While many folk nowadays associate the word "apprentice" with the television shenanigans of Mr. Donald "You're Fired!" Trump, it is in fact a noun and occupation stretching back over a thousand years. In the time before the mechanisation of production, most things were made by hand, requiring skills that took years to learn in many instances. That being so, it was difficult (then, as now) for a "master" to be able to pay for the services of a person, who was learning the trade. Thus arose the "apprenticeship" whereby boys and girls would sign on to work for free to study a trade under a master, often living in the master's home or place of work. A period of years was agreed and an "indenture" drawn up committing each party to certain obligations for the period of the apprenticeship.

The most famous example of apprenticeships in Bermuda must surely come from the Dockyard, where the young men of the island could sign on to learn, for example, the shipwright, electrical, plumbing and other trades. In that manner, the Royal Navy at Dockyard was perhaps Bermuda's first equal opportunity employer (at least for boys) and that suggestion is underlined by the diverse faces of the last group of its apprentices. As the north yard of the Dockyard was closed in 1951, those Bermudians still under service as apprentices were able, if they so wished, to go to Britain to complete their training. A number took advantage of the offer and some stayed on, marrying into the local community around the great Portsmouth Dockyard on the south coast of England or further afield.

In other words, apprenticeship existed as the primary, secondary and university resources of a country in the days before education was universally available.

Unlike much modern education, which teaches one about things, most apprentices were taught how to make them. Before mechanisation, it was essential for societies to have such an educational programme to ensure the transmission of knowledge about the making of things necessary for life of the day. So apprenticeships were both brains-on and hands-on experience, at the end of which one became a journeyman and eventually a master of a particular trade. University internships serve a similar function in modern times, with the student becoming a graduate scholar and potentially a professor (as master).

In days of old, apprenticeships were aimed at transmitting knowledge to ensure the production of goods and services. In Bermuda over the last two years, a new type of apprenticeship has emerged which aims to do the same, but has an interesting twist, for the work of a "tradition-bearer" is seen also as local "heritage". That heritage is a "legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group of society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations". The apprentices in Bermuda's "Folklife Apprenticeship Programme", organised primarily by Dr. Kim Dismont Robinson, of the Ministry of Culture and Social Rehabilitation's Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, signed on for a period of trade-transmission with five "masters".

In no particular order, but if you like food, we will start with Chef Frederick Ming, who took under his wing, or rather into his kitchen, apprentices LaKai Dill and Jahmeko Virgil.

If you preferred to mix cement rather than flour, you could have signed up with master builder George Leon Burt, who taught apprentice Damany Burchall how to make a house last, so that it might become the architectural heritage of the future.

In a more gentile profession, tradition-bearer Lynn Morrell gave apprentice Laura Lyons insights into the heritage of quilt-making, a folk-life art of considerable complexity and potential beauty for the home.

Stepping off dry land, George Llewellyn Hollis, a third-generation fisherman, instructed apprentice Keishunda Curtis on a hook, line and sinker course about Bermuda's shores and reefs.

Last on this listing, but hopefully first on your table, Tom Wadson took apprentice Quincy Burgess through the necessities and value of farming organically.

These apprentices appear not necessarily to have an original ending in their becoming journeymen in a trade or skill, but are an attempt to create intergenerational exchange of information about ways of life in Bermuda, perhaps in the hope that while one may not pursue a career in the kitchen or in coastal waters, at lease one will have a greater appreciatSion and understanding of the heritage of the various trades and skills. As Mr. Carey, noted at the banquet to celebrate the end of the 2010 Folklife Apprenticeship Programme: "It has been said that we all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors; and within the context of an apprenticeship programme, we can see a clear thread of connection between the tradition-bearers of the present and the master artisans of the future. Our young people – in this case, our apprentices – have the opportunity to build upon the knowledge that has been given to them. We rely upon them and others in their generation to determine the way forward, translating the traditions of the past in such a way that they retain the core that makes them Bermudian, while simultaneously considering how to make their art relevant and palatable in a contemporary context."

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The opinions in this column are his own. Comments may be made to drharris@logic.bm or 704-5480.