Lesson23 Night School
美国夜校
Each weekday evening, a reverse rush hour takes place in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. While the average New Yorker is trudging home from their job, a few thousand others are piling into the three modern buildings that house the New School for Social Research. The 54-year-old institution is a full-fledged university, but most of its students are not concerned with accumulation credits or earning degrees. Nor are they apple-cheeked youngsters: a typical New School student is the wage-earning adult who has signed up for a course in anything from sociology to computer programming to creative knitting in an effort to broaden his intellectual or occupational horizons. "I don't want my mind to fall asleep while I have to work," says a young banker who has signed up for a course in psychology.
周一到周五的每天晚上，在曼哈顿的格林威治村都会出现一股反常的交通高峰。当普通的纽约人都在下班往家里赶的时候，几千人却涌入了“社会研究新学校”所在的三座现代化的大厦里。这所学校已经有54年的历史了，是一所颇有名声的大学，但是这所学校的学生并不关心积累学分或者拿到学位，他们也不是有着红扑扑脸蛋的年轻人。一名典型的“新学校”学生是有工作的成人，为了拓宽自己的智力或职业视野，他们报名参加了社会学、计算机编程、创造性编织等各种课程。“我可不想让我的大脑在我工作的时候睡着了”，一位报名参加了心理学课程的年轻的银行职员说。
The New School today remains the only degree-granting university in the nation devoted primarily to the education of adults. As such, it may well be riding the pedagogical wave of the future. Recently, the Educational Testing Service reported that nearly 80 million adult Americans want or need continuing education, but that less than half of them are getting it.
“新学校”当今仍然是全美国唯一一所主要从事成人教育的、有资格授予学位的大学。因此，它可以说是引领着未来的教学潮流。美国教育考试服务中心最近的报告显示，有将近八千万的成年美国人希望或者需要参加继续教育，但是他们中只有不到一半的人做得到
Reflecting this thirst for learning, enrolment at the New School has doubled in the past decade, and of the 13,000 students taking one or more of its 8,875 courses this semester, more than 80 per cent attend evening classes.
过去十年间，“新学校”的入学人数翻了一番，这也反映了人们对学习的渴望。学校这学期开设了8785门课程，13000名学生每人参加一门或多门课程，有80%的学生上的是夜校课程。