Is the Asian economy going to make apprenticeship relevant again in Europe?

Citation

Lopez Kindersley, L. and Coleman, J. (2005), "Is the Asian economy going to make apprenticeship relevant again in Europe?", European Business Review, Vol. 17 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2005.05417eab.003

Is the Asian economy going to make apprenticeship relevant again in Europe?

Keywords: Industrial countries, Apprenticeships, Economic development

Purpose - Aims to consider whether apprenticeship is relevant in Europe in the twenty-first century.Design/methodology/approach - An opinion piece based on current and recent trends in thinking about industrial activity and apprenticeships.Findings - The nature of economic developments in developing countries may force Europe to revert to the European tradition of excellence developed during the middle ages.Originality/value - Alerts Western industrialised nations to a revolution that may be forced on them.

In the middle ages apprenticeship was the foundation of all industrial activity. A craftsman was someone who really knew his trade after years of experience with a master. This means of passing on practical skills and the technical knowledge they embodied, through a process of learning by doing, lasted until well on into the eighteenth century, but with the onset of the industrial revolution the need for such skills in depth declined. Technicians who knew how to manage the newly invented machines appeared to provide the requirements of the new age. It left the majority of working men with low grade labouring jobs, such as shovelling the coal into the furnaces and cleaning and oiling the machinery.

In the fine arts and in some special professions, such as medicine, the need for some form of apprenticeship was self-evident and remained. An extremely good example of an apprenticeship system operating in the modern world is the lettering and carving workshop established by David Kindersley at Barton just outside Cambridge in 1946, which is worth examining in some detail before going on to consider the wider application of the principle of learning by doing in a Europe likely in the twenty-first century to be affected by the drastic consequences of the global economy. David Kindersley expressed the thought behind his work with exceptional clarity:

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  Life should be an education. Knowledge and experience go hand in hand. If one is greater than the other, the lesser will always tend to be the limiting factor. It is all too easy in workshop practice to find experience being held back by lack of knowledge, and the result is a rather limited understanding or outlook. However, it is often not appreciated that the opposite practice, found all too often in art colleges, is equally inhibiting. There the situation is frequently that of knowledge limited by a want of experience, resulting in the student feeling superior but frustrated, with true understanding limited to his or her own level of making. The student is then launched upon the world as an artist free of the inhibiting effects of proven techniques, tradition, science or clients. Indeed 'their' clients - the chosen few of 'informed opinion' - need no converting. They are ever eager to see the latest expression of free genius. To such the greatest sin is to be competent, qualified or professional.

David Kindersley did not merely write about this uncreative tendency for learning only to be valid if it is academic: he actually took in apprentices from the time he set up his workshop. He was devoted to passing on his trade - even though people discouraged him by asking, "Why make your own competition?" To this he reacted furiously: the more people create beautiful things, the more people will see them and want them, the more work there will be. This vision has certainly flourished as there are now many lettercutters working away. The sad thing is that only very few are training the next generation although their reluctance to take on an inexperienced pair of hands is understandable. In fact nothing is being done to help in this matter. Taking on an apprentice is expensive, time consuming and at times even dangerous. Stone is heavy! Yet if we do not share our skills and focus on the future we will all be the poorer for it.

Taking in apprentices is showing and handing on what can be done well: maybe only one or two things, but really well. David Kindersley described the process.

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  The first principle to be mastered (for working in a workshop) is a complete change of attitude to time. Complete mastery of a few elementary techniques must take place in an atmosphere of timelessness. Slowness alone will permit the head to guide the hand at first. Hurry, and the lesson will not be learned. Repetition will not lead to frustration when the apprentice can see around him, in the works of the masters, the fruits of concentration. Speed comes with time.

Once someone has completed the three-year apprenticeship in the Kindersley Workshop they will certainly gain a good understanding of letterforms, the tools to make them well and the different materials in which they may be made. Of course one hopes that the hand will be connected to the brain and that the work will be done in a "devout manner" (to quote Thomas Carlyle) - but even if devotion is something one cannot pass on, the dignity earned by doing a job well makes for a fulfilling and worthwhile life.

