想要提高托福閱讀成績我們除了需要持之以恒的練習，更需要充分利用各類英語或雙語素材做好補充閱讀，培養(yǎng)對英語文章的敏感度和熟練度，這一定程度上也可以助力我們的托福寫作備考。下面我們來看一篇經(jīng)濟學人關于終身學習的文章。
Technology and education
Lifelong learning
It is easy to say that people need to keep learning throughout their careers. The practicalities are daunting
科技和教育
終身學習
人們需要終身學習，這一點知易行難
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.
當教育跟不上技術進步時，就會造成不平等。在創(chuàng)新到來之際，工人如果沒有技能使自己對雇主仍然“有用”，他們就會遭殃。而如果落后的工人太多，社會就開始崩塌。這一根本性的洞見極大影響了工業(yè)革命時期的改革者，推動了國家資助全民教育的普及。后來，工廠和辦公室自動化又引發(fā)了大學生人數(shù)猛增。教育和創(chuàng)新相輔相成，歷經(jīng)數(shù)十年，令繁榮之花耀眼綻放。
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，機器人和人工智能呼喚又一場教育革命。而這一次，工作生涯如此漫長而又變化迅速，只在人生初期強加更多教育已經(jīng)不足以應付。人們還必須能在整個職業(yè)生涯中獲取新技能。
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，正如我們本期特別報道所述，目前的終身學習主要是令成功人士受益，因此更可能加劇而非減輕不平等。如果21世紀的經(jīng)濟體不想要產(chǎn)生一個龐大的底層階級，政策制定者亟需制定措施，幫助國民在謀生的同時學習。而迄今為止，他們的抱負還小得可憐。
Machines or learning
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. 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.
機器還是學習
在青少年時強化學習，之后通過公司培訓加以補充，這種傳統(tǒng)的教育模式正在失效。原因之一是需要新的技能，而且還要不斷更新。制造業(yè)越來越多地需要腦力而非蠻力。從1996年到2015年，常規(guī)辦公職位在美國勞動力中所占的比例從25.5%下降到21%。單一穩(wěn)定的職業(yè)生涯已經(jīng)像旋轉式名片夾一樣一去不返了。
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.
在人生初期讓人們接受更高程度的正規(guī)教育并非解決之道。僅有16%的美國人認為四年的大學教育足以讓學生找到一份好工作。盡管職業(yè)教育能確保找到至關重要的第一份工作，但接受專門培訓的人往往比接受普通教育的人更早退出勞動大軍，可能是因為前者適應性較弱。
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.
與此同時，在職培訓也在萎縮。在美國和英國，在職培訓在過去20年里下降了大概一半。自雇人群正在增多，令更多的人要為自己的技能負責。在年紀較大的時候抽出時間獲得一個正規(guī)的資質是一種選擇，但要投入成本，而且大多數(shù)院校是針對年輕人開設的。
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%.
市場正在創(chuàng)新以讓工人能夠有新的方法學習和賺錢。從General Assembly到Pluralsight，各類供應商紛紛以推動和重啟職業(yè)生涯的承諾開創(chuàng)業(yè)務。大規(guī)模開放式在線課程(MOOC)不再講授柏拉圖或黑洞，而向幫助學生就業(yè)的課程傾斜。在優(yōu)達學城(Udacity)和Coursera，進修者付費學習低價的短期課程，獲得如自動駕駛汽車或安卓操作系統(tǒng)方面的“微證書”和“納米學位”。大學也開始提供在線學位，幫助專業(yè)人士更方便地提升技能。單是佐治亞理工學院(Georgia Tech)的碩士課程就能把每年美國計算機科學碩士的畢業(yè)人數(shù)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.
這些革新顯示了如何交織工作和學習。但是，如果任其自行發(fā)展，這一新生市場將會主要服務那些已經(jīng)具備優(yōu)勢的人。如果你在年輕時就享受課堂學習，那么日后學習起來也會更容易：在Coursera，大約80%的學生已經(jīng)擁有學位。在線學習需要一些IT知識，而在經(jīng)合組織國家里，四分之一的成年人沒有或只有很少的計算機經(jīng)驗。技能不用則退，但在很多低端工作中，工人基本沒有機會實踐技能。
Shampoo technician wanted
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.
招募洗發(fā)師
如果新的學習方式是要幫助那些最需要幫助的人，那么政策制定者應該尋求遠為根本性的舉措。因為教育是一種公益事業(yè)，其益處會延及整個社會，各國政府要發(fā)揮重要作用——不僅要增加投入，還得把錢花得明智。
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.
終身學習始于學校。一般來說，教育不應該有狹隘的職業(yè)性。學生需要從課程中學會如何學習和思考。注重“元認知”將幫助學生日后更好地學習技能。
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.
但最大的改變是讓所有人都能常態(tài)化地進行成人學習。一個方法是向國民發(fā)放抵用券，可用于支付培訓費用。新加坡就有這樣的“個人學習賬戶”。該國向所有25歲以上的國民提供資金，可用來選擇學習500種經(jīng)認可的課程。到目前為止，每個國民只領取了幾百美元，但這才剛剛開始。
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.
由納稅人付費的課程有可能被浪費。但企業(yè)界可以提供幫助，引導人們學習業(yè)界所需的技能，并和MOOC及大學院校合作設計有用的課程。企業(yè)還可以鼓勵員工學習。電信公司AT&T希望員工具備數(shù)字技能，它每年支出3000萬美元報銷員工的學費。工會也可以發(fā)揮作用，組織終身學習，尤其是幫助那些小公司的員工或自雇人士，因為這些人不大可能有公費培訓的機會。在英國，一個工會組織的培訓項目同時得到了左右兩派政黨的支持。
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.
要讓所有這些培訓有價值，政府需要大力降低執(zhí)業(yè)資格要求以及其他阻礙新人入行的門檻。例如，與其要求有300小時的實習來獲得做洗發(fā)工的資格，田納西州應該讓理發(fā)店自行決定雇誰最好。
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.
并非每個人都能成功應付正在變化的就業(yè)市場。受技術顛覆威脅最大的是那些藍領工人，其中很多人拒絕在醫(yī)療護理等快速發(fā)展的領域里承擔不那么“男子漢”的工作。但是，若要盡量減少因時代改變而落伍的人數(shù)，那么所有成年人都必須能夠獲得靈活而又實惠的培訓。在19和20世紀，教育有了令人震驚的進步。今天的抱負應當不遜當年。
