TFA misses a key difference between apprenticeship and classroom learning. Apprentice training tends to be one-on-one. When classroom instruction is done one-on-one, learning dramatically improves. This is called the "two sigma problem" in the educational literature. Ignoring this aspect gives the other factors discussed in TFA exaggerated significance.
I would wager the benefits of this model come mostly from the 2 sigma boost one gets from one on one instruction and not from any sort of optimal skill tree progression a master would impart on a student in a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge and skill acquisition.
I learned in college that I didn't learn anything until I worked the problem sets.
(It always seemed like I learned it, but when faced with the problem sets I discovered I hadn't learned anything yet.)
It's the same with everything. You can watch a yootoob video on rebuilding a carburetor all day, but you don't know nuttin until you take it apart yourself.
I decided to learn to ride a dirtbike. I took some personal instruction from an expert, and promptly crashed. Again and again and again. Finally, my body figured out how to coordinate the controls.
Can't learn how to double clutch downshift from watching a video, either.
Medieval craftsmen often ran what we would consider to be sweatshops, with many young (i.e. child) apprentices banging out work and not receiving much instruction in exchange. We're romanticizing and idealizing a past that was, in realty, often quite exploitative.
There are reasons why we started sending children to schools rather than businesses for basic education. There is also little need to reach back to medieval times when comparatively less exploitative (but still imperfect) apprenticeship systems are alive and well in the trades today.
One-on-one practical instruction related specifically to what you want to do is awesome, but there are a lot of difficulties in incentivizing people to supply such instruction.
It's still that way. Germany has an apprenticeship system that is supposed to work just like the medieval system: You work in a company for 2-3 years at low pay, but you get trained in return. (Nowadays you spend some of that time in a trade school). The promise often is that if you do good, the company will hire you as a regular employee afterwards.
Unfortunately, experiences vary. The promise works out for some, but others have a shitty boss that does not teach them anything and makes them do menial jobs that do not require or teach any special skills (e.g. cleaning up the workshop or cooking coffee).
I've deeply studied the apprentice programs in medieval Europe; your claims don't align with guild law, nor the motivations of the guilds themselves (to create protective but longterm market-satisfying services and goods; i.e. to stay in business and prevent cheap knockoffs, at the cost of inhibiting innovation).
Apprenticeships certainly weren't more abusive than the typical alternatives: serf labor, or servant jobs. (One of the key differences between servants and apprentices in medieval England, for instance, was that you weren't allowed to beat your apprentices.)
Often exploitative? Sure. Most power structures are. But it absolutely was a system that guaranteed rights to the worker, which made it rise far above most employment situations of that time.
It's not that bad in theory, but it's true that modern "no homework!", "no boring practice!" etc directions have done a lot of damage during last decades. But it answers quite well to common complaints why we are still learn to solve quadratic function in school although almost nobody uses it later in their lives? It's because quadratic function is a simplest way to lay a foundation to understand a tons of broad theoretical concepts about functions – turning points, zeros, decreasing, increasing, symmetry etc.
Fortunately this model is still partially used for some careers like medicine and veterinary practices where you have a mandatory internship of at least a year before you can be admitted as a practicing GP or Vet.
I'm not sure if concerete seeing/doing is the only, or even most effective, way to learn.
I've often learned by recalling the concepts from a lecture, reasoning about the material, and imagining what some of the problems would look like while sketching out solutions in my head. It's not any easier than doing the homework, but it is more convenient and flexible. And it can sometimes help with physical skills.
Theory is still important because it communicates how other people understand what they do. But it's certainly not a replacement for reasoning and experience.
I've found the best model of learning is to... not have a "learning process" in the first place. I try to understand as much as possible from as many angles as possible. This means big concepts, minutae, my ideas, other people's philosophies, imagined scenarios, hands-on-experiences, tangentially related concepts, and so on. Being able to answer questions or do the task is more of a side-effect than the intent.
compulsory education is a main pillar of the twisted power structure in our society.
power in society comes from a knowledge gap, and powerful people have all the incentives to sustain it. consequently education is a battleground, and we, the honest people, have pretty much lost the battles for about a century now.
the OP only makes sense when also considering this aspect of the question.
Honestly, it's not worth your time, a lot of presumptions, false premises and incomplete hypothesis. Also, apprenticeship didn't disappear, it's still very much in use in many countries. The focus is just different. Classroom education allows a plethora of secondary skills to be trained without the pressure of performance. For some, it's essential.
Much of Europe still has apprenticeship programs for the trades. The loss of this in the US and the UK shows in the quality of work: anyone can claim to be a carpenter, or painter, or whatever: whether or not they have any training.
