Nice OP
My two cents for master craftsman in metal industry:
Practitioners have normally respect for practitioners of other fields of work. Not much trespassing.
In fact the more they respect other practitioners, the more they (can) expect back respect from other pracrtitioners for their own opinions on their own field of work.
Win-win for them. Peace-peace for them. Just opinion and far away from proselytism.
But not always the technical optimal for the product they make together.
Practitioners as employees can have many practical reasons to keep that bubble up as a kind of wall.
* The first one is protection against their boss. As long as the knowledge is not transparent, the boss cannot get done what he needs without that employee. The boss gets opinions and results... no complete arguments.
* The second one is protection against the younger generation. As long as the knowledge transfer to them is not complete and not transparent enough, a younger person struggling to find out himself, will have more admiration for his elder, his master craftsman. This can go pretty far in metal industry. The small notebooks of masters with their secrets of the last tweakings like recipes of liqueurs with many herbs. When young I did meet such masters. Some gave their notebook with retirement, some didn't. Some notebooks were valuable, some hardly.
* The third one is competition between employees in their efforts to become shiftleader, department leader, etc. It starts with accumulating status and authority of opinion. Opinion and owned result. No debate.
* The fourth one is that many shopfloor "master" practitioners missed out in their youth the partial more theoretical education they would be capable of, and are therefore not trained, not used to articulate their empirical knowledge very well. Here in NL over the last decades engineering education added much more team projects to learn communicating better. Horizontal and vertical.
* There are many more but mentioning as last here, and not the least: their is a healthy distrust among practitioners for anything thought out by theoreticans. Theoreticans (engineers for the shopfloor) can be very good in designing stuff that you can hardly assemble or you need a snake body to do maintenance. The same happens ofc all the time with higher management towards the operational people, whether steelworkers or nurses.
What I learned is that when you hire an new (young) engineer, you better have him some months in the shopfloor roulating through some production work incl shifts. Just to bridge a bit the cultural gap with a dose human-human interaction upfront.
Yeah
getting forward means also reducing the content in your backpack.
Not adding also all the time new knowledge but taking the time, doing the hardship effort of boiling down to essence, stripping, calibrating.
But why would you tire yourself with all that ?
Good enough is good enough.
Unless you have excessive energy... or some holy flame.
But when I am for example a good welder... and I like football and do volunteer stuff there, have much of my social life there... why bother getting outside my welder bubble ?
But with our holy flame here
lived experience can indeed be pretty dangerous... especially when you apply it outside the bubble... and fundamentally because so much lived experience was NEVER very well processed.
Which brings me to this remark of you
yes
I believe very much in master-apprentice like systems.
Theory and practice combined. Self-learning and mentor-learning combined. Not only classes, and even team projects as such not enough.
The technical field of knowledge just a part of what you learn, more the part you pick up along.
The true part your development as human and development as knowledge gatherer.
"education permanente" and people available who can coach you.
Continuous education anyway practical. Those years upfront will in many cases not be good enough for 40 years working at your level.
On Art just a short remark.
I see Art today mainly as self-expression with potential to relate to others.
This Art for Art concept is relatively young... matured since somewhere 1900.
In Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern it was more a craft of practitioners.
The autobigraphy of Bienvenuto Cellini (Florence, 1500-1571) a nice read to immerse.
His life was Art already. And that's a modern concept again in terms of self-expression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini
My two cents for master craftsman in metal industry:
Practitioners have normally respect for practitioners of other fields of work. Not much trespassing.
In fact the more they respect other practitioners, the more they (can) expect back respect from other pracrtitioners for their own opinions on their own field of work.
Win-win for them. Peace-peace for them. Just opinion and far away from proselytism.
But not always the technical optimal for the product they make together.
Practitioners as employees can have many practical reasons to keep that bubble up as a kind of wall.
* The first one is protection against their boss. As long as the knowledge is not transparent, the boss cannot get done what he needs without that employee. The boss gets opinions and results... no complete arguments.
* The second one is protection against the younger generation. As long as the knowledge transfer to them is not complete and not transparent enough, a younger person struggling to find out himself, will have more admiration for his elder, his master craftsman. This can go pretty far in metal industry. The small notebooks of masters with their secrets of the last tweakings like recipes of liqueurs with many herbs. When young I did meet such masters. Some gave their notebook with retirement, some didn't. Some notebooks were valuable, some hardly.
* The third one is competition between employees in their efforts to become shiftleader, department leader, etc. It starts with accumulating status and authority of opinion. Opinion and owned result. No debate.
* The fourth one is that many shopfloor "master" practitioners missed out in their youth the partial more theoretical education they would be capable of, and are therefore not trained, not used to articulate their empirical knowledge very well. Here in NL over the last decades engineering education added much more team projects to learn communicating better. Horizontal and vertical.
* There are many more but mentioning as last here, and not the least: their is a healthy distrust among practitioners for anything thought out by theoreticans. Theoreticans (engineers for the shopfloor) can be very good in designing stuff that you can hardly assemble or you need a snake body to do maintenance. The same happens ofc all the time with higher management towards the operational people, whether steelworkers or nurses.
What I learned is that when you hire an new (young) engineer, you better have him some months in the shopfloor roulating through some production work incl shifts. Just to bridge a bit the cultural gap with a dose human-human interaction upfront.
Yeah
getting forward means also reducing the content in your backpack.
Not adding also all the time new knowledge but taking the time, doing the hardship effort of boiling down to essence, stripping, calibrating.
But why would you tire yourself with all that ?
Good enough is good enough.
Unless you have excessive energy... or some holy flame.
But when I am for example a good welder... and I like football and do volunteer stuff there, have much of my social life there... why bother getting outside my welder bubble ?
But with our holy flame here
lived experience can indeed be pretty dangerous... especially when you apply it outside the bubble... and fundamentally because so much lived experience was NEVER very well processed.
Which brings me to this remark of you
yes
I believe very much in master-apprentice like systems.
Theory and practice combined. Self-learning and mentor-learning combined. Not only classes, and even team projects as such not enough.
The technical field of knowledge just a part of what you learn, more the part you pick up along.
The true part your development as human and development as knowledge gatherer.
"education permanente" and people available who can coach you.
Continuous education anyway practical. Those years upfront will in many cases not be good enough for 40 years working at your level.
On Art just a short remark.
I see Art today mainly as self-expression with potential to relate to others.
This Art for Art concept is relatively young... matured since somewhere 1900.
In Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern it was more a craft of practitioners.
The autobigraphy of Bienvenuto Cellini (Florence, 1500-1571) a nice read to immerse.
His life was Art already. And that's a modern concept again in terms of self-expression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini
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Hi, Valka.
