Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

In my previous article in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, I discussed the general nature of artistry or craftsmanship under the heading of apprenticeship. Aristotle’s virtue of techne, often translated ‘art’, points to our human capacity to make things, to produce things in the world. Words like ‘artistry’ or ‘craftsmanship’ help to convey in English the focus on a person’s trained ability to produce something. We noted that such abilities are trained through an apprenticeship process, rather than a simple knowledge-transfer approach.

If a person desires to cultivate their ability to sing or paint beautifully, they rarely do so by reading a book or attending lectures. Instead, they attach themselves to a teacher or coach, who has attained sufficient mastery of the skills to arrange a series of exercises for them, a practice regimen, and to give them regular feedback on their progress. This, in essence, is the pedagogy of apprenticeship that we will discuss more in this article.

Avoiding the Totalizing Effect of Modernism on the Arts

But before we do, let’s remember that there are many different types of craftsmanship or artistry that have been developed by human beings throughout time. Arts may have an originator, as Jabal was the original keeper of livestock, Jubal the player on the lyre and pipe, or Tubal-cain bronze- and ironworking (see Gen 4:20-22), but they also have traditions that grow and change with new circumstances. The arts are not interchangeable, whether among each other or between different cultural circumstances. If one is trained in navigation, that hardly makes a person a qualified practitioner of medicine. A painter is not equipped to design buildings, nor a business owner to make furniture. In the same way, an ancient sailor cannot operate a nuclear submarine. The traditions of various arts are affected by the tools and technologies, the goals and circumstances of their application. Arts are not one size-fits all.

Perhaps these considerations are enough to counter the totalizing instinct of the modern era, which is well illustrated by Bloom’s Taxonomy. By abstracting six orders of educational objectives in the cognitive domain, Bloom and his colleagues assumed that the main thing in education was transferable intellectual skills. But a proper recognition of the arts (at least) as situated in time and place would help us to understand that a substantial amount of what we are seeking to pass on to our children consists in particular skills and abilities that were invented at a particular time and are judged to be of continuing relevance to life in the world.

Now I know very well that what I am saying now may sound like modern educational pragmatism, but allow me to counter this concern. When applied to the liberal ‘arts’, the traditional nature of the arts is another way of arguing for the Western tradition of grammar, logic and rhetoric; mathematics, science and music. These ‘disciplines’ were discovered in time and place, and mastery of them involves us necessarily in the tradition that each one birthed. So this supposed pragmatism or subjectivity ends up grounding us in the historical realities and the objectivity of an enlightened and practical tradition. It is modernism’s abstractions and pretensions to god-like knowledge that have left us moorless on a sea of preferential postmodernism, grasping about for anything that might be considered “useful”.

When applied to the arts in general, this recognition of the arts’ traditional nature led me to propose a fivefold division of the arts as a help to classical Christian educators.

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

Athletics, games and sports
Common and domestic arts
Professions and trades
Fine and performing arts
The liberal arts of language and number

While I argued for the inclusion of athletics, games and sports as well as the professions and trades, I sympathize with Chris Hall, Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s three-fold division of common, liberal and fine arts. Perhaps it is simply because I like fives rather than threes… but in all seriousness, this division represents a judgment call on the best way to indicate to educators the proper types of artistry or craftsmanship that they should aim at in their various programs.

Perhaps it goes without saying that no educational institution can train its students in every possible area of artistry. And if, as I have said, mastery in particular arts does not transfer to others, then every educational institution must engage in some level of discernment as they plot the curricular sequence and develop offerings in extracurriculars. Those schools that aim, to a lesser or greater extent, at the Christian, classical ideal of a university (from the Latin ‘universitas’ meaning ‘totality’ or ‘wholeness’; see Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University) will want to develop some level of mastery in each of these five directions, alongside the other intellectual virtues. But the particulars will of course be culturally situated, as are the arts themselves. (This does not, I might add, argue against the revival of an ancient art that has been lost, which may from time to time be absolutely crucial.) We must make these decisions boldly in our cities and communities with an awareness of the context and the availability of masters in the crafts to apprentice our young students.

Toward a General Pedagogy of Apprenticeship

In addition to avoiding the totalizing instinct in our artistic divisions, we must also avoid the temptation to think of training in the arts as essentially the same in each area. It is absolutely a different thing to train a student in geometric proofs, than it is to train him as a soccer goalie. According to Aristotle’s definitions, both are intellectual virtues that are rightly called ‘artistry’, but that does not mean they are the same or that the training should look similar. However, types of ‘artistry’ are sufficiently similar in some core essentials, such that Aristotle and the tradition have rightly distinguished them from the other intellectual virtues. So, while it doesn’t look the same to coach a student to excellence in singing or painting, I can call both these activities ‘coaching’ and certain types of teaching activities immediately come to mind as being more appropriate than others. Training activities in different types of artistry have more in common with one another, than they do with cultivating practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, intuition or philosophic wisdom.

