Crickets in the Classroom: Why is it so Quiet?

[Calm, meditative music]

Athenian poet and playwright Euripedes once said, “Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.” Evidently, Euripedes did not attend any small classes or discussion sections at Northwestern University.

[natural sound: people talking in a crowd]

I started as a freshman at Northwestern in the fall. Once thing I’ve noticed since then is the silence. 

[natural sound: white noise]

Every once in a while, in a small class or discussion section, the TA or professor will ask a question, and no one answers. Sometimes, those pauses give me the time and space to figure out something to say, or to materialize the thought that has already been circling in my mind. But in other instances, as the silence deepens with each passing second, I begin to hope, in anguish, that someone else has something to say.

I was curious: what are other students’ experiences with this auditory space? I asked around.

ALAN SHU: Please break the silence before the teachers start picking on people, please, please, please, please, please.

That’s Weinberg first-year Alan Shu, sharing his inner thoughts after facing a recent bout of crickets in his seminar on China in the American Imagination. 

SHU: We had to read 300-ish pages of reading in the span of two days. I did not finish it. And everyone else comes in like, did everyone else read it? No, no, it’s like, no one finished. And so during the discussion, the professor asked a question regarding the reading. 

[natural sound: cricket chirp]

SHU: Dead silence. Nothin’. No one else made a sound. 

Alan told me the silence is quite common in his seminar. Communication junior Jillian Olson said she has actually started timing the length of the silence in her US Gay and Lesbian History discussion. 

JILLIAN OLSON: I think the longest was about five minutes of just empty silence. 

FIVE MINUTES?! You could listen to the song Respect by Aretha Franklin TWICE and still have 16 seconds of change with a silence that long.

OLSON: We all sit in a circle, so there’s not really anywhere for us to hide. Just stare really intensely at our computer like we’re looking for notes, but none of us are looking for notes. And it has never been more clear that not a soul has done the reading.

Jillian said the mountain of work for her other classes deters her from the readings for her History discussion. 

OLSON: An awkward hour is easier for me to endure than missing an assignment for another class. 

[natural sound: white noise]

Breaking the silence has been on my mind recently, in part because of my Spanish class. I do a lot of the staring-down-at-the-desk kind of thing in this class, because once I’ve answered maybe two questions in the span of five minutes, I feel like it’s important for me to not take up so much of the airspace. My Spanish professor, Deisi Cuate, said she’s also been thinking about these uncomfortable quiet moments – and she noticed something that I’ve missed, as I sit at my desk in Kresge and stare at the ground to endure the deafening quiet.

DEISI CUATE: When I was younger, and a teacher would ask something, whether I wanted to answer or not, whether I knew the answer or not, if I was not ready for it, I would try to like pretend like I was doing something while I was thinking about the answer. But I’ve noticed that Northwestern students will have that direct eye contact while sitting in silence. And I find that very interesting. 

Deisi also said that she thinks Northwestern students in her Spanish classes may be too focused on the answer itself, and not what they could learn from trying to articulate a response.

CUATE: I don’t know that Northwestern students always know the why behind the questioning. Sometimes I think that they might be stuck on like, the actual right or wrong answer, like what is she looking for type of thing, instead of thinking just be like this might just be practice.

[natural sound: white noise]

Focusing on answering as a tool for practice instead of a proof of knowledge.

I almost dropped my phone when she said that.

PRACTICE? 

Discussions, for me, can sometimes feel like performance. Participation is monitored, and often assessed. It doesn’t feel like a place to make mistakes, it’s just another, less-intimidating test. 

But how would discussions look if they were focused on practice, and not performance? Would the silence take more of a backseat?

[calm, meditative music]

Perhaps what Euripedes really meant when he said, “Silence is true wisdom’s best reply,” is that we need a few seconds before we answer…

[natural sound: white noise]

But to sit in complete silence would be to waste an opportunity to learn.

[calm, meditative music]

For WNUR News, I’m Rose Carlson. 

Cricket Sound by felix_quinol from Pixabay

Calm music by Leigh Robinson from Pixabay

Crowd Talking by Pixabay

White noise by Pixabay