Apprentices and Masters in Arts, Trades and Disciplines, a classical view of learning and teaching
December 28th, 2007
In many arts, trades and disciplines, the apprentices learn to follow and
apply rules and patterns, steps and methods, practices given or
demonstrated by masters, and to do so with sufficient care to obtain
repeatable, reproducible and verifiable results. The apprentice in the
first instance follows the customs and conventions of the master.
In this education, rules and patterns, steps and methods or practices may
be learnt with or without explanation of why they work or why are they
are followed. But over time, the apprentice may see or the master
may demonstrate how to combine rules and patterns, steps and methods, or
practices to compound them to form further ones in a repeatable,
reproducible and hence verifiable manner. That process of combining
or compounding lends or creates a hierarchical structure to the learning
and mastery of the rules and patterns, steps and methods, or practices.
The extent to which the apprentice may meet and obtain an
operational command of art, trade or discipline may be subjective - some
apprentices will develop abilities beyond that of their master, while
others will equal or develop lesser skills. Masters and apprentices alone
and in groups may accumulate rules and patterns, steps and methods, or
practices to share and extend in a repeatable, reproducible and therefore
verifiable manner. Moreover some rules and patterns will fall into disuse
or be forgotten while newer ones arise. Each participant in the art,
trade or discipline will see practices come and go, and may in time, see
why.
Intelligence within an art, trade or discipline appears and is used when
or while apprentices and masters are carefully to apply their practices,
carefully, while learning about the benefits, flexibility, limitations
and origins of elementary or compounded (combined) practices. In this,
there may some be approximations or some uncertainty known to the master,
if not the apprentice, through trial and error, and/or stories of what is
feasible or not. The master of an art, trade or discipline in
meeting situations that have been handled before or not, will look for
practices that work, and try to duplicate or refine them, and if need-be
and if-possible, invent new practices to handle new situations.
Operational command of a discipline may be enhanced and advanced by
stories or theories to explain why rules and patterns work. On the
other hand, the latter may also unnecessarily inhibit and limit the
operational command. Whence not all is certain.
Over years and decades, the customs and conventions of an art, trade or
discipline in being refined may become more and more contrived and cease
to be immediately obvious to the apprentice. Whence the apprentice
needs a guide or a master to show what is possible, and self-instruction
is impeded. The operational command of an art, discipline and
trade with a history of custom and convention including a hierarchical
organization in which some skills and concepts depend on earlier ones in
ways that took time and effort to discover and perfect requires guidance
from masters of the art, discipline or trade. The apprentice is
well-advised to seek that guidance and stand on the knowledge and wisdom
of others, including practical and theoretical knowledge of the benefits,
limits and origins of steps and methods, to avoid an ad hoc,
incomplete and most likely slow, construction or reconstruction of the
latter skills and concepts.
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