Over the Wall of Silence

6 Over the Wall of Silence

In Jack’s mental lesson plan, at least one of the thirty students replies to him, and provides something that he would use to begin the class. But here in reality, not a single student has volunteered to speak. By this point, he is taken aback, and feeling pretty frustrated and confused. These emotions are understandable, though. The students don’t seem to have any real hostility towards him. Some even look vaguely willing to do something in class. But he can’t escape the feeling that there is an invisible wall of silence between the class and him, even after he has given up on getting a response from the group and moved on to individual students. What’s happening here? Where Jack is from in the US, students may sometimes ignore questions from the teacher directed to the whole class, but they would never ignore a question asked of them individually. Refusing to communicate in a situation like this would identify a student as rebellious, or at the very least, lazy and disinterested. Classroom dynamics differ greatly even amongst most cultures in the West, but this is one fundamental thing they have in common. The challenging situation Jack finds himself in stems from cultural differences between Japanese culture and “Western culture”, which are by definition very deep and sometimes hard to grasp. Not getting a reply to your direct question is one of the most shocking things that many teachers remember from their early days