What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

When considering the revival of the apprenticeship model, too much focus is given to the economics and the social aspect is nearly entirely ignored.

Apprenticeships aren't just about money. They're an intimate relationship between mentor and mentee, the former passing down years if not decades of accumulated knowledge to someone he trusts to take on his craft.

In a society that increasingly treats any "power imbalance" as a relationship prone to abuse, establishing the level of intimacy needed between a master and apprentice becomes exceedingly difficult.

That power imbalance idea is the natural result of deep social atomisation.

So, what's the solution? Do we work on reviving the model and hope it helps to restore the social bonds needed, or do we try and repair social bonds before attempting apprenticeship models?

I don't think there's a "business solution" to this. No startup is going to save the day. It'll take the painstaking rebuilding of social fabric and management of political, economic and social networks by CIVIC actors to restore apprenticeships.

Also, consider how little work these days is done by hand. Do you think "knowledge economy" workers in marketing and sales are going to have anything useful to pass down? The obvious answer is no.

The reason apprenticeships works so well in Germany is that PHYSICAL INDUSTRY is an intimate part of the social fabric.

As such, the discussion of apprenticeships now reaches into industrial policy; bring back the manufacturing of REAL GOODS.

There's no software edtech startup solution to this, except one that cleverly markets itself as a solution to milk the situation in the short term and get VC money - only to make things even worse in the medium-long term. Standard startup antics.

Formal edu is overrated. Informal edu has been society's dark matter forever. Yet in an atomised society, the space for the informal disappears. All that is permitted are formal relationships between individuals under the watchful eyes of the state.

Again, atomisation may not be a problem. The Germans do just fine. But they also have a physical economy that roots them in this world. Work gives them community.

Anglos have neither community nor connection to their labour. It is the final and total alienation.