Some Educational Models: Apprenticeship and School System. A Gradual Reconciliation Between These Two Realities

Abstract

Apprenticeship is born from the union between the working and teaching relationships. Initially, such a model had the character of a teaching relationship, in the sense that the “teacher” would give the student all the necessary instructions and would guide him in all those experiences that would lead to a suitable professional formation. Then, once completed the apprenticeship period, the young man could be integrated into a corporation, upon payment of a registration fee, as a skilled worker or companion; so he was able to open a shop on his own or to work as the employee of a master. During the 20th century, with the industrialization process, the traditional apprenticeship model was no longer used, replaced by a basic formation received in specific professional schools during the compulsory school process. The focus was on the individual, placed in a precise context, according to his professionalism, both as a scholar and humanist in the strict sense, or as an artist, a politician or a producer entrepreneur. This exaltation of the individual as the architect of his own fortune and author of the story, was the beginning of a process intended to equate contemplation and action, theory and practice, intellectual and manual activity. Developing a positive attitude towards work and new openings in the educational field, were the first signals of an orientation that eventually grew during the modern age, allowing the same development in the pedagogical culture. For example, you could identify in the works of Pestalozzi the pedagogical basis of the educational “doing”. All the subsequent debate about the issue of introducing the work in the school system, has its roots in the thinking and experience of Pestalozzi and other thinkers.