Dear Ken,
In your interesting reply to David, at one point you appear to conflate two separate issues in craft education: (1) professional secrecy, and (2) a "different way" of transmitting craft knowledge.
In a distinction originally offered by Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), much craft practice can be seen to rely on skill ('knowledge-how') rather than awareness of facts ('knowledge-that'). Where 'knowledge-that' lends itself to documentation, skill is an ability that, in the words of Ryle, "cannot be imparted but only inculcated" (1946/2009, 234). Teaching of craft skills requires a process of guided repetitive training that can extend for years in the case of, say, piano playing, after which longitudinal studies suggest there are "learning-induced changes in [brain] gray matter" (Dayan & Cohen, 2011, 447).
The result of such training is an automatization of actions that lessens the need for executive brain functions to control the "thought requiring plodding" of the beginner. This liberates the skilled expert to concentrate instead on broader planning (Annas, 2012, 110). Such skill is not the same as routine, because it never performs the same task in exactly the same way, but rather enables a fluid response to changing conditions.
Skill does not lend itself to being "written in a way that permits everyone to read and use it." This is not the same thing as secrecy, because reading alone will not equip the reader to jump into action. At the same time, practiced skills seem not to lend themselves to written description, or even necessarily to self-awareness. In one study, skilled typists were unable to successfully identity the location of more than half the letters on a keyboard (Snyder et al., 2014, 231). They knew how; but not what.
Academics of the recent past are noted for cognitivist bias; emphasizing brain functions that seem to take place only above the eyebrows. Other authors now begin to suggest more complicated engagements between self and world, in which "extended cognitive systems are heterogeneous, composed of brain, body and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another" (Silberstein and Chemero, 2011).
... Looking at my in-box I see that David has already (in advance) summarized my complaints as "valuing of one type of knowledge over another."
Yup,Heidi
Annas, J. (2012). Practical expertise. In Bengson, J. & Modffett, M. A. (eds.). Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 101-112. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389364.001.0001
Dayan, E., & Cohen, L. G. (03 November, 2011). Neuroplasticity Subserving Motor Skill Learning. Neuron, 72, 443- 454.
Ryle, G. (1946/2009). Knowing How and Knowing That. In Collected Essays 1929-1968. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.
Silberstein, M. & Chemero, A. (2011). Dynamics, Agency and Intentional Action. Humana Mente, 15, 1–19.
Snyder, K. M., Ashitake, Y., Simada, H., Ulrich, J. E. & Logan, G. D. (2014). What skilled typists don’t know about the QWERTY keyboard, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 76, 162-171. DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0548-4
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