評(píng)論
打印
At the high school level I often taught courses in United States history and in American government. Whenever I taught either of these two subjects, there was a nightly homework assignment in current events. The average high school kid is woefully uninformed about anything unrelated to music, sports, and other forms of entertainment, so reading the actual news section of a newspaper was a completely new experience for most of them.
在高中階段我經(jīng)常教授有關(guān)美國(guó)歷史和美國(guó)政府的課程。只要教的是這兩門(mén)課程中的一門(mén)，每晚我都會(huì)布置時(shí)事作業(yè)。普通的高中孩子，對(duì)與音樂(lè)、運(yùn)動(dòng)和其他娛樂(lè)形式以外的任何東西都無(wú)知到可悲的程度，所以閱讀報(bào)紙上的真實(shí)的新聞版面對(duì)他們中的絕大多數(shù)而言是一種全新的體驗(yàn)。
Within a few weeks they got the hang of it and were actually surprised at their newly developed ability to carry on an intelligent conversation about what was going on in a world they hardly knew. Just as we were settling into our routine, a student's innocent observation jolted me. He said, "You know, Dr. Urban, for being such a positive guy, you sure give a negative homework assignment." Somewhat startled, I replied with, "What do you mean?" He simply stated that most of the news was bad news, and he added, "It's kind of a downer." He had me.
才幾個(gè)星期的時(shí)間，他們就掌握了其中的竅門(mén)，還實(shí)實(shí)在在地為自己新培養(yǎng)的能力感到吃驚，沒(méi)想到自己能夠就一個(gè)了解甚少的世界所發(fā)生的事情進(jìn)行智慧的交談。正當(dāng)我們開(kāi)始形成慣例時(shí)，一個(gè)學(xué)生的一句沒(méi)有惡意的評(píng)論讓我猛醒。他說(shuō)，“你知道嗎，厄本博士，對(duì)你這么一個(gè)積極的人而言，布置的這個(gè)家庭作業(yè)可真算是消極的。”我有點(diǎn)嚇住了，答了一句“你什么意思？”他只說(shuō)絕大多數(shù)新聞都是負(fù)面消息，然后加了一句，“有點(diǎn)讓人沮喪。”這番話(huà)一時(shí)把我問(wèn)住了。
We had a long class discussion about this, and I was surprised at how involved the students were. While we had several theories on the reasons for so much bad news, we all agreed on one thing: We needed to receive more good news.
我們?cè)谡n堂上長(zhǎng)時(shí)間地討論了這件事，學(xué)生們那么積極參與，讓我很吃驚。對(duì)于負(fù)面消息如此之多這一情況我們有好幾個(gè)不同的解釋?zhuān)贿^(guò)我們?nèi)假澩患拢何覀冃枰嗟暮孟ⅰ?/p>
