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1、学 海 无 涯Work incorporate America1 It is not surprising that modern children tend to look blank and dispirited when informed that they will someday have to go to work and make a living. The problem is that they cannot visualize what work is in corporate America.2 Not so long ago, when a parent said he
2、 was off to work, the child knew very well what was about to happen. His parent was going to make something or fix something. The parent could take his offspring to his place of business and let him watch while he repaired a buggy or built a table.3 When a child asked, What kind of work do you do, D
3、addy? his father could answer in terms that a child could come to grips with, such as I fix steam engines or I make horse collars.4 Well, a few fathers still fix steam engines and build tables, but most do not. Nowadays, most fathers sit in glass buildings doing things that are absolutely incomprehe
4、nsible to children. The answers they give when asked, What kind of work do you do, Daddy? are likely to be utterly mystifying to a child.5 I sell space. I do market research. I am a data processor. I am in public relations. I am a systems analyst. Such explanations must seem nonsense to a child. How
5、 can he possibly envision anyone analyzing a system or researching a market?6 Even grown men who do market research have trouble visualizing what a public relations man does with his day, and it is a safe bet that the average systems analyst is as baffled about what a space salesman does at the shop
6、 as the average space salesman is about the tools needed to analyze a system.7 In the common everyday job, nothing is made any more. Things are now made by machines. Very little is repaired. The machines that make things make them in such a fashion that they will quickly fall apart in such a way tha
7、t repairs will be prohibitively expensive. Thus the buyer is encouraged to throw the thing away and buy a new one. In effect, the machines are making junk.8 The handful of people remotely associated with these machines can, of course, tell their inquisitive children Daddy makes junk. Most of the wor
8、kforce, however, is too remote from junk production to sense any contribution to the industry. What do these people do?9 Consider the typical 12-story glass building in the typical American city. Nothing is being made in this building and nothing is being repaired, including the building itself. Con
9、structed as a piece of junk, the building will be discarded when it wears out, and another piece of junk will be set in its place.10 Still, the building is filled with people who think of themselves as working. At any given moment during the day perhaps one-third of them will be talking into telepho
10、nes. Most of these conversations will be about paper, for paper is what occupies nearly everyone in this building.11 Some jobs in the building require men to fill paper with words. There are persons who type neatly on paper and persons who read paper and jot notes in the margins. Some persons make c
11、opies of paper and other persons deliver paper. There are persons who file paper and persons who unfile paper.12 Some persons mail paper. Some persons telephone other persons and ask that paper be sent to them. Others telephone to ascertain the whereabouts of paper. Some persons confer about paper.
12、In the grandest offices, men approve of some paper and disapprove of other paper.13 The elevators are filled throughout the day with young men carrying paper from floor to floor and with vital men carrying paper to be discussed with other vital men.14 What is a child to make of all this? His father
13、may be so eminent that he lunches with other men about paper. Suppose he brings his son to work to give the boy some idea of what work is all about. What does the boy see happening?15 His father calls for paper. He reads paper. Perhaps he scowls at paper. Perhaps he makes an angry red mark on paper.
14、 He telephones another man and says they had better lunch over paper.16 At lunch they talk about paper. Back at the office, the father orders the paper retyped and reproduced in quintuplicate, and then sent to another man for comparison with paper that was reproduced in triplicate last year.17 Imagi
15、ne his poor son afterwards mulling over the mysteries of work with a friend, who asks him, Whats your father do? What can the boy reply? It beats me, perhaps, if he is not very observant. Or if he is, Something that has to do with making junk, I think. Same as everybody else.在美国大公司工作要是有人跟现在的孩子说他们长大后
16、要“去工作以谋生”，他们往往会表现出一脸的茫然和沮丧，这并不奇怪。问题在于，他们想象不出美国的大公司里都有哪些工作。早些年，当家长说他要去工作了，孩子很清楚他去做什么。他不是去制造东西就是去修理东西。父亲可能会带着孩子去他干活的地方，让他看着自己修四轮小车，或是做桌子。要是孩子问“爸爸，您是干什么的？”，爸爸会用孩子能理解的语言回答，比如：“我是修蒸汽机的”，或者“我是做马项圈的”。现在还是有些父亲在修蒸汽机或是做桌子，但绝大多数人都不干这个了。现在，大多数的父亲坐在有玻璃外墙的大楼里，做着孩子们根本理解不了的工作。当被问到“爸爸，您做什么工作？”时，他们的回答往往让孩子大惑不解。“我是推销空间的。”“我做市场研究的。”“我是数据处理员。”“我在公关部工作。”“我是系统分析师。”这些解释对小孩子来说
