i wouldn't be saying a word is very non-traditional and I think would shock some students, just like Finkel's story in the book. I can however see how it can be very beneficial if done correctly. 

I think as I mentioned earlier, that there can be too much talking from the teacher. If the teacher actually tries to truly facilitate that students they can learn just as much. Just because there's a teacher in the room does not mean that the teacher knows everything and that the teacher can't learn something  from the students 

Does it take practice to refuse to teach? I would gather that it takes a great deal of courage to put this into place during a class action. I wonder how effective this can be in different subjects. What are the potential downfalls of refusing to teach? If the teacher is not prepared properly could this lead to major failure?  I would have to say yes, but even with the proper preparation can it still go the wrong direction that the teacher never anticipated? A direction that the teacher tried to prepare for?