Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c18.27

c18.27

**Advantages of the System.** The system of the apprentice and his master living together has many advantages. The apprentice always lives and works under his master's eye and has opportunities of observing the special points of his skill, his trade secrets, and imbibing his true "inward" method and genius, as the ultimate factor of success of his craftsmanship, when he lives in his home which is also his workshop, i.e home where in its freedom his whole personality always remains revealed, unobscured by the restrictions and formalities of a factory. It is the constant and intimate relationship of the home which, apart from actual and direct teaching, helps the disciple to master his teacher's method and skill in the shortest time. There is also another advantage of the home and the workshop being one. Here the teaching is learnt from the very beginning in relation to real things difficulties, and problems, and primarily by service, by personal attendance on the master. And it is not only technique that is thus learnt here, but something more valuable: in the home as workshop, there is something else, besides mere plant and tools: there is life with its problems, its human relationships, culture, and religion, relieving the mechanical monotony of a mere workshop, a thing which is as necessary to art as technique itself.