Apprenticeship

: If you're looking for the TV show, see The Apprentice.

Related Topics:
TV show - The Apprentice

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Apprenticeships form a traditional method of training a new generation of skilled crafts practitioners. Apprentices (or in early modern usage "prentices") built their careers from apprenticeships.

Related Topics:
Training - Career

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The system of apprenticeship first developed in the later Middle Ages and came to be supervised by guilds and town governments. A master craftsman was entitled to employ young people as an inexpensive form of labour in exchange for providing formal training in the craft. Most apprentices were males, but female apprentices can be found in a number of crafts associated with embroidery, silk-weaving etc. Apprentices were young (usually about fourteen to twenty-one years of age), unmarried and would live in the master craftsman's household. Most apprentices aspired to becoming master craftsmen themselves on completion of their contract (usually a term of seven years), but some would spend time as a journeyman and a significant proportion would never acquire their own workshop.

Related Topics:
Middle Ages - Guild - Master craftsman - Embroidery - Journeyman - Workshop

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Subsequently governmental regulation and the licensing of polytechnics and so on formalised and bureaucratised the details of apprenticeship.

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Universities still echo apprenticeship schemes in their production of scholars: bachelors are promoted to masters and then produce a thesis under the oversight of a supervisor before the corporate body of the university recognises the reaching of the standard of a doctorate. The modern concept of internship is also analogous.

Related Topics:
Scholar - Thesis - Supervisor - Corporat - University - Doctorate - Internship

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Also similar to apprenticeships are the training contracts in British firms of accountants and lawyers, once known as 'articles of clerkship'.

Related Topics:
Accountants - Lawyers - Articles of clerkship

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