# 39: Apprenticeship VERSUS University Education?!
Story behind the Passage
I think a lot about education these days. In fact, I always think about education because it is my life — whether I like it or not. It has taken me up to the present to actually realize and acknowledge this because I always somehow rejected the idea of being a teacher. The part that I do not like about this is the meaning education has nowadays. People usually associate the concept with schools, universities, curricula — in one word: institutions. What they hardly ever think of first is: LEARNING.
That is sad.
We live in a world in which learning is everything.
If there is one thing that will feed you tomorrow.
It is learning today.
My title today is meant to be provocative. When I put “apprenticeship” in contrast to “university education,” I explicitly want to underline the opposites, even though I know, that there is some common ground. Or rather, there was. Maybe, this is the reason why I am thinking so much about education and its problems. I am not sure if there were so many problems in the past. At least, I see many today. And I guess, people in every generation see new problems where there are only old problems seen from a new perspective.
Daniel Coyle’s book is one among many that tells us how powerful learning is. It is the most powerful capacity humans have. And that is why it is so sad that our education system teaches us that learning is basically preserved for those who are already privileged and belong to the “learned class.” In Germany, this still means that mostly kids from academic families go to university. Wonderful people like Katja Urbatsch with her initiative ArbeiterKind.de in Germany and people in other countries have brought this to the attention of decision makers in society and they provide practical help for students to change this.
What I want to focus on today is an image of education that separates between theory and practice, between university education and apprenticeship. It is a false dichotomy and one that can soon break our neck in Germany. Well, if it has not done so already. No worries, I will not go into the entire history of what we call “dual education.” I am not a historian or a pedagogy professor. I am simply someone who has benefited a lot from our education system and can now only read books and keep on learning to continue educating myself and those who are seeking knowledge.
Actually, our universities are supposed to do that.
But by now, I think other people are doing a better job.
Or why do you think we have so many “coaches” and “accelerators” these days?
Coyle’s book basically demystifies or rather unravels the image most people have of “talent” as this inborn skillset that nobody else can catch up with. Instead, he shows that behind all outstanding abilities, there is above all one thing: practice, i.e., many hours of practice (~ 10,000 hours). And even though you do not necessarily need a teacher for all these hours of practice, it is good to have one if you do have questions. For certain skills that require the constant instruction from an outsider’s perspective, it is impossible to teach yourself everything. This is basically what “Socratic Dialogue” is all about. Go, google, if that does not ring a bell.
Am I talking about learning “skills” here?
Sure, I am. And that is one of the basic problems that I want to address today.
My Learnings
“Apprentices learned the craft from the bottom up, not through lecture or theory but through action…” Coyle discusses the concept of apprenticeship in the context of the guild system of Florence, the cradle of education in the European Renaissance. For artists, it might sound self-evident to learn their craft “bottom up,” through practical training. But the term apprenticeship is by far not bound to the arts and crafts. The term denotes the legal guardian contract that Coyle also mentions in the passage and generally refers to learning and teaching (Etymology).
In Germany, at least in the past, we have been proud of the so-called dual education system which translates into apprenticeship in English (“duale Ausbildung”). It means you spend most of your time in a company and usually one day per week in school. In this kind of education, you are indeed close to your “master.” In the arts and crafts, this is usually one boss who teaches you everything you need to learn in the course of two to three years. In bigger companies, you have several instructors in the course of the entire program.
Of course, depending on one person only as your teacher is a double-edged sword. But in the ideal case, you learn a lot — maybe even more than just by jumping around between different teachers or professors every other hour. I do not think that you can quantify the difference in terms of learning outcome. What I do think is that the experience itself, of accumulating knowledge and skills that are passed on to you directly from your “master,” is something that shapes you. This is because you learn what is really the most essential thing: learning itself. Not big institutions, not fancy furniture in some ‘creative spaces,’ not the newest technology. Yes, all these things are nice but the real essence of learning in an apprenticeship constellation is really easy:
You observe, you listen, you ask, you try things yourself.
I did my apprenticeship as an industrial clerk in a huge company and this was already a lot less “romantic” (in the sense of the Renaissance origin of apprenticeship) than in some smaller handicraft business. Still, I am very grateful I did it because I think, I learned more than I learned in university in the same amount of time. Well, this is again a matter of metrics and I am comparing apples and oranges. What I am simply saying is that I am still applying many of the skills I learned back then (even though I pretty much hated everything about the job I would have been doing for the rest of my life). And the reason is, I think, that I exactly learned it the way Coyle describes it: “bottom up.”
Most things that you encounter in the everyday-practice of a job comes to you without much preparatio. You are simply told to do XYZ without much context and with even less theory. And because there is pressure — there always is pressure when we are talking about business because things need to get done — you start acting immediately and as best as you can to not screw up completely. This also means that you are completely lost at the beginning and you feel really dumb.
And that exactly is a great way to learn anything.
Coyle also discusses how musicians learn playing an instrument this way or how athletes start their careers. Whatever it is: You always start on the level of being a complete amateur. Then, as you practice more, your skills start forming and you also start exploring the bigger picture. But this is the important part and the crucial difference to university studies: You start exploring the “theory” around what you are doing after actually practicing the task. That gives you a completely different approach to “theory.” Your motivation and mindset is just so different. You know exactly what you are looking for in the books you pick up or the questions you ask because you start with the biggest puzzle you are looking at in your practice. Questions like these usually start with “how” or “why.”
I have to admit, for me being an apprentice was not that easy. Partly that was because some of my instructors were really nasty assholes who simply enjoyed power play and bashing young people. Well, that is simply the downside of depending on one person as your “master.” The other difficult part was that I was not used to learning this way. I always enjoyed theory and probably even back then, I was a big picture thinker who longed for context to understand the role I was playing in the entire game. It made me crazy to just hear the sentence:
“You do not have to understand it. Just do it.”
