Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work

By Claire Cain Miller

For all the jobs that machines can now do—whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food—they still lack one distinctly human trait.They have no social skills.

[2] Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research.And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.

[3] The findings help explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists:the slowdown in the growth even of high-skill jobs. The jobs hit hardest seem to be those that don’t require social skills, throughout the wage spectrum.

[4] “As I’m speaking with you, I need to think about what’s going on in your head—‘Is she bored? Am I giving her too much information?’—and I have to adjust my behavior all the time,” said David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study.“That’s a really hard thing to program,so it’s growing as a share of jobs.”

盡管現在機器能從事很多工作，手術、開車、上餐等，但它們依然缺乏一種明顯的人類特征：社交能力。

[2]然而，分工合作、體恤他人、善于變通——這些能力在當今職場已顯得愈發(fā)重要。新的研究表明，自1980年以來，與其他職位相比，需要強大社交能力的職位增加最多。而自2000年以來，工資持續(xù)增長的只有那些要求兼具認知和社交能力的職位。

[3]這些研究結果有助于解釋一個令經濟學家困惑已久的謎題：高技能職位增幅竟也放緩。縱覽各行業(yè)工資水平，那些不需要社交能力的職位似乎受到的沖擊最大。

[4]“我跟你說話時，需要去思考你在想什么——‘她覺得無聊嗎？我給的信息量太大嗎？’——然后我得時時調整自己的行為。這確實很難編為程序，所以相關的職位有所增加?！贝骶S·戴明如是說。戴明是哈佛大學教育與經濟學副教授，剛發(fā)表了一篇新的研究報告。

[5] Some economists and technologists see this trend as cause for optimism: Even as technology eliminates some jobs, it generally creates others.Yet to prepare students for the change in the way we work, the skills that schools teach may need to change. Social skills are rarely emphasized in traditional education.

[6] “Machines are automating a whole bunch of these things, so having the softer skills, knowing the human touch and how to complement technology,is critical, and our education system is not set up for that,” said Michael Horn,co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, where he studies education.

[7] Preschool classrooms, Mr. Deming said, look a lot like the modern work world. Children move from art projects to science experiments to the playground in small groups, and their most important skills are sharing and negotiating with others. But that soon ends, replaced by lecture-style teaching of hard skills, with less peer interaction.

[5]這一趨勢讓一些經濟學家和技術人員認為有理由保持樂觀：技術是會淘汰一批工作，但總會創(chuàng)造另一批。然而還是要讓學生為這種工作方式的變化做好準備，因此學校教授的技能或許應該有所改變。傳統(tǒng)教育極少注重社交能力。

[6]邁克爾·霍恩是克萊頓·克里斯坦森研究所的聯合創(chuàng)始人，主要研究教育問題。他說：“機器可以自動完成這樣一大堆事情，所以擁有軟技能、知道與人為善、用人際溝通來完善技術至關重要，我們教育系統(tǒng)卻并未以此為宗旨。”

[7]戴明說，幼兒園的課堂更貼近現代職場。孩子們分成小組參加各種活動，從藝術項目到科學實驗再到操場玩耍，其中最重要的技能就是與他人分享和溝通?？上н@一切很快結束，取而代之的是課堂講授各種硬技能，同學間互動也少了很多。

[8] Work, meanwhile, has become more like preschool.

[9] Jobs that require both socializing and thinking, especially mathematically,have fared best in employment and pay,Mr. Deming found. They include those held by doctors and engineers. The jobs that require social skills but not math skills have also grown; lawyers and child-care workers are an example. The jobs that have been rapidly disappearing are those that require neither social nor math skills, like manual labor.

[10] Despite the emphasis on teaching computer science, learning math and science is not enough. Jobs that involve those skills but not social skills, like those held by bookkeepers, bank tellers and certain types of engineers, have performed worst in employment growth in recent years for all but the highest-paying jobs. In the tech industry, for instance, it’s the jobs that combine technical and interpersonal skills that are booming, like being a computer scientist working on a group project.

