p Education through work is, so to speak, a combination of three ideas: ought, hard, and wonderful. Perhaps there would be no need to bring up the subject of education through work if in schools and homes these three ideas were seen as compatible .... But there can be no education outside work and without work, because without work in all its complexity and diversity no one can be educated. (31)

p Let us dwell for a moment on the following position. In our country tens of millions of people between the ages of seven and 17 or 18 are studying at school. This is a phenomenon unprecedented in history. It is a great boon of socialism. Yet this boon has given rise to problems of their own which can only be solved if they are approached wisely and intelligently. Our society is obliged to school all citizens between the ages of seven and 17 without exception (and furthermore, several more millions of young people aged between 18 and 25 are receiving higher education) because without universal education and literacy and culture it 189 is impossible to fashion workers with all-round training and fully developed personalities.

p But why do many young people show such little respect for this boon? .. .

p Before the Revolution it was the urge to escape poverty which led boys and girls to study. Now that all-powerful “educatory” poverty is no longer with us. And so much the better. But the fact that there are millions of seventeenyear-olds in school means that this achievement, unprecedented in history, should be given massive moral support. The moral factor which could ensure that universal secondary education proceed smoothly and fruitfully and could prevent various disasters which beset school life today is above all education through non-academic work. (31)

p We considered, for instance, that if a schoolchild carries out his work assignments enthusiastically while at school, then his attitude to work after school will be equally enthusiastic. However, experience showed that there was far more to it than that. A pupil may well conscientiously carry out what is expected from him in school and acquire practical skills, but still not be morally prepared for life after school.

p This is where the problem of how to foster moral fibre and maturity arises. What should be done to ensure that pupils are morally prepared for their working life? ... (2, 141)

p If a child receives instruction for ten years and is given basic knowledge in the sciences, 190 only to be handed a spade on leaving school and told to get on and work with it, this will be a real tragedy for him. Yet just such tragedies do befall many school-leavers, whose emotions, ideas and interests have over a period of ten years been quite divorced from real life, from work. Preparation for everyday work must be provided in all pupils’ activities and most important of all by way of their minds, ideas and emotional lives. (3, 86)

p An individual’s attitude to work is an essential element of his character and mental activity. It would be naive and inadequate to say that interest in work is fostered in the process of work. Interest in work as a central feature of man’s nature is fostered by his intellectual and emotional life as well. It is impossible for an individual who thinks or experiences little to take interest in his work. The more intelligent an individual, the richer his emotions and the stronger his will, the more strikingly his inclination for diverse types of work activity will manifest itself.... While interest in work cannot be fostered by mere words about work, neither can it be fostered without intelligent, serious words. (3, 14)

p Some critics of the curricula and syllabuses for secondary schools see their deficiencies to lie in the fact that they are overloaded with humanities at the expense of natural sciences. Demands are made to curtail humanities in the syllabuses and thus enhance young people’s 191 grounding for practical activity, and to narrow the gulf between instruction and real life. If this criticism were taken to its logical conclusion, it would emerge that the study of humanities bore no relation to the encouragement of interest in work. This is an extremely primitive approach to the problem. Training for life and work activity does not only involve the mastering of a narrow range of skills .... Humanities must provide an important instrument for the formation and channelling of pupils’ intellectual experience and for helping them to grasp the meaning of their work. (3, 91)

p We cannot accept the superficial view on the education process to the effect that hard physical work, coping with privations and obstacles automatically strengthen pupils’ moral fibre and principles. The educational role of work depends upon the way in which it influences the individual’s ideas, attitudes and emotions, and how closely it bears upon his will-power. (6, 27)

p A lack of intelligent work, and indiscriminate assignment to a pupil of any physical work—merely to give him something to keep himself occupied with—are equally disastrous for pupils’ intellectual development. (14, 8)

p A superficial approach to study is the most terrible deficiency of all education work.... The passing of time at classes corrupts pupils and fosters bad habits precisely at an age when young people are most susceptible. There are 192 countless examples to hand of pupils who, after leaving school, found themselves ill-prepared for life outside, after they had idled their time away in class. Neither exhortations nor useful work and duties can undo the bad habits that have already taken root, after years of time wasted by pupils who sat in class doing nothing. Perhaps they may even start showing interest in work, because the latter is carried out relatively seldom and thus introduces some variety into the boring life of the idler. (3, 120)

p Work used to exert a purpose-orientated influence on the individual is particularly closely bound up through numerous dependences and connecting links with other educa^ tional influences and if this bond does not materialise then work becomes no more than a repellent obligation of no benefit to man’s mind or heart. (10, 224)

p Education through work should not be seen as the application of unconnected methods and organisational forms. I have read a good number of articles, whose authors hold that if a village school has a production brigade, and a town school a workshop then the question of education through work can be regarded as solved. Of course both the brigade and the workshop are very important, but they are only isolated facets of education through work. Education through work is an extraordinarily broad, many-faceted concept. Many years of teaching and the hundreds of children’s lives 193 that have passed before me have convinced me that education through work constitutes the very meaning, the principal motive of school and family life. (31)

p Work and education through work are not something on a par with study, moral education and development. Work is something allpervading and all-embracing. To whatever stratagems we might resort in school to involve a child (and later youth) in other work, apart from study, study will still occupy the main place in his mental activity and there is no avoiding that truth. This is the reality which education through work must start out from. Indeed it is the beginning of all beginnings. Food for thought, a path to discovery of the world around us, and life’s truths, the acquisition of knowledge and the development of individual views and convictions on the basis of that knowledge are all a schoolchild’s sphere of work. (81)

p The pupils’ brainwork consists in energetic mental activity orientated towards correct, scientific cognition of reality. It is energetic because without that quality study ceases to resemble work and degenerates into senseless, merely passive assimilation of knowledge which is a burden to the child.

p Brainwork does not mean simply “thinking”. Thinking only acquires the nature of work if it is purposeful, when a person is striving to achieve a specific goal. (3, 72)

p Study becomes work only if it possesses the essential characteristics of any work—an objective, effort and results. (3, 194)

p Rigid divisions between physical work and brainwork at school are just as dangerous as dogmatic uncreative instruction. The combination of brainwork with physical work does not mean a mechanical increase of physical effort required together with an increase in the quota of brainwork, but a constant application of intellectual effort in the context of physical work. (3, 71)

A correct conception of brainwork makes it possible to avoid false ideas concerning the division of labour between “clean” work and “dirty” work. After appreciating from personal experience the effort required for real brainwork, the pupil will come to respect physical work as well. (3, 110)