Yes, I can only repeat myself, there is no simple ‘black and white’ logic when it comes to assessing the value of the apprenticeship system. But the value that I want to strongly highlight is without any doubt related to “action.” You learn that the doing part is essential. Without this part, all your thinking is worth exactly: 0. And that is something that made me become successful later on, especially in my university studies and career. No matter how much I enjoyed theory — and I still do so. I never doubted that deeds matter more than words. It just never occurred to me to trade one on for the other. To say it with a quote:
“You can only have two things in life, reasons and results. Reasons don’t count.” — Robert Anthony
When I look at many people in university who end up being stuck for many years, e.g., who spend five years or longer on their Ph.D. or who never finish some other degree, I feel quite sad about this. Do not get me wrong. I know that there are many reasons why you would not finish something. Life is not Disneyland and I myself did not finish my Business Studies program, for example. But the point is: The attitude makes all the difference. As soon as you start focusing on execution, the action part, you see that so many other things — including overthinking, as I would call it — create no value. So you can simply focus on what is important and if you do that, there is hardly any chance that you end up spending such a long time on stuff that creates really limited results.
Of course, you might argue now: Well, if the apprentices in Florence even spent five to ten years as apprentices, why rush? Sure, I am not saying learning does not need time. And in many professions, we still have fairly long education programs. Just think of physicians, for example. Yes, a medical doctor studies ‘only’ for four to five years, let’s say. But then the real training in the hospital follows until he/she is really considered a “master” in his/her craft (and medicine is a craft, by the way). With people studying for a “Dr. phil.,” which is simply an academic degree that does not even involve much/any practical output that people can use — except for some classes and books maybe — I do not see why you should not be able to come up with results a bit earlier (again, there are always special hardship exceptions).
“… a cooperative-competitive arrangement that today would be called social networking.” No worries, I am going to be much briefer on this one. The term that fascinates me about this sentence is “cooperative-competitive.” I extremely like this one. I personally love competition because I am a gambler. I like playing to win but I do not see any reason why this should not be built on a cooperative arrangement at the same time. Just imagine any kind of sport. Yes, you might be competing with your opponent in tennis or with the opposing team in soccer. But you are nevertheless connected by the common passion about the sport. And this shared passion is exactly what marks a social network which can then promote the results of individual members who benefit and might even outperform the competition.
“In short, apprentices spent thousands of hours solving problems, trying and failing and trying again, within the confines of a world built on the systematic production of excellence.” Almost every word in this sentence is a key term for understanding the difference between a real apprenticeship, some superficial training, and university studies. Especially the latter have in recent years tried to build up or further develop an image of excellence based on “universities of excellence.” At least in Germany, this has not led anywhere but it would go too far to explain this in detail now.
The important thing I want to get at is the aspect of problem solving. Just like I described above with respect to my own apprenticeship in industry: you will only encounter problems that need to be solved if you actually practice some trade or art or whatever. Yes, sure, you can form your “problems” in your mind and presumably “solve” them with smart answers. But you will quickly notice the difference. Again, going back to the quote by Anthony above, I would argue that “thought problems” are really only reasons for taking action. And if these thoughts do not lead to actual results, you have not solved any problem.
In order to do so, the only thing that is needed is indeed: The willingness to fail. And I think, this is the most important thing that is missing in our education system. This is the major reason why I am putting the apprenticeship education in opposition to the one in universities. It is such a shame that nowadays, our universities are staffed with people that do not embody the philosophy of trial and error because they simply do not act. They are not doers (I am talking about comprehensive universities here, not universities of applied sciences). They are not “masters” in the tradition of the guilds that take students by the hand and actually share stories of their own failure to teach the students/apprentices even more memorable lessons of how to improve their own practice. The only practical thing they teach, if you will, is writing and grading papers. Well, that is a starting point…
What frustrates me even more, however, is that many teachers in universities do not embody learning as a lifelong skill and pleasure anymore. And I am not blaming them for this. I know that many of them are simply drowning in work — stupid work, administrative bullshit that you do not need any degree for. But I am blaming them for not being smarter by investing their time into more valuable stuff. They could do that. University professors are not slaves, right? They do have free will power. Or do they not? Is the system the master and they are the apprentices who simply follow orders and never start thinking themselves? Have they unlearned learning as their №1 pleasure in life?
Unfortunately, there is a cultural problem behind this huge gap between practical and theoretical learning: Both parties, those defending and actually managing the apprenticeship system and those leading the university education do not see much value in the respective other. This especially holds true for the theorists who think they rule the world. Well, wake up! How many more education startups and online academies does it take to teach you, the classical universities, that actual problem solvers who really help the country move forward, need a different training than is offered by you? And different does not necessarily mean that everything needs to be replaced. No, not at all. But certain methodologies that started to gain the upper hand because the system moved farther away from the apprenticeship system need to be reconfigured.
If that does not happen, we will continue to see that the gap between universities and business, between theory and practice, and between society and university will get wider and wider. And that is something that really worries me and it also makes me sad. Somehow, I managed to grow because I benefited immensely from both worlds — the world of the Ivory Tower and the practical training world “out there.” If I were now forced to choose only one of them, my choice would be clear.
As a journalist just mentioned in a documentary I watched about the Royal family in the U.K. and Prince Harry:
“Some things you just cannot learn in university.”
Reflection Questions
1) Are you happy with your formal education?
2) If you were to become the “master” in some training program — what is a lesson that you would definitely like to pass on to your apprentices?
3) If you were to start a distant study program next month — what would it be?