Leonardo de Vinci started as an apprentice. So did Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford. What they learned as apprentices, they applied along their years-long journeys to becoming master craftsmen. Knights Templar says becoming a medieval apprentice was “A rite of passage, a journey of learning and growth. It was a period of discipline, dedication, and hard work.”
Ever since the collapse of Rome, trade associations that shared common occupations have continued to establish and enforce the standards of the Apprentice > Journeyman > Master Craftsman model, also known as the Guild System.
The Journey from Apprentice to Master
The Guild System uses what you and I call a pecking order but what scientists like to call a hierarchy. Either way, it’s a system where groups of people are ranked from top to bottom, based upon their ability, authority and status. There were as many types of guilds as there were occupations, especially in trades that required manual skills, such as weavers and woodworkers, bakers and locksmiths, masons, and jewelers.
The Apprentice
During the Middle Ages, apprenticeships were the first step on a young boy’s path to becoming skilled at a trade. Young boys were hired on as apprentices for their character and ability, but Master Craftsmen also took on young boys whose parents had enough money to pay him for his services. Either way, every apprentice was bound to his master until they earned journeyman status.
Apprentices worked unpaid for long hours and were given a corner of the shop to sleep in. They’d be given simple tasks first, and as they gained the necessary knowledge and experience, they would gradually develop enough of both to move on to the next stage. At the end of the agreed-upon time, the boy’s apprentice days were over and he was either designated a journeyman or was discharged.
The Journeyman
In the guild system, those apprentices who earned the right to call themselves journeymen were considered to have developed enough mid-level skills and competence to be fully qualified to work in their field. Even better, journeymen had earned the right to paid for their work. Ambitious journeymen took this new credential and began the even-steeper climb towards becoming a true Master Craftsman.
Just like it sounds, the name journeymen came about because now that they had proven their skills, they could journey from place to place to work for and learn from many Master Craftsmen.
Today the word journeymen is used to describe those who are experienced and reliable, but unable to excel. Before the Age of Indignance, people used to describe skill and responsibility levels as Indians and Chiefs. But then the motorcycle manufacturer complained.
The Master Craftsman
After a long journey of extensive learning and demonstrated proficiency over time, some workers were finally able to create an outstanding work that was such a sensation that the guild declared it a masterpiece and you a Master Craftsman. Not only could you charge more for your services now, but you were also given the right to operate your own shop and the right to train apprentices.
Most universities’ graduate schools follow the same process established by the guilds
We have to earn our credentials by starting at the bottom
No matter our chosen area of study, we have to work your way to the top by successfully completing high school, then college, then graduate school. Each year graduate schools admit a new group of apprentices (undergraduates) who will be referred to as a cohort (a group of people bound by a shared characteristic) for as long as they remain together. This is the story of Cohort 12, inspired by an authentic case study.
Once upon a time on the campus of a large Midwestern university
There were a dozen journeymen in the new cohort, each appropriately degreed, and each from a different college or university. Graduate schools had a special word for apprentices. The University’s Guild Masters called them undergraduates because they brought with them certified proof that they had devoted four years to successfully learning most of the fundamentals of their chosen fields.
Each of the 12 students in Cohort 12 had written surveys, collected, processed and analyzed data, and written reports before as a part of their journeyman training
Cohort 12’s big new team assignment was to conduct fieldwork. This is not the kind of field work where thousands of migrant workers are paid pittances for months of backbreaking stoop labor in the hot sun. All Cohort 12 had to do was learn enough of the material to successfully pass all the checkpoints along the way to becoming masters.
Each year the university conducted an annual survey of the general population of a large Midwestern city
Each year’s study had different objectives, but all were made possible by a member of the senior staff who had received a grant from a corporation, foundation, or government that deemed his research worth underwriting. Some say the system of using unpaid students* to conduct research means study directors who don’t pay their worker bees eliminate the cost of labor, a large line item in a field study, and lets them keep more of their grant monies as they add another page to their credentials pile.
The chair convened his first meeting with Cohort 12
During this session he explained the objectives of this year’s study as Cohort 12 sat around a large table. Mind you, the chair had carved out a solid reputation in a sub-specialty where he was well-known, so that’s what his survey’s about. What he was interested in was the interplay between people’s roles as workers, spouses, and religious people.
The chair, now in his role as the study director, led Cohort 12 through hard copies of his questionnaire draft, asking them in real time, item by item, to suggest ways of improving it
It was well known to incoming cohorts that certain study directors liked to deliberately booby-trapping questionnaire drafts to see how many errors his students were able to find. One I know well said he started laying his own land mines when he figured out that no one would be able to tell which were his deliberate errors and which were his personal mistakes.
After hours of grinding over details in an effort to make the questionnaire bullet-proof, Cohort 12 finally came to the demographic section
Researchers know this section often comes last, after the topic(s) of interest to the study sponsor. The demographics section of the questionnaire rarely changes so researchers paste in pre-written sections called boilerplate.
