The Significance of Studying the Question of Working Education from the Point of View of Historical Development for the Solution of Present-Day Pedagogical Problems

The author analyses and appraises the views on the importance of work in education mainly from the aspect of the relationship between the theories being studied and the social classes. He differentiates the theories according to whether the respective theory aimed at the idea of working education contributing to a change of the social order (More, Campanella, Fourier, Owen; the Russian Revolutionary Democrats; Marx, Engels) or whether in only served to make the advancing class assert itself (the period of antiquity and feudalism, as far as the education of the ruling class was concerned; Bacon, Locke; Comenius, Rousseau, the pedagogical reformers of the French Bourgeois Revolution; Pestalozzi). The author applies this class view also when analysing pedagogical theories on the significance of working education from the point of view of components and aspects of education. In stating the case for working education he stresses the following viewpoints:
1. The viewpoint of all-round education (differentiation between working education and physical training; working education as a necessary component of all-round education).
2. The viewpoint of moral education (working education as a means of acquiring moral habits; instilling respect for work: working education as a guarantee of a happy life).
3. The viewpoint of methodology and pedagogy (how working education contributes to the process of teaching and learning; its function as a method in the educational process; how it is to be understood with regard to teaching. In conclusion the author characterises the socialist conception of working education, which shows that Marxist-Leninist pedagogical theory is qualitatively the highest stage in the development of the most progressive pedagogical efforts that appeared in the past.