Halfway through the semester in his market research course at Roanoke College last fall, only moments after announcing a policy of zero tolerance for cellphone use in the classroom, Prof. Ali Nazemi heard a ring. Then he spotted a young man named Neil Noland fumbling with his phone, trying to turn it off before being caught. "Nell, can I see that phone" Professor Nazemi said, more in a command than a question. The student surrendered it. Professor Nazemi opened his briefcase, produced a hammer and proceeded to smash the offending device. Throughout the classroom, student faces went ashen. "How am I going to call my Morn now" Neil asked. As Professor Nazemi refused to answer, a classmate offered, "Dude, you can sue. " One thing we should be clear about was the episode in his classroom had been plotted and scripted ahead of time, with Nell Noland part of the charade all along. The phone was an extra of his mother’s, its service contract long expired. Professor Nazemi, in a telephone interview last week, attested to the exasperation of countless teachers and professors in the computer era. Their permanent war of attrition with defiantly inattentive students has escalated from the pursuit of pigtail-pulling, spitball-lobbing and notebook-doodling to a high-tech arsenal of laptops, cellphones Blackberries and the like. The poor school teacher or or now must compete with texting, instant- messaging, Facebook, eBay, YouTube, Addictings. Corn and other poxes(瘟疫，灾难)on pedagogy. "There are certain lines you shouldn’t cross," the professor said. If you start tolerating this stuff, it becomes the norm. "The more you give, the more they take. Multitasking is good, but I want them to do more tasking in my class. " All the advances schools and colleges have made to supposedly enhance learning— supplying students with laptops, equipping computer labs, creating wireless networks— have insteadenabled distraction. Perhaps attendance records should include a new category: present but otherwise engaged. "I am so tired of that excuse," said Professor Bugeja, may he live a long and fruitful life. "The idea that subject matter is boring is truly relative. Boring as opposed to what Buying shoes on eBay The fact is, we’re not here to entertain. We are here to stimulate the life of the mind. " "Education requires contemplation," he continued. "It requires critical thinking. What we may be doing now is training a generation of air-traffic controllers rather than scholars. And I do know I’m going to lose. " Not, one can only hope, without fight. In the end, as science-fiction writers have prophesied for years, the technology is bound to outwit the fallible human. What teacher or professor can possibly police a room full of determined goof-offs(游手好闲者)while also delivering an engaging lesson Halfway through the semester in his market research course at Roanoke College last fall, only moments after announcing a policy of zero tolerance for cellphone use in the classroom, Prof. Ali Nazemi heard a ring.