原文出处：2017年1月经济学人封面文章
原文作者：经济学人
总结翻译：一切都还不晚
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图片来自网络：终身学习
It is easy to say that people need to keep learning throughout their careers. The practicalities are daunting.
对人们说要终身学习是一件很简单的事，但是在实际操作过程中未免会让人感到畏惧。
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.
当教育跟不上科技发展的步伐，结果往往就会导致不平等。当一个人不能拥有对雇主有用的技能，那么当变革降临时，这些人就会遭殃。然而，假如这样的人变得越来越多时，社会就将面临着崩塌。在工业革命时，这一根本性的洞察被改革者们抓住，而后推动了国家性质的大学教育。后来，随着工厂的自动化及办公自动化的出现，引发了大学毕业生的激增。教育及改革之间这种相辅相成的联系持续了好几十年，也令不同寻常的繁荣之景象遍地开花。
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.
如今机器人以及人工智能呼唤着新一轮的教育改革。然而这一次变革里，我们的职业生涯变得如此之久，变化如此之快，由此看来仅仅是依靠在人生初期强加更多的学校教育是远远不够的，人们必须学会如何在整个职业生涯里不断的获得新的技能。
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.
然而不幸的是，就像我们本期特别报道所阐述的一样，终身学习更多的是让已获得较高成就的人受益，而且这更有可能增加不平等而不是减少不平等，如果不想在21世纪的经济体内产生更多的底层阶级，那么就亟待需要政策制定者们想出更好的办法去帮助他们的公民学会在谋生的同时去学习。但是截至到目前，政策制定者吋门的抱负还依旧很小。
Machines or learning 机器还是学习?
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 constant ly 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.
在青少年时期强化教育，在工作后通过公司的培训来加以补充知识，这一经典的教育模式逐渐失去作用。其中的原因之一就是，社会需要的是新的并且在不断更新的知识及技能。在制造行业，相比体力劳动者，脑力工作者的需求越来越大。从1996-2015年，在美国的劳动市场上普通的办公职位的比例从25.6%下降到21%。单一的，稳定的职业生涯已经成为过去式。
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.
在人生初期就要求人们接受更高程度的正式教育并非应对之策。在美国，仅仅只有16%的人认为四年的大学教育有助于毕业生找到一份好工作。尽管职业培训对获得至关重要的第一份工作有保证意义，然而，相比哪些受过普通教育的的人，那些经过职业培训的人更容易早早的从职业市场里退出，或许就是因为这些人的适应能力太弱了吧。
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 nore 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，在岗培训正在萎缩。在过去的20年里，美国和英国的在岗培训大概萎缩了一半。自我雇佣人员正在增加，结果是很多人必须为自己的技能负责，在年老时花时间去获得一个正规的资格IT是一种选择，但是这要花费很多的钱，并且大多数的大学仅仅是针对年轻人设立的。
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 (M00Cs) have veered away from lectures on Plato or black holes in favour of courses that make their studens more employable. At Udacity and Coursera self-improvers pay for cheap,short programmes That bestow "microcredentials"and"nano-degrees"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%.
市场上的创新，让工人们有了新的方法去学习和挣钱。不论是General Assembly还是Pluralsight，各类供应商纷纷都在创建有关推动和重启职业生涯业务的承诺。大规模开放式在线课程(慕课)不再讲授关于柏拉图或者黑洞相关的课程，而是更多的讲授那些能够帮助学生能更好的被雇佣的课程。在优达学城和Coursera(Udacity and Coursera)上学习者可以为便宜的、短期的课程支付费用，而后获得比如自动驾驶以及安卓操作系统这些课程的"微证书"和"纳米学位。通过提供在线学位，大学可以更加方便的为专业人士提供技能。每年，单单就是佐治亚理工大学就能将美国计算机科学硕士学位的丰收生提高近10%的比例。
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 enjoy 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.
这些努力为我们展示了如何交错进行工作与学习。但是，如果仅仅任由这些意志发展，那么这些新兴市场将会变成主要为哪些已经拥有优势的人群服务。如果你很乐意进行课堂式的学习，那么在往后的日子里也更加容易再学习。80%在Coursera上的学习者是已经获得学位的，在线学习要求学习者拥有一定的IT知识，然而在OECD经合组织国家里有将近1/4的成人没有或者仅有一点点的计算机知识 (OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development经济合作与发展组织)技能会退化，除非不断的被使用到，但是许许多多低端的工作使得工人们能够练习这些技能的机会变得非常之少。
Shampoo technician wanted 招募洗发技师
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要帮助哪些非常需要帮助的人们，政策制定者们需要制定更加有远见的根本性的措施。因为，教育的目的是使公众受益，这些益处会在全社会内延伸开来，政府在其中扮演着一个重要的角色，不仅要在教育上舍得花钱，更要更加明智的花钱。
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.
终身学习从学校教育开始。通常，教育不应该仅仅局限于职业培训，这些课程需要教会小孩子如何学习和思考。注重“元认知”将有助于他们在日后的生活中掌握技能。
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.
但是，最大的改变是似使得成人能够将学习常态化。一个方法是向民众发放抵用券，人么可以用这些抵用卷去参加培训-新加坡就有这样的“个人学习账户”，这个账户为每个超过25岁的公民提供资金让他们能够用于支付超过500多个认证过的课程。虽然到目前为止，每个公民仅仅只能领取几百美金，但是这只是开始。
Courses pairl 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.
这些由纳税人付费的课程有可能被浪费掉，但是企业可以帮助人们向他们所需要的技能靠近，另外通过和MOOCs以及大学合作来设计与企业相关的课程。
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 program in Britain has support from political parties on the right and left.
公司也同样可以鼓励员工学习。电讯公司AT&T，希望员工具备数字技能，他们每年在用于员工学费上的报销达到3000万美元。工会其实也可以在这里面扮演重要的角色，组织员工进行终身学习，特别是那些在小公司工作或者是自我雇佣者，这些人不太可能获得培训的机会。在英国，一个由工会主导的培训项目同时得到左右两派政党的支持。
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.
为了使所有的培训有价值，那么政府就应该降低职业资格要求以及扫除其他阻碍新人进入这一领域的障碍。相比于要求洗头工要有300小时的练习才能获得在理发店做洗头工的资格，田纳西州更应该放权让理发店自行决定去雇佣谁。
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.
并不是所有人都能成功的应对这一变化的就业市场。蓝领工人确实是最容易受到技术颠覆而承担最大风险的人，其中他们当中的很多人是拒绝在诸于健康护理这一快速发展的行业里承担不那么“男子汉”的工作。但是，为了使得这些落后的群体变小，那么所有成年人必须要获得灵活的、可以担负得起的培训。在19和20世纪里，我们看到教育有了很大的进步，我想今天的抱负应该不能低于那个时代。
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