Demographics are a collection of easily-measured variables
Cohort 12’s interview respondents would check boxes to indicate their age group, educational group, income group, occupational group, and race, which Young Moderns know only as ethnicity.
Cohort 12’s questionnaire provided two pre-labeled boxes for the respondent’s gender
One was for male and the other was for female. Those who can be counted on to leap to judgment would do well to remember that we can’t judge yesterday’s activities with today’s greater knowledge and by today’s modern standards.
Cohort 12’s questionnaire also had a place for the interviewer to indicate whether the study subject was White, Black, or Other
One of the Cohort 12 asked, “What if we get a mixed race couple? How do you want that recorded?” The study director dismissed the thought, annoyed by the interruption. “Never mind, that’s not going to happen.” All along, the study director had overruled many of Cohort 12’s suggestions, so the rest clammed up at this snappish answer and only answered when called upon for the rest of the section.
Age is another demographic variable where no one writes in the actual number
They choose from several pre-assigned categories and check the one that fits them. Most marketers and researchers are familiar with this traditional set of age brackets: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55+, used to target audience segments.
One of the tells of a really crappy survey is when the age and income categories they used in their survey don’t line up with what the ad agency uses for their metrics
Sure there are voodoo statistics that can sort of make up for when the age categories are misaligned. But for obvious reasons, remember that adjusted data should be used only in desperation.
Income is a demographic variable that has no upper limit
When being interviewed by a stranger, household income is an even touchier matter than age. Again, real surveys don’t ask for real numbers. They present the study subject with a set of income categories to choose from. These scales need to be adjusted for each study but often aren’t. The income scale used with people who own used cars is miles from the income scale a researcher would use with people who own Czinger 21C Blackbird hypercars with the high-downforce rear engine that limits its top speed to 218 mph.
Sampling
As the survey went back to the study director for him to edit and approve, Cohort 12 went about deciding who would be chosen for interviewing and how many responses they needed to get answers that others can depend upon. There was an entire section on attitudes, values, beliefs, etc, these sampled people have toward the work do, the jobs they have, and whatnot.
The study director was counting on virtually every household having at least one person who worked, was married, or considered themselves a religious person. Some had two, which means twice as much data. The most valuable study subjects of all were those who qualified on all three counts. Interviewing those triple-qualifiers was a real slog for the study subject and the interviewer.
The survey method was face-to-face interviews in people’s homes
All of the Cohort 12s had name tags, lanyards with photo, and of course, clipboards when they rang the target’s doorbell unannounced. Standard precautions had been taken to see things went smoothly in the dozen designated neighborhoods
Going through a questionnaire with three sections that explore similar issues with similar intensity is more like going through three questionnaires than one
From every study subject’s point of view, these questionnaires were far longer and far more boring than it should have been. Why? Because none of the respondents gave a fig about the interplay between people’s roles as workers, spouses, and religious people
Amazing, nearly all respondents slogged through well more than an hour being asked question after question by scruffy but earnest college students in their twenties
Not simple questions, either. Study subjects were asked over and over to observe themselves from three different angles at once in ways they had never done before in their lives. One needn’t be a researcher to know that’s a big ask.
Even people who don’t know anything about writing questionnaires have suffered from what is called survey fatigue
It’s the fog that comes over us like a case of the flu when surveys are too boring and too complicated.
The more esoteric the statistical procedures study directors write into the analytical plan, the larger the study needs to be
It’s the only way professors can split one more mathematical hair after another until it becomes not a sensational contribution to the field that it was declared a masterpiece by the guild, but what a boss of mine used to call no more than “picking fly shit out of the pepper.” outstanding work that was such a sensation that the guild declared it a masterpiece and you a Master
Cohort 12’s interviewer #12 rang the doorbell of the first address on his list and a married couple invited him into their home
The couple was a while man and a black woman. I saw the mixed-race couple with my own baby blues because I was there observing #12 so I could give him performance-improving feedback later.
Later than day, some pinhead started a rumor that #12 had faked his mixed-race couple to poke the department in the eye
While this untrue gossip slimed its way around the university, one of #12’s old wounds began to bleed internally and he had to be hospitalized for an urgent operation. The rumor now had the added furbelow that #12 had faked that, too, to get out of working. The upshot of it all was that the university agreed to toss one of their diplomas through the passenger-side window of #12’s car as he drove out of town.
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The author is a researcher, writer, teacher, and storyteller who looks at old things in new ways, sees the commonplace in greater detail, and explains complex subject matter in simple, conversational language. More than 400 of his articles are posted on this site.
Bonus
Medieval apprenticeships led to specialized trades, from fletchers (arrow makers) to broderers (embroiderers) to chandlers (candle-makers) to poulters (sellers of poultry and small game). Over time, these occupational names became handy surnames that told us not only who a person was, but also what kind of work they did: Baker, Cook, Mason, Miller, Sawyer, Slater, Smith, Tanner, Taylor, Tyler, Weaver, and many more.
