When I heard the learn'd astronomer,Apprenticeship plays an important role for the young students of Team Paleo. How can that be when these teens are already great scholars, tackling academic courses beyond their years. Each has a promising future in college and beyond. These kids can put together a term paper and likely outdo their public school peers in several choice subjects. What is this talk of apprenticeship?
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was show the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
~ Walt Whitman
Apprenticeship brings up
images of medieval tradesmen training young children a skill in
exchange for a free sleeping run by the fireplace. Quaint, if not
antiquated, the idea of apprenticeship seems outmoded in our
enlightened culture. In today's world, children are not given over to
a predetermined trade, but rather given an equal start with
education. Kids these days are told that they can be anything they
want- blacksmith, engineer, magician, or mathematician. Even the kids
at the family farm or mom-and-pop business are not expected to take
their parents' place, instead pursuing college for bigger and
brighter things.
But academics are not everything. As Whitman says in his poem, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, there are things that can be - should be - learned about the world that are not found in books or charts. One can memorize every fact known about the stars, yet know nothing about them. What is the point of a marvelous academic education if you have no practical or applied understanding of the subject you just spent half a decade studying?
One can memorize every fact known about the stars,
yet know nothing about them.
To be able to look at the stars in the mystical moist night-air is the purpose of apprenticeship. To hold in your hands the potsherd or arrow point that you have read about in a book. To dig in the earth, by the backhoe or by the infinitesimally plodding hand trowel, you will understand with your whole body and brain that the idealized models of the geographic strata aren't realistic.
In an apprenticeship setting - the relationship that Team Paleo has with their mentors at Dickson Mounds Museum - people can learn in ways that will never be had by scholarly lecture and pedantic bookishness. And while book learning and instruction are important, apprenticing polishes and fills the cracks untended by a solely academic education. I might even go so far as to say apprenticing is the basis of a true education.
Apprenticeship need not be formal. Any person who has real life experience and (just as important) passion in a particular area can be a wonderful guide to a child interested in learning through apprenticeship. I recall a time when on a nature walk in the prairie, several young children clustered around and questioning an older man who seemed to know everything there was to know about his prefered eco-system. Children are drawn to those with passion and interest- those who wish to share it. Those kids learned more on that day than they had in a semester of biology.
Children are drawn to those with passion and interest-
those who wish to share it.
And so it is with Team Paleo. These kids have read about lithic points and soil horizons. But through a relaxed apprenticeship approach, they have also come to know the soil and rocks. They have run their fingers over the grooves of an ancient pot, smelled the must of bones, heard the sound of trowel hitting artifact on a hot summer dig day. These kids know archaeology in a manner far different from when they read about it in a book.
There is so much more to learn. The life is so short and the craft so long to learn. I suppose none of us will ever learn it all. But in apprenticing, we can at least learn deeply, if not widely.
There is so much more to learn. The life is so short and the craft so long to learn. I suppose none of us will ever learn it all. But in apprenticing, we can at least learn deeply, if not widely.
