Think before you speak

I have a terrible habit: I roll my eyes whenever I get annoyed. This kind of habit tends to make a person very unpopular in social circumstances whenever a certain sort of reserved politeness is expected. There are times, however, when eye-rolling seems almost inevitable. The list of triggers is long and diverse. There are the frantic mating rituals of intoxicated freshmen on Saturday nights. The brown mossy log masquerading as "Chinese Chicken Salad" in my dining hall. The banshee-like wails of my hallmates in the shower when they mistakenly think nobody is listening. One more thing must be added to this tragic list: the incessant mewing of certain students during precepts and seminars.

My experience with student participation in many classes is a woeful tale. Most students are eager to participate, but, sadly, many neglect to think before speaking. The result inspires dread. For example:

Professor: "So how do you think we cope with death in a ritualistic sense?"

Student: "When my grandmother died, I was, like, really sad, but then I realized that there were a lot of people at her funeral, and like, it was really meaningful, and that relates ..."

At the heart of this vocal flamboyance is a grading system in which "class participation" is a component. Unfortunately, this seems to be a quantitative, as opposed to qualitative, component. It seems that a quota of vaguely comprehensible words must be uttered in order to achieve a passing grade. Besides that, most professors seem loath to criticize unintelligent or irrelevant comments when they are passed, and in fact display preternatural patience in the face of such an onslaught. This means that I can often be found silently doing my impression of Munch's "Scream" in a corner of the room.

After careful observation I have noted several categories of students. The first is the namedropping student who has fastidiously compiled a secret stash of famous people from Wikipedia. There's also the student for whom everything relates to her grandaunt's, er, famous last words circa 1965. Alas, there's the nauseating "Simple Truths" student who, having just escaped from kindergarten, naively believes that everything can be derived from the most insipid observations in his or her daily life. "I totally do not relate to pedophiles ... therefore Kant's categorical imperative is totally true!"

An exchange student friend of mine, horrified by the prospect of having to endure this hitherto unknown phenomenon for an entire semester, casually interrogated a professor about it. His laissez-faire reply? That most students weren't going to become academics but financial analysts and businessmen; there was therefore no point in being particular about what was being said within the classroom. Besides, discussions are a good thing.

It's true that lively and animated discussions are crucial to the learning experience. The keyword here, however, is "discussion." Proper discussions must include intelligent, well-thought questions, answers and arguments. A bunch of egoistic students clamoring for their 15 seconds of airtime does not a discussion make. Conversely, the student who speaks out only occasionally may be thinking carefully about what he will speak of, and may in fact articulate the most intelligent sentence of the entire session. The final travesty against reason and intellect is that those who make the most noise receive the highest "class participation" score. The reserved genius of few words is hysterically relegated to the dustbin of history.

How can this be avoided? Certainly not by placidly accommodating students who, inebriated with the sound of their own voice, continue to vocalize random and disconcertingly incoherent ideas self-importantly. There needs to be a point at which inconsequential tangents are rudely interrupted and their proponents led back to the main topic of discussion. Students should be glad if they are informed of the irrelevance of their comments. Were I talking rubbish, I would certainly appreciate being told so, much in the same way I would like to be immediately informed if I accidentally left the house in drag. No amount of nicety does the true intellectual any good in the long run. If calling them imbeciles seems a tad impertinent, a more sophisticated quote from the philosopher Wittgenstein will suffice. "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent." Johann Loh is a freshman from Singapore. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.