Technologies of Learning
Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to the End of the Ancien Regime
By (author) Bert De Munck
The importance of training and education is on the increase. While the production of ‘human capital’ is seen as a motor for a competitive economy, skills and expertise proof to be necessary for social mobility. Remarkably, in conceiving modern forms of ‘apprenticeship’, several mechanisms from the acien regime, seem to return. The difference between public and private initiative is disappearing, education and training is being confused, and in order to acquire generic skills as flexibility, communicability, self-rule, creativity and so on, youngsters have to learn ‘in context’. Even for maths, scholars now talk of ‘situated learning’.Before the advent of a formal schooling system, training took place on the shop floor, under the roof of a master. The apprentice not only worked but also lived in his master’s house and was thus trained and educated at the same time. In cities, this system was formally complemented by an official apprenticeship system, prescribing a minimum term to serve and an obligatory masterpiece for those who wanted to become masters themselves. Traditionally, historians see this as an archaic and backward way of training, yet this book’s aim is to show that is was instead a very flexible and dynamic system, perfectly in tune with the demands of an early modern economy.In order to understand it fully, however, we should differentiate the informal training system organised via a ‘free market’ of indentures on the one hand and the institutionalised system of craft guilds on the other. In Antwerp, early modern guilds had a project of ’emancipating’ their members. They didn’t simply produce certain skills, but through a system of quality marks defended the honour of craftsmen. This is the difference with current practices. By representing hands-on skills as superior, guilds supplied a sort of symbolic capital for workers.
The importance of training and education is on the increase. While the production of ‘human capital’ is seen as a motor for a competitive economy, skills and expertise proof to be necessary for social mobility. Remarkably, in conceiving modern forms of ‘apprenticeship’, several mechanisms from the acien regime, seem to return. The difference between public and private initiative is disappearing, education and training is being confused, and in order to acquire generic skills as flexibility, communicability, self-rule, creativity and so on, youngsters have to learn ‘in context’. Even for maths, scholars now talk of ‘situated learning’.Before the advent of a formal schooling system, training took place on the shop floor, under the roof of a master. The apprentice not only worked but also lived in his master’s house and was thus trained and educated at the same time. In cities, this system was formally complemented by an official apprenticeship system, prescribing a minimum term to serve and an obligatory masterpiece for those who wanted to become masters themselves. Traditionally, historians see this as an archaic and backward way of training, yet this book’s aim is to show that is was instead a very flexible and dynamic system, perfectly in tune with the demands of an early modern economy.In order to understand it fully, however, we should differentiate the informal training system organised via a ‘free market’ of indentures on the one hand and the institutionalised system of craft guilds on the other. In Antwerp, early modern guilds had a project of ’emancipating’ their members. They didn’t simply produce certain skills, but through a system of quality marks defended the honour of craftsmen. This is the difference with current practices. By representing hands-on skills as superior, guilds supplied a sort of symbolic capital for workers.
- By (author) Bert De Munck
Other Titles in this Series
De Bono Communi
The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.) / Discours et pratique du Bien Commun dans les villes d'Europe (XIIIe au XVIe siecle)
Volume 22
La Justice dans une ville du Nord du Royaume de France au Moyen Age
Etude sur la pratique judiciaire a Saint-Quentin (fin XIe-debut XVe siecle)
Volume 24
Civilites et incivilites urbaines
Urbanite, rituels et ceremonies dans la ville du XVIIe siecle
Volume 62
Le chatiment des villes dans les espaces mediterraneens (Antiquite, Moyen Age, Epoque moderne)
Volume 26
Emotions in the Heart of the City (14th-16th century) / Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Volume 5
Le pouvoir en ville
Gestion urbaine et pratiques politiques a Geneve (fin XIIIe - debut XVIe siecles)
Volume 25
The Rise of Cities Revisited
Reflections on Adriaan Verhulst's Vision of Urban Genesis and Developments in the Medieval Low Countries
Volume 61
Woven into the Urban Fabric
Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600)
Volume 54
Urban Elites and Aristocratic Behaviour in the Spanish Kingdoms at the End of the Middle Ages
Volume 27
Des amities ciblees
Concours de tir et diplomatie urbaine dans le Saint-Empire, XVe-XVIe siecle
Volume 51
The city, the duke and their banker
The Rapondi family and the formation of the Burgundian state (1384-1430)
Volume 7
The Power of Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries
Volume 30
Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings
Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 - ca. 1570)
Volume 14
Epitomes of Evil
Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages
Volume 8
Usuriers publics et banquiers du Prince
Le role economique des financiers piemontais dans les villes du duche de Brabant (XIIIe-XIVe siecle)
Volume 28
For the Common Good
State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477-1482
Volume 17
Subaltern City?
Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-modern Period (13th-18th Centuries)
Volume 46
La police de Bruxelles entre reformes et revolutions (1748-1814)
Police urbaine et modernite
Volume 29
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