What We Mean By “No Artificial Ingredients”

A mentor and apprentice connect at The Trade

Philosopher and educator John Dewey said that "artificiality always leads to unnecessary complexity." It’s so true today, and he said this 100 years ago!  

Before the advent of smart phones and gaming devices and social media and AI, Dewey argued that our approach to education was too abstract and indirect. That artificiality makes life complicated, and it makes us unhappy, sick, and lonely. It slows down our learning. It's unnecessary. In his own brilliant and prophetic way, Dewey exhorted educators to "keep it simple, stupid." We have made life unnecessarily complicated and tangled, but we can change that. 

At The Trade, we want our apprentices to learn by doing the thing they're trying to learn—not some approximation of it.  So much of education has devolved into drills and content and approximations that we have made education abstract and theoretical instead of clear and practical. In other words, the accepted mainstream educational approach is rife with "artificial ingredients" that not only reduce the learner's pace of learning, but also remove the real-work context that makes that learning relevant.    

A direct, experiential approach is critical for all learning areas, but especially for those that are skill-based and require an integration of thinking and doing and relating. Most of us don't learn how to do our chosen careers in college. We might learn about that work. But we learn to work by doing work— showing up and trying and failing our way toward competence, then skill, and, eventually, maybe even mastery. 

We are committed to taking as much of the abstract and theoretical out of our apprentices' experience so that they can more directly learn how to work and live and "adult." Let’s move beyond the classroom and jumpstart skill development by practicing it in a supportive setting. 

Speaking of the classroom, it’s no secret that many young people are viewing a college education as little more than a costly way to delay their entry into a career and adulthood. We are not so cynical about college. We think that even for those who enter the trades, a college degree can be a great tool. 

But we also believe that our educational system can feel—and be—irrelevant and disconnected. We need to provide young people, including those who do pursue a college education, with real experiences of work and responsibility. This direct engagement is particularly important now, at a time when our experiences of the world are increasingly mediated by screens.  

It is possible, and not uncommon, for a young person to navigate their entire existence virtually—socializing, working, playing, ordering food, paying bills, everything, without leaving the blue glow of their bedroom. With the proliferation of AI, the prospect of complete alienation from "the real world" and, most concerningly, real people, is frightening. The costs of this artificial way of life are becoming obvious.  

As the world becomes increasingly automated and many career tasks and career paths are subsumed by technology, there will be an increased premium on those things a computer cannot do—connect, relate, think critically and morally, develop wisdom, read the room, embody experiences and a story, care, love. All that human stuff.  

Those of us who are deeply and directly engaged in the real world, real people, and real work will have a distinct advantage over those who are not. It's also pretty clear from the research, not to mention the news, that we will be a lot happier and healthier too.   

This "real" approach to life and work and growth is not just for our apprentices. It's also a value those of us working here honor in our own lives and work. We have experienced the gift of a "real life" that includes meaningful work and direct engagement with others. We want to share that gift with others.