The Master and Apprentice

The Great Exhibition of 1851 celebrated the achievements of English industrial and creative might by housing the greatest array of inventions in the industrial arts and sciences the world had ever seen in a mighty Crystal Palace erected in Hyde Park just for the occassion. Six million visitors from all over Britain poured through the exhibition to see a display of human ingenuity on a scale never before thought possible.

The exhibition celebrated British creative genius and demonstrated just what a nation of skilled craftsmen could do. The inventors whose wonders were on display - men like George Stephenson - the Brunels (father and son) - Richard Arkwright - John Smeaton - were all former craftsmen who had each served long apprenticeships. Few of them had gone to school for any length of time and most regarded school as subordinate to what they had learned on the job.

These were the men that forged the "industrial revolution" which created Englands wealth - Masters and Apprentices. Men educated the same way also created most of the "developed worlds" industrialisation and wealth. The English school system of the day at best taught basic literacy to a part of the population with the higher education reserved for the "ruling class" and the children of the "nouveau riche" class created by that very industrialisation.

That higher education then did not include any of the engineering and sciences so necessary to maintain Englands leading role in that sphere - while the very nature of the industrialisation by 1850 had all but eliminated the position of craftsmen and artisans - and along with it the older Master Apprentice education system. It took that another 100 years to disappear almost completely. Britain won almost all the prizes for wondrous innovations at that Great Exhibition - the next Exhibition in Paris saw them take home less that 10% - just 40 years later the other European Nations had taken over that lead.

The British Empire certainly grew as that tiny percentage with the "higher education" colonised and plundered half the world - protected by the mighty Navy her industries produced. The "new world" of North America received enough craftsmen to develop its own industrial growth after cutting loose from England many years earlier - but those colonies that could not cut loose were simply plundered of their manpower and natural resources in order to feed the English and European appetites. Appetites as insatiable as the developed worlds demand for fuel oil is now.

Ruled until independence by a class with no understanding of technology - it is perhaps not surprising that little industry developed in the African colonies, and that any education system developed after independence was modelled on the worst features of the system that created the colonists in the first place. So perhaps it is fair to say the African formal education system actually is designed simply to produce post-colonial administrators and maybe just give some basic literacy to as many others as possible.

The Master Apprentice system in itself is a more natural order of things - Father/Son - Mother/Daughter - Artisan/Apprentice, and as familiar to Africa now as it was once to the so called developed world. For whatever reason Africa now needs to be part of that world. Unfortunately Africa does not have the Masters and Craftsman skilled in those arts - the west has very few since the apprenticeship system finally died in the 1970's - industry in an incremental improvement mode does not need Master Craftsmen. Germany still has such a system though - perhaps no coincidence Germany is still doing so well with machine tools.

Schooling in science and technologies alone cannot do it. The mystery surrounding any technology can only be cleared by understanding - and understanding can only be gained by doing - and doing needs to be taught one on one by someone who can. That applies as equally to an electric generator manufacturing plant being built in Senegal - as it does to running an agro-industrial business in Zimbabwe.