• The Craftsman Richard Sennett

    The journeyman

    The apprentice goldsmith was place-bound while learning how to smelt, purify, and weigh precious metals. These skills required hands-on instruction from his master. Once the apprentice had locally presented his chef d'oeuvre, however, he could move from city to city as a journeyman, responding to opportunities. The traveling goldsmith journeyman made his presentation élevé to the corporate body of master craftsmen in foreign cities. Through his managerial talents and moral behavior he had to convince these strangers that he could become one of them. This migratory dynamism was built into medieval goldsmithing.

    Sedentary guilds, by contrast, appeared to him insert and 'corrupt'. The good master, in his words, "presides over a traveling house."

    Never really thought about the etymology of the term 'journeyman' – literally, someone who journeys in search of new places to refine their craft.

    • The Art of Training Young People Benjamin Parry

      Apprenticeships are a path to a thick skilfulness in a craft and a real solve for the problems of training and helping the next generation of young workers become productive members of the workforce, but they are also more than this.

      The reason that in early modern Europe an apprentice was called a freeman or journeyman at the end of their tenure was that they were qualified to be a 'free' citizen or to ‘journey’ out into the world. They were prepared to live and work in a city without restriction. The apprenticeship had liberated them not just economically but socially.

      ...Like the army or the monastery apprenticeships are a sacrifice. The apprentice sacrifices many of the best years of their youth and the multiplicity of career options that they could see before them to undergo a specific course of training. Yet, just like the army or the monastery apprenticeship also represents a gift of freedom. At the end of their tenure the apprentice has been given an identity and a chance to navigate society as they see fit.

      In our noble drives to democratize access to the liberal arts and our cultural valourization of the dropout entrepreneur we have inadvertently looked down on the creative capacity, economic windfall, and social liberation that can come from apprenticeships. As we seek as individuals and as a society to find new avenues for building capability we would be wise to rediscover this form.