美國大學奇葩課 如何上網浪費時間

Lucky Creative writing students in a University of Pennsylvania seminar will be able to earn academic credit for wasting time on the Internet next spring. The class, appropriately titled “Wasting Time on the Internet,” will require its students to spend the three-hour weekly sessions dividing their attention between the world of the Internet and the classroom.
明年春天，賓夕法尼亞大學研討會上幸運的創意寫作的學生可以從“浪費時間上網”上獲得學分。這個取名爲“浪費時間在網上”的班級要求，他們的學生花三個小時每週將注意力從班級裏轉到網絡世界。

The instructor, Kenneth Goldsmith, tells The Washington Post that he will strictly enforce “a state of distraction” among the students — exactly the sort of thing he and virtually every other professor on Earth spends time trying to eliminate from their classes.
導師肯尼斯·戈德史密斯告訴《華盛頓郵報》，他會嚴格逼迫學生執行“分心的狀態”——恰恰是那種地球上其他的教授告誡學生萬萬不可做的事情。

The purpose, Goldsmith says, is to have the students write something good at the end of the course, as a result of all that forced distraction. Goldsmith says he hopes the distraction will place his students “into a digital or electronic twilight,” similar to the state of consciousness between dreaming and waking that was so prized by the Surrealists.
戈德史密斯說，其目的就是讓學生在強制分心的情況下，能在課程結束時寫出好文章。戈德史密斯說，他希望分心能讓他的學生置地於“一個數碼的，或是說電子的朦朧狀態，”和超現實主義學家十分重視的夢與醒之間的意識狀態很相似。

Goldsmith seems to be hoping that forcing students to actively engage in what is usually seen as a bad classroom habit will make them “not want to do that” in other settings. Goldsmith’s highest hope for the class is that students will walk away better from the experience, “having theorized what they haven’t already theorized.”
戈德史密斯似乎是希望逼迫學生積極參與這個“壞習慣班級”能讓他們在其他地方“不再想這麼做了”。 戈德史密斯最希望通過這個班級，學生們從這次經驗教訓裏變得更好了，“會建立出出他們沒想過的理論。”

Of course, not everyone will agree that encouraging young, impressionable minds to divide their attention among a phone, a laptop and a professor is worth the Ivy League tuition. For his part, Goldsmith says he has yet to hear substantial negative criticism of his new course idea, noting that undergraduate education often makes space for ideas and experiments one wouldn’t otherwise get to try.
當然了，不是每個人都會同意讓這些年輕的，極易受影響的頭腦把注意力分散到手機，筆記本電腦上去，而且這個課能讓上常春藤盟校的學費花有所值。從這點上來說，戈德史密斯說他已經聽到了大量對他這門新課的負面批評，大學本科教育常常爲不能實現的想法和實驗提供空間。

“Creative writing and art is the place where you get to try out…things that might seem a little bit outrageous,” he says. “Isn’t that what an undergraduate education is, really? It sounds like a perfect undergraduate class to me.”
“創意寫作和繪畫是你要去嘗試的部分……事情發展可能看起來有一點讓人吃驚，”他說。“這不是大學本科教育該有的嗎，是嗎？對我來說這是最棒的本科課程。”