Radical change is necessary for current craft education and training. We must invest quality time, energy, and money into well-designed craft education and training, studying and respecting both past and modern aspects, and encourage self-belief in our future craftspeople—for we are no less able today than historic craftsmen of producing the masterpieces we marvel at today. Only by demanding quality apprenticeships and learning environments that develop an ethos clearly seen to be producing superb craftspeople, employed in an industry that promotes quality of work and service, can we ask others to also place value on our once-noble crafts.
Those of us fortunate to have had all-embracing time-served craft apprenticeships, and to have worked alongside and learned from older craftsmen possessing traditional skills and knowledge, are now around 50 years of age plus. When we, and particularly the master craftsmen, are gone, that historic craft link will be forever broken.
One ignores a craft’s history, knowledge, and skills at one’s peril, perhaps best summed up by this old Chinese proverb:
“If a man dwells on the past then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past then he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of the past.”
Dr G C J Lynch