Pretraining

The Hundred Crafts Academy took on apprentices without first teaching the secret methods of any one shop. In their first year, new apprentices studied wood grain, heat control, measurement, accounts, geography and common implements. The days were dull, and shopkeepers often complained that results came too slowly. Many shopkeepers grew impatient. They wanted people who could work the moment they walked in, and were unwilling to spend money supporting those seemingly useless miscellaneous courses.

An impatient shopkeeper said that since he wanted shipbuilders, he would have the apprentice memorize only ship manuals. Half a year later, the apprentice could name every plank but panicked whenever faced with new wood, new waters, or new load capacities. Worse, when a shipowner changed requirements on the spot, this apprentice could only look for similar pages in the old manual. He answered quickly, but the ships he built sat too deep in the water.

The old schoolmaster brought two groups of apprentices to the dock. Those who had only memorized the ship manuals could nail planks according to the drawings, but could not understand why the grain was cracking; those who had studied broadly did not know every shipyard code, but understood how water, force, material, and accounts were interconnected, and could quickly ask the key questions.

So the academy set early training more broadly: first let apprentices build a worldly foundation across a large amount of ordinary material, then have masters from each trade take over and teach them to adapt to the rules of shipyards, pharmacies, banks, or courier stations. The old headmaster also did not let apprentices study vaguely forever. Only after the foundation was solid enough to transfer did he send them into specific trades, connecting the general foundation to specialized rules.

A pharmacy owner later came looking for an apprentice too. He found that people who had studied miscellaneous subjects still had to learn drug names, but they would ask about the patient's age, season, contraindications and dosage, avoiding many dangerous paths.

Once these apprentices enter a specific shop, the master continues to train them. The foundation is not a replacement for specialized training; it gives later specialized training something to build on. Without a foundation, even a secret recipe learned quickly tends to be fragile.

The school later wrote this sequence into its admissions brochure. The first year seems far from specific business, but it is actually accumulating transferable common knowledge; the second year enters the trade, and only then compresses that common knowledge into specific rules. Broad first, narrow later, so apprentices won't be locked in by their first shop.

Years later, those who came out of the school might not be able to do the narrowest work right away, but they could learn quickly and adapt steadily in new industries. Lay the foundation first, then specialize, relying on broad experience accumulated in hand rather than carving patterns from the start.