I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes. The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.
The author is a good writer, able to expand upon (and illustrate) ideas articulately and convincingly. However, quite a lot of this doesn't quite apply to actual practice in education, particularly in science.
High-school and undergraduate science classes tend to pair lectures with labs. Practical work is very much the focus of those labs, and the lab instructors work closely with students who need help. And a postgraduate degree typically involves a student working side-by-side with a professor on practical work.
As for the pyramid model, I think the author makes some good points, especially for the grade-school level. However, it's simply a fact that being comfortable with adding comes in handy before moving on to multiplying.
Good teachers find ways to motivate students, and adjust those ways as the years flow by. They know how to do their job, and I trust them to find the best practices.
One thing I've heard from many teachers, especially those who are notably effective, is that teaching theorists are not of much help. And I see that in the silly trends that higher-ups impose on teachers. That way of teaching multiplication that has worked for generations? No good -- we must scrap it. The practice of teaching students to write cursive? So quaint - time to toss that in the trash bin. Years later, I see the results of these trends, when students come to university.
The problem of teaching theorists coming up with silly ideas is a result, I fear, of the system of educating educators. How do you get a PhD in a subject? You have to come up with a new idea. Nobody got an advanced graduate degree in education by writing a thesis that said "teaching is fine as it is." No, that PhD student has to say "this is broken, and here's how to fix it." But some things just aren't quite broken, not really. Sure, some adjustments might be helpful. More one-on-one tutoring would be great. Although then, the non-theorist immediately sees a problem: we don't have enough teachers, as it is.
Apprenticeship is generally for the so-called servile arts. The article completely neglects medieval education in the form of the liberal arts, and specifically the trivium and quadrivium. These are experiencing a minor resurgence in various forms in classical education curricula.
People back then just needed to learn one skill, say baking. Then they ply that trade for their lives.
Our economy changes so fast that we need more generalized skills to adapt. If you were apprenticed as a telephone operator, what would you have done? So we learn math, science, communication, etc.
Kids are absolutely right - much of it you will never use to make money. But if you learn how to learn, then that will help make you successful no matter where you go.
So I don't know what medical education is like in other parts of the world, but in Austria it involves a lot of practice. Doctors spend a lot of time practicing medicine under supervision before they are allowed to practice on their own. Specialists work as "assistant doctors" for a few years before they can open their own specialist practice.
It's not a question of theory or practice; you obviously need both to learn advanced skills.
This is a very utilitarian view of learning. Mass education isn't meant just to teach you marketable skills, it's quite explicitly designed to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation. Plus in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, with similar goals in mind.
It seems that the author prefers to ignore the fact that, throughout history, apprenticing has been reserved for the common people, while teaching was reserved for their masters, the rich and the powerful.
Having both is better, but at some point you need to learn the theory.
I think even more so apprenticeships were for skilled workers or somewhat "middle-classes". Majority that is farmers well either you worked with your parents or seek employment from someone else in various farming jobs. Sure they trained you to do that, but it was not so much complex jobs but labour.
> Classes are divorced from the practical applications of learning. Apprenticeships train in exactly the situation you’d want to apply the skill.
Hmm .... Something like in the movie "The Hunt for Red October", the US Navy wanted:
(1) Start with recordings by US submarines of underwater sounds, and write software to estimate the power spectra using the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and the Blackman and Tukey, "The Measurement of Power Spectra".
(2) Given ships at sea and a war, how long would the US submarines last? Start with some WWII analysis of search and encounters by Koopmans and do a Monte-Carlo Markov process, generate many independent sample paths and average.
Gee, how could I do those without my academic courses in analysis and probability? And there are more examples, including the crucial, original core math in my startup.
I like that we talk about practice, and we need to add this to our learning. Even more now, when apprenticeships are a dying practice and everyone is vibe-working.
But dismissing theories, and just saying “most theories are wrong, anyway” smells too strongly of anti-intellectualism, and it just rubs me in the wrong way. I don't like this trend at all.
Theory is as important as practice. The two depend on each other.
I've done an apprenticeship in IT and CS, the first two years of it felt more intense than my 4 years of university education. We used to have waves of exams every 6 weeks for the first year. Then on the second, every 8/12. Was crazy but it was thrilling. 16yo me was incredibly happy to have gone to trade school instead of high school.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 54.8 ms ] threadThe best way to learn how to do something is to do it. There's no substitute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany
(It always seemed like I learned it, but when faced with the problem sets I discovered I hadn't learned anything yet.)
It's the same with everything. You can watch a yootoob video on rebuilding a carburetor all day, but you don't know nuttin until you take it apart yourself.
