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January 6, 2006
France rediscovers the apprentice
I recently came across this interesting tidbit in a story about the French apprentices in the International Herald Tribune:
Germanic cultures preserved the traditions and spirit of apprenticeship while revolutionary France destroyed the guilds and the apprentice system with it in the 1790s. The system was re-established in France but remains much less widespread than in Germany.
Might this fact explain Germany's rise as an industrial power? Maybe, maybe not. As I understand it, the German apprentice system is more advanced than the British system as well the French. The US has always lagged in our apprenticeship programs.
The apprenticeship system is an important mechanism for passing on tacit knowledge. Such knowledge is key in skilled areas; less so in mass production activities. So a country whose economic development was based on precision engineering, such as Germany, is more likely to benefit from an apprenticeship system than an economy build more on the mass production of consumer goods, closer to the British and American experiences
The transfer of tacit knowledge is also important in innovation and creative activities. But in the I-Cubed economy, formal apprenticeships may be much less important that informal mentoring and networking. A formal apprenticeship passes down very specific skills in a defined context. There is also often a rigid hierarchy and an end point of learning that defines "mastery" - although in truth, the real masters of a craft never stop learning. The ability to absorb tacit knowledge from multiple sources in an ever changing context is more important in the I-Cubed Economy. Multiple mentors are common, with different sets of skills learned at different points in one's career.
So, rather than emulate the German apprentice program, France may do better in the future by emulating the American networking model. As much as that may pain my French friends to hear.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at January 6, 2006 12:18 PM
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