Posted on 06/23/2015 1:50:08 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
A University of Pennsylvania English course taught by a poet who performed for President Obama at the White House ended up exactly as the professor envisioned it: college kids watching porn.
“Wasting Time on the Internet,” a once-a-week creative writing course taught by Kenneth Goldsmith that required students to stare at a computer screen for three hours completed its first class this spring.
Goldsmith wrote last fall that students could use the three hours to watch porn, and then “use it as the basis for compelling erotica.”
“I’ve never taught this class before, but I have a hunch that it’s going to be a success,” he said.
At least one student agreed. Speaking to the College Fix, a female student who took the course described it as “one of the best classes I’ve ever taken.”
During the class students sat in a circle and pushed play on the same porno on multiple computers at the same time.
“It created a very uncomfortable environment for us—some of the class even got up part of the way through and left because they were uncomfortable,” the girl said.
It was “hard to really pinpoint… one thing that I learned,” about the course overall, she added.
The course cost approximately $3,202.
The goal of “Wasting Time on the Internet” was for students to surf the web and then write about it.
“What if these activities — clicking, SMSing, status-updating, and random surfing — were used as raw material for creating compelling and emotional works of literature?” the course description states. “Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook? Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed? Could we reframe the Internet as the greatest poem ever written?”
Goldsmith said “nothing was off limits” in an piece he wrote for the New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” blog before the class began.
Aside from porn, Goldsmith hoped that students would spend time on conservative media sites in order to be inspired for “hate-filled” material for a spy book.
“Students watching three hours of porn can use it as the basis for compelling erotica; they can troll nefarious right-wing sites, scraping hate-filled language for spy thrillers; they can render celebrity Twitter feeds into epic Dadaist poetry; they can recast Facebook feeds as novellas; or they can simply hand in their browser history at the end of a session and present it as a memoir,” he said.
However, the writing portion for the course, which is listed as a requirement for the English Creative Writing Track at UPenn, was dropped. Goldsmith told Slate he “eliminated the writing requirement and instead solicited activities for the class to do together.”
“What we create together is so much more exciting than any physical artifact we might take from it or produce afterward,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t even remember what we’ve done that day—that’s how strange, how ephemeral it is.”
Goldsmith previously taught a course about erotic acts and computer code. The course was described as “often violent and disturbing” and “not for the faint-hearted.” In another course, “Uncreative Writing,” he teaches his students to plagiarize.
As a poet, Goldsmith adapts the spoken words and writings of others as his own.
He passed the autopsy report of Michael Brown off as poetry, during a performance in March. His last line was, “The remaining male genitalia system is unremarkable.”
When he performed at the White House in 2011, Goldsmith read excerpts from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “To Brooklyn Bridge” by Hart Crane.
He then read his own poetry, which was a transcript of traffic reports from a New York City AM radio station.
Goldsmith says he “just kept dropping armatures” with his poetry, ending up with literal transcriptions of other people’s writing and language. He spent a year and a half working on his most famous book, Day, by reprinting every word that appeared in a single edition of the New York Times.
“It’s sort of that stupid and that simple,” he said.
History has demonstrated that a culture that has devolved into decadence and hedonism does not prosper or persist.
Well, look at the bright side. At least they weren’t getting credit for campaigning for Democrats or throwing Molotov Cocktails at Occupy Wall Street events.
So you spend $3,202 to prepare yourself for Future Government employment, I get it!
But they left out the 4 days of telework per pay period where you get to go shopping on the taxpayer dime.
These degenerate so called educators need to be fired and prosecuted
Nor does it deserve to. One of the most flagrant attacks of decadence in my lifetime was having to pass Obamacare before finding out what was in the bill. This government is indefensibly decadent, undemocratic, and bankrupt.
His poems include such hits as “There Once Was a Man from Nantucket.”
Ugh!
The crazy White woman who doesn’t want children because they would have White privilege is a professor of Womyn’s Studies at the University of Pennsylnania. Why would anyone send a child to be brainwashed by these Leftist loons?
Do you really think Christian kids stand a chance these days... no.
Before too long every class will have stuff like this.
Who would pay for a course titles “Wasting time on the internet” ? Wait..I know....people who don’t actually pay for their courses or parents who don’t care what courses their kids are taking...I’m sure there are others examples
Pardon me for being captain obvious, but that should read “White House Poet Taught Young Adults to Sit in Circles and Watch Porn for College Class”-as ridiculous and wasteful as this course was-unless the students were under 18, they are not kids in the sense implied-the headline sounds like this “poet” had grade-school kids watching porn in the class he taught-misleading at the very least...
U off Penn?? Seriously? I am no prude and am probably one of the most libertarian and politically incorrect people on FR. I was an animal in college and law school. Not even I would dream of taking that course. Then again, I paid for college myself.
Parents have only themselves to blame for sending their kids to some intellectual pig pen like this and paying big bucks to do so. Thank God some kids had the sense to get up and walk out. Try as they might, and they are trying mightily , the left is up against God and nature. Mother Nature has hard-wired kids to be repulsed by sexual activity as their bodies and minds are not yet attuned to engage in it. Not only for the complex emotions tied to sex but because , depending on the age the brain is telling the females ‘’this unit is not ready for procreation,access denied’’. It’s a survival mechanism so the species will survive.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. That’s $3k of daddy’s hard earned dollars or our tax payers’ dollars. Either way, it’s not just a waste of students’ time but a waste of $$$$ and minds. This is why college students can seem to graduate or it takes them 5-6 years. FYI, I buckled down and graduated in 3 years and that was before high school AP and college credits.
And hits like “I Love To Go Swimming With Bow-Legged Women!’’.
Bet they have several “safe places” on campus for these flakes.
According to COMMON CORE STANDARDS, you only need to have ‘words’ in your sentences. The order of the words is no longer important.
With part or full time jobs, my sibling and I chose our college courses wisely, since we were paying for most of them...
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