I decided to learn to ride a dirtbike. I took some personal instruction from an expert, and promptly crashed. Again and again and again. Finally, my body figured out how to coordinate the controls.
Can't learn how to double clutch downshift from watching a video, either.
There are reasons why we started sending children to schools rather than businesses for basic education. There is also little need to reach back to medieval times when comparatively less exploitative (but still imperfect) apprenticeship systems are alive and well in the trades today.
One-on-one practical instruction related specifically to what you want to do is awesome, but there are a lot of difficulties in incentivizing people to supply such instruction.
Unfortunately, experiences vary. The promise works out for some, but others have a shitty boss that does not teach them anything and makes them do menial jobs that do not require or teach any special skills (e.g. cleaning up the workshop or cooking coffee).
Apprenticeships certainly weren't more abusive than the typical alternatives: serf labor, or servant jobs. (One of the key differences between servants and apprentices in medieval England, for instance, was that you weren't allowed to beat your apprentices.)
Often exploitative? Sure. Most power structures are. But it absolutely was a system that guaranteed rights to the worker, which made it rise far above most employment situations of that time.
I've often learned by recalling the concepts from a lecture, reasoning about the material, and imagining what some of the problems would look like while sketching out solutions in my head. It's not any easier than doing the homework, but it is more convenient and flexible. And it can sometimes help with physical skills.
Theory is still important because it communicates how other people understand what they do. But it's certainly not a replacement for reasoning and experience.
I've found the best model of learning is to... not have a "learning process" in the first place. I try to understand as much as possible from as many angles as possible. This means big concepts, minutae, my ideas, other people's philosophies, imagined scenarios, hands-on-experiences, tangentially related concepts, and so on. Being able to answer questions or do the task is more of a side-effect than the intent.
power in society comes from a knowledge gap, and powerful people have all the incentives to sustain it. consequently education is a battleground, and we, the honest people, have pretty much lost the battles for about a century now.
the OP only makes sense when also considering this aspect of the question.
This is just blatantly wrong. If nothing else I myself have shown dogs how to solve problems, but here's a link to Wikipedia for good measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals
I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes. The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.
High-school and undergraduate science classes tend to pair lectures with labs. Practical work is very much the focus of those labs, and the lab instructors work closely with students who need help. And a postgraduate degree typically involves a student working side-by-side with a professor on practical work.
As for the pyramid model, I think the author makes some good points, especially for the grade-school level. However, it's simply a fact that being comfortable with adding comes in handy before moving on to multiplying.
Good teachers find ways to motivate students, and adjust those ways as the years flow by. They know how to do their job, and I trust them to find the best practices.
One thing I've heard from many teachers, especially those who are notably effective, is that teaching theorists are not of much help. And I see that in the silly trends that higher-ups impose on teachers. That way of teaching multiplication that has worked for generations? No good -- we must scrap it. The practice of teaching students to write cursive? So quaint - time to toss that in the trash bin. Years later, I see the results of these trends, when students come to university.
The problem of teaching theorists coming up with silly ideas is a result, I fear, of the system of educating educators. How do you get a PhD in a subject? You have to come up with a new idea. Nobody got an advanced graduate degree in education by writing a thesis that said "teaching is fine as it is." No, that PhD student has to say "this is broken, and here's how to fix it." But some things just aren't quite broken, not really. Sure, some adjustments might be helpful. More one-on-one tutoring would be great. Although then, the non-theorist immediately sees a problem: we don't have enough teachers, as it is.
Our economy changes so fast that we need more generalized skills to adapt. If you were apprenticed as a telephone operator, what would you have done? So we learn math, science, communication, etc.
Kids are absolutely right - much of it you will never use to make money. But if you learn how to learn, then that will help make you successful no matter where you go.
It's not a question of theory or practice; you obviously need both to learn advanced skills.
Having both is better, but at some point you need to learn the theory.
Hmm .... Something like in the movie "The Hunt for Red October", the US Navy wanted:
(1) Start with recordings by US submarines of underwater sounds, and write software to estimate the power spectra using the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and the Blackman and Tukey, "The Measurement of Power Spectra".
(2) Given ships at sea and a war, how long would the US submarines last? Start with some WWII analysis of search and encounters by Koopmans and do a Monte-Carlo Markov process, generate many independent sample paths and average.
Gee, how could I do those without my academic courses in analysis and probability? And there are more examples, including the crucial, original core math in my startup.
But dismissing theories, and just saying “most theories are wrong, anyway” smells too strongly of anti-intellectualism, and it just rubs me in the wrong way. I don't like this trend at all.
Theory is as important as practice. The two depend on each other.