Anthropologist Trevor Marchand got his hands dirty. He worked alongside minaret builders in Yemen and the mud masons of Djenné in Mali, and he followed trainees in a fine-woodworking program in London.
In the British Journal of Educational Studies, Marchand draws on those years to describe how apprentices learn. Much of it happens without words. In crafts, as in sport and dance, people show and understand each other largely through the body. Apprentices learn by watching, copying and practicing again and again.
That leads Marchand to a wider idea of knowledge: it lives in words and ideas, and just as much in the body and in skilled work. He encourages researchers from linguistics, neuroscience and other fields to study together how we communicate through the body.
His second point goes even further. An apprenticeship teaches a craft, and it also shapes the person. On the building site, young people grow in character as they grow in skill.
Marchand ends with an invitation to Western schools and universities: see skilled work as a form of intelligence, and give learning by apprenticeship the respect it deserves.
Sources
Marchand, T. H. J. (2008). Muscles, morals and mind: Craft apprenticeship and the formation of person. British Journal of Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2008.00407.x