The key point is that while each art is distinct, the intellectual virtues themselves are taught in fundamentally different ways, because of their radically different nature. So we can generalize some aspects of proper training in an art in a way that will help us develop a pedagogy of apprenticeship. Far from contributing to the problem of treating everything alike, developing a pedagogy for each intellectual virtue will contribute greatly toward our ability to make proper distinctions between different types of teaching as educators.

Happily I am not the first person to follow the Aristotelian tradition by seeking to develop a pedagogy of techne, Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of ‘artistry’ or ‘craftsmanship’. The great Christian Reformation era educator John Amos Comenius developed a pedagogy of art in his Great Didactic, articulating many similar points to what I have addressed in attempting to revive the classical distinction between an art and a science. His recommendations also accord well with what we know of the value of deliberate and purposeful practice from modern research on elite performance, which I have discussed at some length before (as has Patrick Egan in this article).

What Artistry Requires

Comenius begins his discussion of a pedagogy for art by identifying the core requirements of artistry or craftsmanship. As he says,

Art primarily requires three things: (1) A model or a conception, that is to say, an external form which the artist may examine and then try to imitate. (2) The material on which the new form is to be impressed. (3) The instruments by the aid of which the work is accomplished. (194)

The “model or conception” may look very different in the different arts: a model of a house you want to build is different than a map of where you want to sail or the imaginary ark of a penalty kick in soccer. But all arts require this mental image or plan upon which the artist operates. Art cannot be an accident, for then it would not be art, but chance in Aristotelian terminology. In the same way, the materials worked may be vastly different, from the wood, metal and straw used in building to the words, phrases and arguments used in logic and rhetoric. Finally, instruments are necessary for craftsmanship, from a voice box for singing to the gardener’s gloves and the astronomer’s telescope.

While it may seem obvious to point out these different artistic requirements, they are of immense help to a pedagogy of craft. How often do art students work on projects without a clear model or conception to imitate? We can forget to help beginners learn the basic principles of handling tools and materials correctly, particularly in cases where the tools and materials are less obvious, like the meanings of words, grammar and syntax in the case of the language arts. This draws attention to the fact that these requirements point in the direction of three other things that are prerequisites of artistry:

But when the instruments, the materials, and the model have been provided, three more things are necessary before we can learn an art: (1) a proper use of the materials; (2) skilled guidance; (3) frequent practice. That is to say, the pupil should be taught when and how to use his materials; he should be given assistance when using them that he may not make mistakes, or that he may be corrected if he do; and he should not leave off making mistakes and being corrected until he can work correctly and quickly. (194)

Comenius’s comments illustrate the idea that one of the main problems in the teaching of arts comes from rushing the early stages of development. The teacher or coach too often assumes that the novice knows how to use the materials or will not make any more mistakes after being corrected once or twice. The training of the hands (whether literal or figurative) must be slower and more methodical than that. Bad habits can easily be acquired through insufficient attention to the basics.

We can also note positively that it is not without significance that cognitive psychologists have developed the terminology of ‘mental models’ for a student’s absorption of these models or conceptions into his intellect in order to perform some artistic activity. The writers of Make It Stick define a “mental model” as a “mental representation of some external reality”, noting that they are extending its use to “motor skills, referring to what are sometimes called motor schemas” (6; n.1 on 257). They go on to illustrate their definition through the example of artistry in a sport like baseball:

Think of a baseball batter waiting for a pitch. He has less than an instant to decipher whether it’s a curveball, a changeup, or something else. How does he do it? There are a few subtle signals that help: the way the pitcher winds up, the way he throws, the spin of the ball’s seams. A great batter winnows out all the extraneous perceptual distractions, seeing only these variations in pitches, and through practice he forms distinct mental models based on a different set of cues for each kind of pitch. (6-7)

We can notice from this example that a person does not necessarily need to be able to articulate a mental model in words to have it. In fact, in this case if the player’s conscious mind were to get involve trying to categorize and analyze the cues, the ball would have already flung past the plate. Often an artist’s mental models are like these motor skills, hard-wired in as almost an instinctual, bodily response. These models or conceptions are formed by “frequent practice” with the immediate feedback of whether he was right in his swing or wrong. It must be reality that the artist is modeling in his mind as he works with his materials according to the natural constraints of the art itself.

