The crucible and the content

The crucible font

There is no course to become an artisan. We can teach the basic skills, from agriculture through bookkeeping, coding, dentistry.....all the way to zookeeping, but we cannot teach an attitude.

An artisan is a crucible into which knowledge, skills, and relationships can be poured, and the magic of transformation is provided by the curiosity, purpose, view and worldview of the individual, the crucible in which raw materials are transformed to something of importance and beauty, however small.

There was a time when knowledge was scarce and was held by a few people and insititutions who doled it out in return for, variously, influence, control and money. This is no longer true - for all our angst around the internet, it has set information and knowledge free.

The same is true of education. It used to be that certificates and badges were essential to get to the jobs we wanted, and that scarcity offered those issuing the badges power. Whilst they are still a factor, that factor…