Technology and Education 科技与教育

Lifelong learning 活到老学到老

It is easy to say that people need to keep learning throughout their careers. The practicalities are daunting

人们需要坚持边工作边学习，这话说得容易，实际情况却不尽人意。

WHEN education fails to keep pace with technology, the result is inequality. Without the skills to stay useful as innovations arrive, workers suffer—and if enough of them fall behind, society starts to fall apart. That fundamental insight seized reformers in the Industrial Revolution, heralding state-funded universal schooling. Later, automation in factories and offices called forth a surge in college graduates. The combination of education and innovation, spread over decades, led to a remarkable flowering of prosperity.

当教育跟不上科技的脚步，其结果就是不平等。创新科技层出不穷，技术不再有用，吃亏的是工人——而如果被淘汰的工人达到一定数量，社会将开始四分五裂。在工业革命时代，这种基本观点抓住了改革者的心，随之而来的是由国家出资的普及教育的盛行。后来，厂房和办公室自动化带来了大学生的激增。几十年来，教育与创新相结合大行其道，造就了百花齐放的惊人繁荣。

Today robotics and artificial intelligence call for another education revolution. This time, however, working lives are so lengthy and so fast-changing that simply cramming more schooling in at the start is not enough. People must also be able to acquire new skills throughout their careers.

今天，机器人和人工智能呼吁着另一场教育革命。然而这一次，工作年限如此之长，变化发展如此之快，仅凭加大教育力度，已然无济于事了。人们还必须学会，从工作当中掌握新的技能。

Unfortunately, as our special report in this issue sets out, the lifelong learning that exists today mainly benefits high achievers—and is therefore more likely to exacerbate inequality than diminish it. If 21st-century economies are not to create a massive underclass, policymakers urgently need to work out how to help all their citizens learn while they earn. So far, their ambition has fallen pitifully short.

不幸的是，正如本期特别报告中所谈到的，今天，终生学习的存在主要让高成就人群收益——因此，它更倾向于令不平等加剧，而非消除。如果在21世纪，各国不打算制造出庞大的下层阶级，那么，决策者们就需要刻不容缓地研究对策，帮助国民们边工作边学习。目前，他们的斗志还远远不够。

Machines or learning 

机器当道，还是加强学习？

The classic model of education—a burst at the start and top-ups through company training—is breaking down. One reason is the need for new, and constantly updated, skills. Manufacturing increasingly calls for brain work rather than metal-bashing (seeBriefing). The share of the American workforce employed in routine office jobs declined from 25.5% to 21% between 1996 and 2015. The single, stable career has gone the way of the Rolodex.

从小拼命学习为主、公司职业培训为辅的经典教育模式正在坍塌。对不断更新的新技术的需求，是原因之一。在制造业中，越来越需要的是脑力工作，而非体力工作。从美国的劳动力就业情况看，1996年至2015年间，办公室日常工作的就业比例从25.5%下降至21%。就像旋转式名片架那样，一辈子只干一份稳定工作的情况已经一去不返了。

Pushing people into ever-higher levels of formal education at the start of their lives is not the way to cope. Just 16% of Americans think that a four-year college degree prepares students very well for a good job. Although a vocational education promises that vital first hire, those with specialised training tend to withdraw from the labour force earlier than those with general education—perhaps because they are less adaptable.

要求人们在年轻时接受越来越高的正规教育，并不是解决问题的方法。仅有16%的美国人认为，通过四年本科学习就可以将学生培养得很好，足以找到好工作。尽管职高教育可以保住至关重要的第一个饭碗，但是同接受了大学综合教育的人相比，接受技校培训的人们更倾向于被劳动力市场淘汰——或许是因为他们的适应能力稍逊一筹。

At the same time on-the-job training is shrinking. In America and Britain it has fallen by roughly half in the past two decades. Self-employment is spreading, leaving more people to take responsibility for their own skills. Taking time out later in life to pursue a formal qualification is an option, but it costs money and most colleges are geared towards youngsters.

同时，在职教育也在大不如前。在过去20年中，美国和英国的在职教育锐减近半。自主创业的人越来越多，导致更多的人需要考自己去想办法，拥有一技之长。在人到中年之后，再花时间去接受正规学位教育不失为一种选择，但是，这样做成本很高，而且大部分高校都是针对年轻人的。

The market is innovating to enable workers to learn and earn in new ways. Providers from General Assembly to Pluralsight are building businesses on the promise of boosting and rebooting careers. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have veered away from lectures on Plato or black holes in favour of courses that make their students more employable. At Udacity and Coursera self-improvers pay for cheap, short programmes that bestow “microcredentials” and “nanodegrees” in, say, self-driving cars or the Android operating system. By offering degrees online, universities are making it easier for professionals to burnish their skills. A single master’s programme from Georgia Tech could expand the annual output of computer-science master’s degrees in America by close to 10%.

