Literature and Drama editor Laura Kiely explores the cultural trope of Irish ‘shyness’ among college students and the impact it is having on their classroom engagement.
When I began my university experience, it was September 2020, amidst the height of COVID-19 restrictions. Students across the country and internationally abroad were partially promised some semblance of normality regarding how the semester would unfold. The oscillating discourse from on-campus to exclusively online led countless students into cold, isolated (and extortionately priced) Belfield dorms just to sit blankly at their hissing laptops. What transpired was a mix of anxiety, apathy and, essentially, a huge lack of engagement.
I don’t think it’s a case that students feel they don’t understand the material but there’s a hesitance to engage
The college experience was reduced to faceless grey boxes, muted mics and hapless tutors trying their best to elicit any tiny sentiment from the black-and-white icons before them. The University Observer chatted with Liam Gormáin, who reflected on his first-year experience during lockdown; “I feel that having our first classes online meant that already shy first-years never got fully comfortable with speaking up or engaging with their tutors and classmates about course material. Sometimes the tutorials felt like one-on-one conversations. I don’t think it’s a case that students feel they don’t understand the material but there’s a hesitance to engage.”
Growing up, I lived vicariously through the college students in movies and shows, the ones abundantly shooting up their hands, just dying to relay their well-informed, perfectly articulated opinions. When classes resumed a year later for stage two, on campus, I anticipated something akin to this, especially as an arts and humanities student. However, this wasn’t the case, even outside of austere, impersonal Zoom calls. While there were some enthusiastic speakers, it was certainly not adjacent to the abundance I saw on television.
Perhaps Gormáin is suggesting how these early years of college online set a tone that bred a socially acceptable indifference over visible and verbal enthusiasm. The rise of technology has transformed the classroom in many ways. While new, positive developments afford remote learning, a negative trend formed alongside, likely conceived during the lockdown virtual years, making students feel too comfortable in their tutorial silences.
In an interview with The University Observer, Aoife Kilbane, a final-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student, shares her thoughts on the topic,
“When education moved online, it became highly depersonalised, and it remains so. People struggle to form connections in this increasingly online, isolated world because they view others as oppositional and separate from themselves. Combine this trend with how shy Irish people can be; now, young people can hardly speak to one another without the social lubrication of alcohol.”
Discussing whether this is a fault of the student or the environment, Kilbane suggests that the classroom itself is not restrictive, but the students who enter it feel so. However, it does cut at something more profound than this, specifically vis-à-vis Irish students, that the depersonalised learning experiences over Zoom sessions only magnified a pre-existing problem with vocal engagement. As Kilbane highlights, we have a challenge triggered by the mix of culturally Irish shyness and social alienation fostered by the increasingly virtual world.
There does seem to exist a fear of judgement for 'trying too hard', which ends up working as a deterrent to engagement in open class discussions.
While reflecting on my silent tutorial experiences, I realised this was not the case during my Erasmus semester at CU Prague in 2023. I was the only Irish exchange student in my five classes there. I was surrounded by highly enthusiastic, vocal classmates who created a fiery atmosphere I had not yet experienced at UCD. In conversation with Molly O’Toole, a recent graduate of Sociology and Social Policy at UCD, she shared a similar experience:
“It wasn’t until after my Erasmus year that I realised there was a certain stiffness to the lectures and tutorials I’ve attended at UCD that was rarely present in VU Amsterdam, regardless of size or similarity of topic. There does seem to exist a fear of judgement for “trying too hard”, which ends up working as a deterrent to engagement in open class discussions.”
What Molly signifies here is the tangible shame that seeps into Irish culture, a permeance derived from decades of a socially and culturally fabricated insistence on extreme modesty. Many Irish people will be familiar with the negative epithet of “try-hard” placed on openly ambitious peers. O’Toole suggests that intergenerational trauma of colonisation may be the root cause for this ‘shameful modesty’— and this very well may be the case.
Additionally, discussions around reforming the sacred (barbaric) ritual of the Leaving Cert have been ongoing for decades. It’s no wonder Irish students are taken aback when rote learning seven textbooks for a 2-hour exam does not imbue them with the skillset for formulating opinions and expressing themselves fluently in open discussions when they reach College.
Whether it be shyness, the lingering impacts of seclusion mandated by the pandemic, or a mix of both, the blank stares of an unresponsive classroom are strained; students do want to engage, they’re eager to, but a collective ingrained silence is holding us back.