[11] “If it’s just technical skill, there’s a reasonable chance it can be automated,and if it’s just being empathetic or flexible, there’s an infinite supply of people,so a job won’t be well paid,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s the interaction of both that is virtuous.”

[8]同時，職場，變得更像幼兒園了。

[9]戴明發(fā)現，在就業(yè)和薪酬方面表現最佳的是要求兼具社交和思維尤其是數學思維能力的工作。這類職業(yè)包括醫(yī)生和工程師。需要社交能力而不需要數學能力的職業(yè)也有所增長，比如律師和保育員。一直處于快速消亡中的就是那些既不需要社交也不需要數學能力的職業(yè)，比如體力勞動。

[10]盡管我們重視計算機科學教育，但只學數學和科學還不夠。涉及這方面能力但缺乏社交技能的職業(yè)，像會計、銀行出納、某些行業(yè)的工程師，近年在就業(yè)市場的增長最慢，個別超高薪酬的除外。就拿技術行業(yè)來說，只有那種結合技術和社交能力的工作發(fā)展迅猛，比如在團隊項目里工作的計算機科學家。

[11]“如果只是技術方面的能力，有很大可能會被自動化取代；如果只要求能夠體恤他人，或者善于變通，這樣的人數不勝數，所以這樣的工作收入都不會太高。”麻省理工學院的經濟學家戴維·奧特爾說道，“兼具兩種才能者，為上?！?/p>

[12] Mr. Deming’s conclusions are supported by previous research, including that of Mr. Autor. Mr. Autor has written that traditional middle-skill jobs,like clerical or factory work, have been hollowed out by technology. The new middle-skill jobs combine technical and interpersonal expertise, like physical therapy or general contracting.

[13] James Heckman, a Nobel Prizewinning economist, did groundbreaking work concluding that noncognitive skills like character, dependability and perseverance are as important as cognitive achievement. They can be taught,he said, yet American schools don’t necessarily do so.

[14] These conclusions have been put into practice outside academia. Google researchers, for example, studied the company’s employees to determine what made the best manager. They assumed it would be technical expertise.Instead, it was people who made time for one-on-one meetings, helped employees work through problems and took an interest in their lives.

[15] Mr. Deming’s study quantifies these types of skills. Using data about the tasks and abilities that occupations require from a Department of Labor survey called O*NET1= Occupation Information Network職業(yè)資訊網絡，簡稱職訊網，美國勞工部統(tǒng)計局屬下著名的職業(yè)資訊網站，提供各種職業(yè)相關的資訊，并對每一種職業(yè)都有諸如“工作內容、所需知識、技術、能力、就業(yè)前景”等方面的詳細介紹。, he measured the economic return of social skills, after controlling for factors like cognitive skill, years of education and occupation.

[12]戴明的結論得到了之前一些研究的支持，其中包括奧特爾所做的研究。奧特爾認為，科技進步早已挖空了傳統(tǒng)的中等技能崗位，如文書或者工廠工作?，F代的中等技能工作需要結合技術專長和人際溝通能力，譬如物理治療或者項目承包。

[13]諾貝爾獎獲得者、經濟學家詹姆斯·赫克曼的研究得到突破性的結論：性格良好、為人可靠、堅忍不拔等非認知能力與認知能力同等重要。他說，這些能力可以學，然而美國的學校卻未必教。

[14]在學界之外，這些結論得以付諸實踐。例如，谷歌的研究人員分析公司雇員的情況，以確定是什么造就了優(yōu)秀管理者。有人猜測，這或許是技術專長所致。然而，抽空與人單獨交談，幫助手下渡過難關，關心他們的生活——這樣的人才是優(yōu)秀管理者。

[15]戴明對這些技能做了定量研究。他從勞工部的“職訊網”上獲得了某些職位的工作內容和所需技能方面的數據，在排除認知能力、教育年限、職業(yè)種類等因素的干擾之后，計算出了社交能力所帶來的經濟回報。

[16] The extent to which jobs required social skills grew 24 percent between 1980 and 2012, he found, while jobs requiring repetitive tasks, like garbage collecting, and analytical tasks that don’t necessarily involve teamwork,like engineering, declined.

