Fable
A master doesn't just look at the finished piece, but also at how the apprentice makes the cut
A porcelain workshop trained apprentices, and at first it only looked at whether the final bowl was round. The apprentice submitted the finished product, and the master gave a score. Those that fired successfully stayed; those that warped were redone. This method produced people with fast hands, but it could not reliably teach complex vases. Some people happened to get it right in the end, but their steps were chaotic; others failed by a little, but their key techniques were actually correct. The master first added finished-product standards: rounder, thinner, brighter. The apprentices were under more pressure, but they still did not know whether a complex vessel should first be pulled tall and then narrowed, or first stabilized at the base. Later, the master required skilled craftsmen to write down the production process as well: when to add water, why to stop, and how to correct the clay body when it was found to be skewed.
Apprentices no longer imitated only the finished product, but a whole chain of judgments. When they encountered complex forms, they learned to break the task into executable steps.
Trouble also appeared. Some old craftsmen's process records were vague, and some even wrote after-the-fact explanations as if they were judgments made at the time. Apprentices learned fine words, but did not learn the real techniques.
The master therefore selected verifiable processes and kept only step records that could reliably lead to a good finished product. The finished product still had to be inspected, and the process also had to be inspected; neither could be missing.
The porcelain workshop later discovered that this kind of practice was best suited to multi-step, error-prone shapes that require planning. Ordinary small bowls did not need the full process written out; over-practice only slowed things down.
The master said: to teach apprentices complex judgment, you cannot reward only the answer. You must also let them see how a good answer is reached step by step.
The master also discovered that process records can't be longer than necessary. Some apprentices wrote down every breath, and the truly key gestures were drowned out. So the workshop kept only the steps that could explain choices, be reproduced, and affect success or failure.
Later, when encountering a new vessel shape, the apprentice first broke it down by process, then fired a finished piece to verify. If the process looked beautiful but the bowl cracked, it still had to be sent back; if the finished piece was good but the steps were dangerous, it could not be promoted directly either. What the workshop needed to learn was reliable technique, not a pretty self-description. The master said the process could teach people, but only a verified process deserved to enter the textbook.