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.”

尽管现在机器能从事很多工作，手术、开车、上餐等，但它们依然缺乏一种明显的人类特征：社交能力。

[2]然而，分工合作、体恤他人、善于变通——这些能力在当今职场已显得愈发重要。新的研究表明，自1980年以来，与其他职位相比，需要强大社交能力的职位增加最多。而自2000年以来，工资持续增长的只有那些要求兼具认知和社交能力的职位。

[3]这些研究结果有助于解释一个令经济学家困惑已久的谜题：高技能职位增幅竟也放缓。纵览各行业工资水平，那些不需要社交能力的职位似乎受到的冲击最大。

[4]“我跟你说话时，需要去思考你在想什么——‘她觉得无聊吗？我给的信息量太大吗？’——然后我得时时调整自己的行为。这确实很难编为程序，所以相关的职位有所增加。”戴维·戴明如是说。戴明是哈佛大学教育与经济学副教授，刚发表了一篇新的研究报告。

[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]这一趋势让一些经济学家和技术人员认为有理由保持乐观：技术是会淘汰一批工作，但总会创造另一批。然而还是要让学生为这种工作方式的变化做好准备，因此学校教授的技能或许应该有所改变。传统教育极少注重社交能力。

[6]迈克尔·霍恩是克莱顿·克里斯坦森研究所的联合创始人，主要研究教育问题。他说：“机器可以自动完成这样一大堆事情，所以拥有软技能、知道与人为善、用人际沟通来完善技术至关重要，我们教育系统却并未以此为宗旨。”

[7]戴明说，幼儿园的课堂更贴近现代职场。孩子们分成小组参加各种活动，从艺术项目到科学实验再到操场玩耍，其中最重要的技能就是与他人分享和沟通。可惜这一切很快结束，取而代之的是课堂讲授各种硬技能，同学间互动也少了很多。

[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]同时，职场，变得更像幼儿园了。

[9]戴明发现，在就业和薪酬方面表现最佳的是要求兼具社交和思维尤其是数学思维能力的工作。这类职业包括医生和工程师。需要社交能力而不需要数学能力的职业也有所增长，比如律师和保育员。一直处于快速消亡中的就是那些既不需要社交也不需要数学能力的职业，比如体力劳动。

[10]尽管我们重视计算机科学教育，但只学数学和科学还不够。涉及这方面能力但缺乏社交技能的职业，像会计、银行出纳、某些行业的工程师，近年在就业市场的增长最慢，个别超高薪酬的除外。就拿技术行业来说，只有那种结合技术和社交能力的工作发展迅猛，比如在团队项目里工作的计算机科学家。

[11]“如果只是技术方面的能力，有很大可能会被自动化取代；如果只要求能够体恤他人，或者善于变通，这样的人数不胜数，所以这样的工作收入都不会太高。”麻省理工学院的经济学家戴维·奥特尔说道，“兼具两种才能者，为上。”

[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职业资讯网络，简称职讯网，美国劳工部统计局属下著名的职业资讯网站，提供各种职业相关的资讯，并对每一种职业都有诸如“工作内容、所需知识、技术、能力、就业前景”等方面的详细介绍。, he measured the economic return of social skills, after controlling for factors like cognitive skill, years of education and occupation.

[12]戴明的结论得到了之前一些研究的支持，其中包括奥特尔所做的研究。奥特尔认为，科技进步早已挖空了传统的中等技能岗位，如文书或者工厂工作。现代的中等技能工作需要结合技术专长和人际沟通能力，譬如物理治疗或者项目承包。

[13]诺贝尔奖获得者、经济学家詹姆斯·赫克曼的研究得到突破性的结论：性格良好、为人可靠、坚忍不拔等非认知能力与认知能力同等重要。他说，这些能力可以学，然而美国的学校却未必教。

[14]在学界之外，这些结论得以付诸实践。例如，谷歌的研究人员分析公司雇员的情况，以确定是什么造就了优秀管理者。有人猜测，这或许是技术专长所致。然而，抽空与人单独交谈，帮助手下渡过难关，关心他们的生活——这样的人才是优秀管理者。

[15]戴明对这些技能做了定量研究。他从劳工部的“职讯网”上获得了某些职位的工作内容和所需技能方面的数据，在排除认知能力、教育年限、职业种类等因素的干扰之后，计算出了社交能力所带来的经济回报。

[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]他发现，在1980年到2012年间，需要具备社交能力的工作增加了24%，而类似于垃圾清理这样的重复性工作，还有像工程师这类不需要团队合作的分析类工作，则有所减少。

[17]戴明采用经济学中的“比较优势”概念来解释这一现象。

比如，两名员工要发表一份研究报告。一个擅长数据分析，另一个擅长论文写作，如果两人协同合作，他们会更加富有成效，报告完成得会更好。但如果他们缺乏人际沟通能力，那让两人一起工作则可能成本过高而难有成效。

[18]职场对社交技能的需求增多，女性似乎尤为获益。重复性工作减少，对女性冲击更大。然而，女性却能顺利转型，从事一些协作性的职业，比如经理、医生和教授。

这或许是因为传统上，女性从婴儿时期开始就更能察言观色，情商更高，更擅长与人合作。

[19]研究人员说，这些结论并不意味着传统教育失去了意义——事实上，要参与就业市场的竞争，传统的学校课程比以往任何时候都更重要。但一些学校也在实验，尝试把社交能力纳入课程大纲。

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.”

在很多商学院和医学院，会把学生分成小组去完成作业。所谓的“翻转课堂”就是如此，上课前先让学生看视频，课堂上则进行讨论或小组学习。

[20]旧金山的密涅瓦大学是一所新成立的学校，他们就采纳了这种模式。校长斯蒂芬·科斯林说，他们的办学理念是把实际知识留到课堂之外，把有效的沟通互动放到课堂之中。“这包括涉及创造、判断等一切难以编程让机器做的事。”他说。

[21]女子运动基金会的首席执行官黛博拉·斯蕾娜·拉金说，团体活动如运动、乐队或戏剧，是传授这些技能的另一种方式。她说，学生会学到重要的职场技能：互相信任，发挥优势，虚心请教。

[22]终有时日，机器可以完成几乎全部的工作，人类会拥有无数闲暇时光，可以尽情享受。但与此同时，研究也指出，学生应该为真实的职场做好充分准备。或许，中学和大学都应该像幼儿园那样评估学生——看他们是否“合群”。