Another aspect of the importance of the principle of apprenticeship and the idea of "Learning by Doing" embedded in it, is that it tends to counter the influence of machines and computers that erode man's capacity for individual creativity. That is the paramount significance of such oases of excellence as the Kindersley Workshop. Nevertheless the principle it is based on must have a deeper significance and a wider application than just the fine arts. In one of his moods of reaction against making poetry too precious the Irish poet W.B Yates wrote:

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  Irish poets learn your trade

  Sing whatever is well made.

Surely the everyday objects and activities of life should have that special quality which not only satisfies our ordinary worldly needs, but also nourishes our spiritual natures such as even the humblest implements well and beautifully made do. We do not live by bread alone.

Today we seem to be facing a world in which the manufacture of mass-produced goods is being snatched away from us by the developing economy of China, so long resistant to the lure of the abundance of shoddy necessities and the utilitarian philosophy that underpins it. At the time of the Boxer revolution in China the Daily Express printed an interview with one of their number in London:

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  "You bring us," said this Chinaman, "inventions which we do not want, a religion which you yourselves are divided upon and these things, in defiance of protest, you force upon us. You even seize our harbours and towns."

  "Against all this we protest."

  "And now, having carefully considered the matter", we, of the so called Boxer's Society, have decided that the only way to get rid of you is to kill you. We are not naturally bloodthirsty. We certainly are not thieves. But when persuasion and argument and appeals to your sense of justice are of no avail, we find ourselves face to face with the fact that the only resource is to put you out of existence.

  "Consider your missionaries. They come, as I have said, with a new religion, on the main principles of which they are literally divided amongst themselves. They tell us that unless we accept their doctrines we shall suffer eternal punishment. They frighten our children and the more weak-minded of our older people, and create all kinds of dissension between families and individuals. No wonder we will not tolerate them."

  "If we wanted your railways and machines, we could, of course, buy them, but we do not. We have no use for them; we have learned to do without them. Yet you say you will force us to buy them, whether we will or no. Is that just? I say that it is impertinence - an outrage."

  "We could if we chose overwhelm the rest of mankind. That we do not do so is due to our civilization, our philosophy, and our morals. We are 400,000,000 human beings, and who could withstand us if we chose to assert our power? Do you think we are unconscious of it? On the contrary, we understand it only too well. Let the white races of the world appreciate the fact that we and not they are its masters."

  "Let us alone and we will let you alone".

This is a chilling reminder of what may still lie at the heart of the Chinese nation. The very nature of the economic developments, even more widely in the whole of Asia, may force us to fall back on our own great European tradition of excellence developed during the Middle Ages and largely forgotten since the Industrial Revolution. What exactly will be the trigger and how deep will be the social upheaval to make us do so we cannot predict. It may be an oil crisis. It may be the effects of global warming. Let us hope that it comes in stages and gives us time to adjust. Steadily rising oil prices seem an imminent possibility and possibly the least painful.

It is sad to see the Asians following the path that has led to the present unsustainability of so many of the great cities of Europe. On a recent BBC programme a young Chinaman said with great pride, "Yesterday we had bicycles, today we have mopeds, tomorrow we will all have motor cars". Of course the lure of the city with all the good things it offers draws the Chinese peasants out of their meagre agricultural existence, but the problems will multiply and be far worse than with the far smaller populations of Europe. How much better it would be for them, as it would have been for us here, if the efforts of government were directed to improving agricultural life and growing decent food which requires a lot more human labour than the modem factory fanning methods require.

Already in England people are beginning to move out into the country and are struggling to develop country crafts for far smaller financial rewards than the cities offered them. Certainly this is very limited at the moment but already the need for apprenticeship is being felt as old crafts are being revived. The need is to think in terms of human satisfaction and not solely in terms of money, although that is clearly an element in it, but perhaps it is a revolution that will be forced upon us.

Lida Lopez KindersleyNew European Publications, London, UKJohn ColemanKindersley Workshop, Cambridge, UK