translation by Misspring

Misspring

Functional illiteracy seems to be increasing among both those who drop out of school and those who finish.Last year in New York city one out of every two people who took the examination to see whether they were fit to be telephone operators flunked.
  Yet the Reagan administration is dismantling the education and training programs of the Federal government.Many of them were severely slashed in last year's budget and again in this year's budget,and all of this is compounded by the additional cuts at the state and local levels.
  The economy is not going to thrive unless there is a major effort to upgrade the American labour force from the bottom to top to the bottom.After the sputnik shock, a rather minor but spectacular scientific defeat,the government embarked on a highly successful program to upgrade human skills.
  Unfortunately,the United States reached the moon first and most of the education and training programs were abandoned in the aftermath of what was also a rather minor,if spectacular.scientific victory.In the 1980s a much less dramatic but much more important economic defeat will require a similar,but this time sustained,effort to upgrade the quality of the work force.
   技能上的不足似乎不仅在那些辍学者中增加，在那些完成了学业的人当中也同样如此•。在纽约去年的一场应征电话接线员的考试中，参加的人有一半都没有通过。
   然而里根政府却还在不断地取消联邦政府制定的教育和培训项目。这其中有许多项目在去年和今年的财政预算中所占的比率都大大缩水。而各个州和地方的在这些项目上的进一步财政缩减则更加剧了它们的困境。
   如果不花大力气把美国的劳动力质量从根本上提升的话，我们的经济是不可能繁荣的。前苏联人造卫星的率先升天对美国来讲其实只是科技上一个微小的挫败，然而其影响却极其巨大。受此强烈震撼，美国政府发起了一场提升人类技能的计划，并取得了极大的成功。
   而美国的率先登月，即使是个很辉煌的成就，却也同样只是一个微小的科技上的成功。然而不幸的是，美国政府却在取得了此番成就之后摒弃了大部分的教育和培训系统。如今80年代的这场经济危机，虽然没那么剧烈，但意义却更加深远。我们需要为此做出类似于以往的努力来提升劳动力的质量，但这种努力需要更持久。

Cinderella

Good translation.