[17] Mr. Deming explains it in terms of the economic notion of comparative advantage.

Say two workers are publishing a research paper. If one excels at data analysis and the other at writing, they would be more productive and create a better product if they collaborated. But if they lack interpersonal skills, the cost of working together might be too high to make the partnership productive.

[18] Women seem to have taken particular advantage of the demand for social skills. The decline in routine jobs has hit women harder than men. Yet women have more successfully transitioned into collaborative jobs like managers, doctors and professors.

That might be because, starting in infancy, females traditionally excel at things like social perceptiveness, emotional intelligence and working with others.

[19] These conclusions do not mean traditional education has become unnecessary, researchers say—in fact,traditional school subjects are probably more necessary than ever to compete in the labor market. But some schools are experimenting with how to add social skills to the curriculum.

[16]他發(fā)現，在1980年到2012年間，需要具備社交能力的工作增加了24%，而類似于垃圾清理這樣的重復性工作，還有像工程師這類不需要團隊合作的分析類工作，則有所減少。

[17]戴明采用經濟學中的“比較優(yōu)勢”概念來解釋這一現象。

比如，兩名員工要發(fā)表一份研究報告。一個擅長數據分析，另一個擅長論文寫作，如果兩人協同合作，他們會更加富有成效，報告完成得會更好。但如果他們缺乏人際溝通能力，那讓兩人一起工作則可能成本過高而難有成效。

[18]職場對社交技能的需求增多，女性似乎尤為獲益。重復性工作減少，對女性沖擊更大。然而，女性卻能順利轉型，從事一些協作性的職業(yè)，比如經理、醫(yī)生和教授。

這或許是因為傳統(tǒng)上，女性從嬰兒時期開始就更能察言觀色，情商更高，更擅長與人合作。

[19]研究人員說，這些結論并不意味著傳統(tǒng)教育失去了意義——事實上，要參與就業(yè)市場的競爭，傳統(tǒng)的學校課程比以往任何時候都更重要。但一些學校也在實驗，嘗試把社交能力納入課程大綱。

At many business and medical schools, students are assigned to small groups to complete their work. So-called flipped classrooms assign video lectures before class and reserve class for discussion or group work.

[20] The Minerva Schools in San Francisco, a start-up college, takes that approach. The idea is to transmit facts outside of class, said its dean, Stephen Kosslyn, and use class to teach effective communication and interaction. “It involves creativity, judgment, all that stuff that is hard for a machine to be programmed to do,” he said.

[21] Another way to teach these skills is through group activities like sports,band or drama, said Deborah Slaner Larkin, chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Students learn important workplace skills, she said: trusting one another, bringing out one another’s strengths and being coachable.

[22] Someday, nearly all work could be automated, leaving humans to revel in never ending leisure time. But in the meantime, this research argues, students should be prepared for the actual world of work. Maybe high schools and colleges should evaluate students the way preschools do—whether they “play well with others.”

在很多商學院和醫(yī)學院，會把學生分成小組去完成作業(yè)。所謂的“翻轉課堂”就是如此，上課前先讓學生看視頻，課堂上則進行討論或小組學習。

[20]舊金山的密涅瓦大學是一所新成立的學校，他們就采納了這種模式。校長斯蒂芬·科斯林說，他們的辦學理念是把實際知識留到課堂之外，把有效的溝通互動放到課堂之中?！斑@包括涉及創(chuàng)造、判斷等一切難以編程讓機器做的事。”他說。

[21]女子運動基金會的首席執(zhí)行官黛博拉·斯蕾娜·拉金說，團體活動如運動、樂隊或戲劇，是傳授這些技能的另一種方式。她說，學生會學到重要的職場技能：互相信任，發(fā)揮優(yōu)勢，虛心請教。

[22]終有時日，機器可以完成幾乎全部的工作，人類會擁有無數閑暇時光，可以盡情享受。但與此同時，研究也指出，學生應該為真實的職場做好充分準備。或許，中學和大學都應該像幼兒園那樣評估學生——看他們是否“合群”。