The Canons of Artistry

After establishing the requirements for artistry, Comenius lays out eleven canons for a pedagogy of artistry in his Great Didactic. Later in life he summarized this method of the arts more succinctly in his Analytical Didactic:

This method requires theory, prudence, and practice. Theory is necessary, so that a man, no matter what he does, will not do it like a brute, on blind impulse, but with an understanding of what he is doing. Such understanding inevitably brings with it caution and vigilance not to err in his work, and constant practice finally makes him incapable of error. (155)

The term “theory” explains the precepts and rules of his earlier discussion, and accords with Aristotle’s requirement that ‘art’ be according to reason. “Prudence” seems to draw attention to the artist’s sifting process, showing “caution” and “vigilance” to not make errors, but to act in such a way as to bring about the desired outcome. “Constant practice” completes the learning process by making him “incapable of error,” a state that we might call mastery.

One of the main dangers, in Comenius’ mind, is that educators might overemphasize theories and precepts at the wrong stage of an artist’s development. As he notes in his first canon, “What has to be done must be learned by practice” (Great Didactic 194):

Artisans do not detain their apprentices with theories, but set them to do practical work at an early stage; thus they learn to forge by forging, to carve by carving, to paint by painting, and to dance by dancing. In schools, therefore, let the students learn to write by writing, to talk by talking, to sing by singing, and to reason by reasoning. In this way schools will become workshops humming with work, and students whose efforts prove successful will experience the truth of the proverb: ‘We give form to ourselves and to our materials at the same time.’ (195)

We can see that Comenius lends his support to the classical understanding of the liberal arts as forms of verbal craftsmanship. When we linger over the theories and rules, without giving our beginning students practice in talking, writing, singing and reasoning, we are breaking the cardinal rule of training in artistry. Comenius’ vision of schools as “workshops humming with work” sets an inspiring standard for us to judge our teaching by. It well accords with Dorothy Sayers’ interpretation of the trivium as the lost tools of learning. The upshot of her clarion call in the 1940s was that we were too focused on teaching ‘subjects’ rather that giving our students the opportunity to handle the materials of knowledge through productive and (we might add) artistic activities.

Comenius thinks that the formation of students’ mental models for this practice should occur, not primarily through precepts or rules, abstract theories, but instead through examples (195). He cites Quintilian for classical support of his method: “It is many years since Quintilian said: ‘Through precepts the way is long and difficult, while through examples it is short and practicable.’ But alas, how little heed the ordinary schools pay to this advice” (195).

Comenius continues to look to the mechanical or common arts for fruitful analogies of how to best train students in grammar or logic:

The very beginners in grammar are so overwhelmed by precepts, rules, exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to the exceptions, that for the most part they do not know what they are doing, and are quite stupefied before they begin to understand anything. Mechanics do not begin by drumming rules into their apprentices. They take them into the workshop and bid them look at the work that has been produced, and then, when they wish to imitate this (for man is an imitative animal), they place tools in their hands and show them how they should be held and used. Then, if they make mistakes, they give them advice and correct them, often more by example than by mere words, and, as the facts show, the novices easily succeed in their imitation. (195-196)

Comenius’ description of the apprenticeship model of “mechanics” lays out a few key steps:

Students are given a general acquaintance with the works produced, the end-products of the art.
Students respond with a natural desire to imitate through producing works of their own.
The master provides the students with the proper tools and models their use, showing them examples of the techniques.
The master corrects the students through both examples and advice, sharing the theories and precepts while correcting students.

This last point, the proper use of theory and precepts at the end rather than the beginning is detailed in his eleventh canon, where Comenius is focused on the swift correction of errors during practice:

(ix.) Errors must be corrected by the master on the spot; but precepts, that is to say the rules, and the exceptions to the rules, must be given at the same time.

Hitherto, we have urged that the arts be taught rather by example than by precept: we now add that precepts and rules must be given as well, that they may guide the operations and prevent error. That is to say, the less obvious points of the model should be clearly explained, and it should be made evident how the operation should begin, what it should aim at, and how that aim can be realised. Reasons should also be given for each rule. In this way a thorough knowledge of the art, and confidence and exactness in imitating will be attained. (200)

Comenius’ description of mistake-focused practice coheres well with what Daniel Coyle calls “deep practice” in his book The Talent Code. Practice must be purposeful or deliberate, to the extent possible, and take advantage of all the resources, in terms of rules and precepts developed by the masters in that tradition of artistry. The correction of errors and constant practice, based on examples and informed by theory, constitute the core essentials of the apprenticeship model of teaching an art.

In the next article we’ll develop this pedagogy of artistry further by laying out an apprenticeship lesson structure to guide teachers of the arts, as we draw further insights from Comenius and modern research.