美国国家公共电台 NPR Century-Old Decisions That Impact Children Every Day

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

School architecture has changed over generations. We've gone from one-room schoolhouses to open classrooms, from blackboards to whiteboards to tablets. And yet, schools designed for one era often have to meet the needs of students for generations to come. Anya Kamenetz, of the NPR Ed team, takes us to a 90-year-old school in New York where you can walk through history all the way to the present.

ANYA KAMENETZ, BYLINE¹: Near Manhattan's garment district stands the former Straubenmuller Textile High School.

ALEXANDRA LANGE: Half of a city block - it's huge.

KAMENETZ: Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic. Her new book is "The Design Of Childhood." We've come here to see how the decisions made by architects and designers shape the way children learn and teachers teach. Our first stop is the big historic lobby - the year, 1929. The walls were painted in frescoes² by artists for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Lange says this school is a classic example of a building boom that started when big city public schools began replacing the old one-room schoolhouses. Straubenmuller was a vocational high school, the first one ever built to serve the local textile industry.

LANGE: So this school had a room with weaving in it. It had a room with fake department store windows.

KAMENETZ: We huff and puff³ up the stairs to the fifth floor classrooms. This was the era of conformity⁴, says Lange.

LANGE: If you measure a classroom in St. Louis or Chicago or New York from 1925, the proportions are probably going to be within a foot of the same.

KAMENETZ: Rooms were typically built for 56 students. The windows here start about three feet up. And they go all the way to the ceiling - more than 12 feet high. This wasn't exactly a flexible layout. Classroom desks had cast-iron pedestals fixed⁵ to the floor.

LANGE: The light was ideally supposed to come over their left shoulder, illuminate⁶ their book open in front of them. And that way, they would have less eyestrain.

KAMENETZ: Of course, this plan assumed that every single student was right-handed. Now, we're going to fast-forward a few decades. Alexandra Lange says that starting around the middle of the 20th century, school design started to loosen up. And lesson plans did too.

LANGE: So we've taken the elevator to the seventh floor, and it immediately feels really different.

KAMENETZ: Today, this building hosts six different New York City public schools all packed in together. The seventh floor belongs to a public middle and high school called Quest to Learn, which uses game-based and project-based learning. This is what they call the commons.

LANGE: There's a curve at the end of the hallway. And there's an open sort of lounge space where kids are sitting on poofs and other soft furniture.

KAMENETZ: We walk up to two kids sprawled⁷ out in the hallway working on an assignment. Their names are Damion Albert and Robert Parker. And they're in sixth grade.

DAMION ALBERT: Mostly I'm out here because it's hot in our classrooms. Our class is so noisy.

ROBERT PARKER: A lot of distractions⁸.

LANGE: Do you guys distract each other?

ROBERT: No.

KAMENETZ: How come?

ROBERT: We're best friends.

LANGE: There was definitely a feeling, at a certain point, that those fixed rows of desks were not the way to get kids to learn - not the way to get kids to be creative.

KAMENETZ: In the experimental 1970s, this idea was taken to the limit. Schools were built without interior walls at all. They were called open plan. And they were groovy but too loud. OK, let's get up to 2018. It's an era rich in creativity even if it's not rich in investments. Orlando Garcia teaches 10th-grade English.

ORLANDO GARCIA: So out of "Fahrenheit⁹ 451," they discuss the perils¹⁰ of inadequate¹¹ school systems. So then they look at the problems within their current school system, identify those problems and then research solutions.

LANGE: He says one year the kids came up with the idea of putting tennis balls in the feet of the desks and chairs. So now his class sounds like this...

(SOUNDBITE OF CHAIRS MOVING QUIETLY)

KAMENETZ: ...Instead of this.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHAIRS MOVING LOUDLY)

GARCIA: Why do teachers always have desks in traditional formations? It's because getting them into those nontraditional formations sometimes takes time and-or getting a class back together after the noise disruption takes time out of the classroom instruction.

LANGE: Sometimes you can just buy what you need to solve this problem, but that's not possible for a public school. And so the tennis balls are actually a great hack¹².

KAMENETZ: They're not as beautiful as the WPA mural in the lobby. But they are useful and another way the students have made this 90-year-old space their own. Anya Kamenetz, NPR News, New York.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 frescoes   

n.壁画( fresco的名词复数 )；温壁画技法，湿壁画

参考例句：

• The Dunhuang frescoes are gems of ancient Chinese art. 敦煌壁画是我国古代艺术中的瑰宝。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The frescoes in these churches are magnificent. 这些教堂里的壁画富丽堂皇。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 puff   

n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气

参考例句：

• He took a puff at his cigarette.他吸了一口香烟。
• They tried their best to puff the book they published.他们尽力吹捧他们出版的书。

4 conformity   

n.一致，遵从，顺从

参考例句：

• Was his action in conformity with the law?他的行动是否合法？
• The plan was made in conformity with his views.计划仍按他的意见制定。

5 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

6 illuminate   

vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释

参考例句：

• Dreams kindle a flame to illuminate our dark roads.梦想点燃火炬照亮我们黑暗的道路。
• They use games and drawings to illuminate their subject.他们用游戏和图画来阐明他们的主题。

7 sprawled   

v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着）

参考例句：

• He was sprawled full-length across the bed. 他手脚摊开横躺在床上。
• He was lying sprawled in an armchair, watching TV. 他四肢伸开正懒散地靠在扶手椅上看电视。

8 distractions   

n.使人分心的事[人]( distraction的名词复数 )；娱乐，消遣；心烦意乱；精神错乱

参考例句：

• I find it hard to work at home because there are too many distractions. 我发觉在家里工作很难，因为使人分心的事太多。
• There are too many distractions here to work properly. 这里叫人分心的事太多，使人无法好好工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 Fahrenheit   

n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的)

参考例句：

• He was asked for the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit.他被问到水的沸点是华氏多少度。
• The thermometer reads 80 degrees Fahrenheit.寒暑表指出华氏80度。

10 perils   

极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境）

参考例句：

• The commander bade his men be undaunted in the face of perils. 指挥员命令他的战士要临危不惧。
• With how many more perils and disasters would he load himself? 他还要再冒多少风险和遭受多少灾难？

11 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

12 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。