有了市场创新，劳动者们得以通过新的方式，边工作边学习。从联合国大会到多视角在线教育（Pluralsight），各路教育机构均看好推进和重启职业发展的培训前景。大规模开放式网络课程（MOOCs）不谈柏拉图，不谈黑洞，只关注利于其学生找到好工作的课程。利用优达先在线大学（Udacity）和Coursera在线教育平台，进修者可以廉价的短期课程，获得各个领域的“小微证书”和“纳米学历”，比如无人车或安卓操作系统等等。通过提供在线学历，大学为专业人才提供了便捷途径，让他们在技术上精益求精。单是佐治亚理工学院的研究生课程，就能够将美国每年的计算机科学硕士学位产出提高近10%。

Such efforts demonstrate how to interleave careers and learning. But left to its own devices, this nascent market will mainly serve those who already have advantages. It is easier to learn later in life if you enjoyed the classroom first time around: about 80% of the learners on Coursera already have degrees. Online learning requires some IT literacy, yet one in four adults in the OECD has no or limited experience of computers. Skills atrophy unless they are used, but many low-end jobs give workers little chance to practise them.

这些努力例证了，如何去兼顾事业与学业。但是，倘若任其自由发展，这个新生市场将主要服务于优势人群。如果年轻时就爱读书，那么日后再学起来也比较容易：在Coursera在线教育平台上听课的人中，有80%都已拥有学历。在线学习要求学习者会用电脑，但是在经合组织成员国中，有四分之一的成年人没有用过电脑，或不太会用。熟能生巧，可是许多低端工作并未给劳动者提供使用电脑的机会。

Shampoo technician wanted 

招聘洗头工

If new ways of learning are to help those who need them most, policymakers should be aiming for something far more radical. Because education is a public good whose benefits spill over to all of society, governments have a vital role to play—not just by spending more, but also by spending wisely.

如果新的学习方式是为了帮助最需要学习的人，决策者们应该着眼更加根本的问题。因为教育是一种公共利益，它的好处将惠及全社会，政府的作用至关重要，不是花钱多就好，而是花得对才行。

Lifelong learning starts at school. As a rule, education should not be narrowly vocational. The curriculum needs to teach children how to study and think. A focus on “metacognition” will make them better at picking up skills later in life.

But the biggest change is to make adult learning routinely accessible to all. One way is for citizens to receive vouchers that they can use to pay for training. Singapore has such “individual learning accounts”; it has given money to everyone over 25 to spend on any of 500 approved courses. So far each citizen has only a few hundred dollars, but it is early days.

终生学习开始于学校。作为惯例，教育不应为职业所局限。课程安排得教会学生如何学习，如何思考。关注“元认知”（即人对自己的认知过程的认知），有助于学生们在日后生活中更好地选择职业技能。但是，终生学习最大的改变，是让所有成年人都可以每天学习。方法之一就是为公民提供学习券，用来支付培训费用。在新加坡，有专门的“个人学习账户”；国家掏钱给年满25周岁以上的人，让他们从500门认证课程中，任意挑选课程学习。目前，每位公民的学习基金仅为几百美元，不过，这只是个开端而已。

Courses paid for by taxpayers risk being wasteful. But industry can help by steering people towards the skills it wants and by working with MOOCs and colleges to design courses that are relevant. Companies can also encourage their staff to learn. AT&T, a telecoms firm which wants to equip its workforce with digital skills, spends $30m a year on reimbursing employees’ tuition costs. Trade unions can play a useful role as organisers of lifelong learning, particularly for those—workers in small firms or the self-employed—for whom company-provided training is unlikely. A union-run training programme in Britain has support from political parties on the right and left.

纳税人支付的课程也有被浪费的风险。但是，通过指引人们掌握所需技能，或通过与大规模开放式网络课程及高校合作，设计相关课程，行业也可以起到辅助作用。公司也可以鼓励员工学习。美国电话电报公司（AT&T）希望让员工学习数字技术，于是每年花费3000亿美元，报销员工的学费。工会可以发挥作用，组织终生学习，尤其是为小公司员工或自主创业人员组织学习活动，因为他们接触公司培训的机会较少。在英国，一个由工会负责的培训项目得到了左右两派政党的双重支持。

To make all this training worthwhile, governments need to slash the licensing requirements and other barriers that make it hard for newcomers to enter occupations. Rather than asking for 300 hours’ practice to qualify to wash hair, for instance, the state of Tennessee should let hairdressers decide for themselves who is the best person to hire.

要让所有这些培训物尽其用，政府需要降低行业准入要求，消除其他障碍，为新人步入职场提供便利。与其要求洗发工必须洗发300小时以上才有执业资格，田纳西州还不如让理发店自行决定谁是最佳雇佣人选。

Not everyone will successfully navigate the shifting jobs market. Those most at risk of technological disruption are men in blue-collar jobs, many of whom reject taking less “masculine” roles in fast-growing areas such as health care. But to keep the numbers of those left behind to a minimum, all adults must have access to flexible, affordable training. The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today.

并非人人都能成功地驾驭转型中的就业市场。最容易受到技术革新波及的是蓝领工人，他们当中，有许多人拒绝接受一些快速发展领域中不太“爷们儿”的工作，比如健康保健行业。但是，为了让落后劳动力的人数实现最小化，所有成年人都必须有渠道接受灵活的、实惠的培训。19世纪和20世纪，教育的进步令人叹为观止。而今，我们的志向理应不输当年。

原文出处：经济学人网站  

译者：linda10030

本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。