SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
Apprentice Education. 
By CHARLES FENNER, D.Sc.* 
ACH. generation must hand on to the next its “heritage of 
skill and knowledge.” With the Eskimo or the Australian 
aboriginal this heritage is small and general, but all-important, 
and is handed on by the elders in their tribal hunts and in the 
daily round of life. In our complex civilization, the “ hand- 
ing on” of this heritage is performed through the agency of the home, 
the workshop, and the school. The foundations of the specialized 
knowledge of some of the higher professions is mainly acquired in the 
school; the home is the only training ground in housecraft for the 
majority of our girls; the great body of manual workers and craftsmen 
receive the bulk of their education in the workshop (office, field, or 
factory). 
In Elizabethan times, a high place in industrial organization was 
reached by the apprenticeship system, whereby a lad was indentured 
or bound to a master workman to be taught the full round of a trade. 
Times have changed. ‘The separate and single master, with his appren- 
tice living in his household, has given way to a maze of industrial 
organization, with large factories, much machinery, higher specializa- 
tion of work, an increasing amount of repetition work, and a new 
conception of social and industrial life. With it all, there has been 
little or no change, nominally, in apprentice conditions. Compare the 
two following clauses from apprenticeship indentures :— 
(a) A master’s obligation to his apprentice, as set out in the 
“seaventh yeare of the reigne of our Sovraigne Lady 
A Anne.” (1708): “ And the said Thomas Stokes doth pro- 
mise and covenant to and with the said Thomas Selman 
and Richard Selman his apprentice to teach or cause the 
said Richard Selman to be taught and instructed in the 
trade, art, science, or occupacion of a broadweaver, after 
the best manner that he can or may with moderate correc- 
tion, finding and allowing unto his said servant, meate, 
drinke, apparrell, washing, lodging, and all other things 
whatsoever fitting for an apprentice of that trade during 
the said term of seaven yeares.” 
(b) A master’s obligation, as set out in the present year (1919): 
“The said Richard Brand (employer) covenants with the 
said Benjamin Cable (parent) and the apprentice and 
each of them that he will for the said term of five years 
from the fifth day of June, nineteen hundred and nineteen, 
instruct or cause to be instructed the apprentice in the 
process, trade or calling, business or occupation of a fitter, 
and shall pay to the apprentice weekly wages as fol- 
lows,” &e. 
* Superintendent of Technical Education, S. Aust. 
500 
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