This article presents the first demonstration of active control of terahertz waves in classical electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) metamaterials at room temperature by integrating photoactive silicon (Si) islands into functional unit cells. The EIT metamaterial consists of a cut wire (CW) and two split-ring resonators (SRRs), with Si islands positioned in their gaps. The active control of the EIT resonance is demonstrated through optical pump-terahertz probe (OPTP) measurements. Theoretical calculations and numerical simulations show that the modulation is due to a change in the damping rate of the dark mode caused by the increased conductivity of the Si islands under photoexcitation. This work demonstrates an optically active classical analogue of the quantum EIT phenomena in metamaterials. The active tuning of group delay and group refractive index may have promising applications in terahertz wireless communications. It may also inspire interest in developing electrical and mechanically tunable EIT metamaterials, resulting in a wide range of novel compact slow light devices. The EIT effect is a quantum interference effect that occurs in three-level atomic systems and gives rise to a sharp transparency window within a broad absorption spectrum. This effect modifies the dispersive properties of an otherwise opaque medium, leading to slow light phenomena and enhanced nonlinear effects. However, the demands of stable gas lasers and low temperature environments severely hinder the implementation of EIT in chip-scale applications. Recently, analogues of EIT-like behavior in classical systems, such as coupled resonators, electric circuits, and plasmonic structures, have attracted enormous interest. These artificial structures possess EIT-like resonances due to Fano-type linear destructive interference, but avoid the experimental requirements of quantum optical implementations. The EIT metamaterial was fabricated on a Si-on-sapphire wafer with a 500-nm-thick undoped Si film and a 495-μm-thick sapphire substrate. The metamaterial sample was fabricated with Si islands by reactive ion etching, followed by deposition of 200-nm-thick aluminium that forms the CW and SRR-pair patterns. The fabricated sample array occupies an area of 10 × 10 mm. An electro-optic time-resolved OPTP system was used to carry out the measurements. The 2.5-mm diameter terahertz beam was collimated on the metamaterial array with electric field parallel to the CW. An optical pump beam (50 fs, 1.35 mJ per pulse at 800 nm with a 1-kHz repetition rate) with a spot diameter of 10 mm enables a uniform excitation aperture for the terahertz transmission. A bare sapphire wafer identical to the sample substrate serves as a reference. The measured transmission through the EIT metamaterial sample and the blank reference has a time extent of the terahertz pulse scans of 12 ps to removeThis article presents the first demonstration of active control of terahertz waves in classical electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) metamaterials at room temperature by integrating photoactive silicon (Si) islands into functional unit cells. The EIT metamaterial consists of a cut wire (CW) and two split-ring resonators (SRRs), with Si islands positioned in their gaps. The active control of the EIT resonance is demonstrated through optical pump-terahertz probe (OPTP) measurements. Theoretical calculations and numerical simulations show that the modulation is due to a change in the damping rate of the dark mode caused by the increased conductivity of the Si islands under photoexcitation. This work demonstrates an optically active classical analogue of the quantum EIT phenomena in metamaterials. The active tuning of group delay and group refractive index may have promising applications in terahertz wireless communications. It may also inspire interest in developing electrical and mechanically tunable EIT metamaterials, resulting in a wide range of novel compact slow light devices. The EIT effect is a quantum interference effect that occurs in three-level atomic systems and gives rise to a sharp transparency window within a broad absorption spectrum. This effect modifies the dispersive properties of an otherwise opaque medium, leading to slow light phenomena and enhanced nonlinear effects. However, the demands of stable gas lasers and low temperature environments severely hinder the implementation of EIT in chip-scale applications. Recently, analogues of EIT-like behavior in classical systems, such as coupled resonators, electric circuits, and plasmonic structures, have attracted enormous interest. These artificial structures possess EIT-like resonances due to Fano-type linear destructive interference, but avoid the experimental requirements of quantum optical implementations. The EIT metamaterial was fabricated on a Si-on-sapphire wafer with a 500-nm-thick undoped Si film and a 495-μm-thick sapphire substrate. The metamaterial sample was fabricated with Si islands by reactive ion etching, followed by deposition of 200-nm-thick aluminium that forms the CW and SRR-pair patterns. The fabricated sample array occupies an area of 10 × 10 mm. An electro-optic time-resolved OPTP system was used to carry out the measurements. The 2.5-mm diameter terahertz beam was collimated on the metamaterial array with electric field parallel to the CW. An optical pump beam (50 fs, 1.35 mJ per pulse at 800 nm with a 1-kHz repetition rate) with a spot diameter of 10 mm enables a uniform excitation aperture for the terahertz transmission. A bare sapphire wafer identical to the sample substrate serves as a reference. The measured transmission through the EIT metamaterial sample and the blank reference has a time extent of the terahertz pulse scans of 12 ps to remove