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 régime, 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.
Bert De Munck is lecturer at the University of Antwerp and
member of the Centre for Urban History. His research focuses on the
history of the guilds, vocational training and social
capital.