apprenticeship

Premodern learning through mentorship, observation, and practice, contrasted with school credentials.

Jiang's preferred model for training people into competence, contrasted with meritocratic gatekeeping and degree inflation.

For most of human history, learning happened through practice, experience, and apprenticeship rather than lectures, tests, papers, and grades.

Jiang argues that apprenticeship would produce better doctors than elite credential pipelines because practical work teaches better than school status.

Greg says American workplaces increasingly refuse to train people and instead expect workers to arrive fully formed, which creates inefficiency.

Jiang says China staffs medicine with weaker students but compensates through years of mentorship, internship, and guided experience.

Jiang says most jobs do not require passing through meritocratic tournaments; they require proper mentoring and apprenticeship, which would reopen access to the American dream.