My study has two fundamental aims: the first one consists in investigating the connection between work and learning, developing a theoretical position that offers the possibility to grasp the growth of personality in a wide prospective (cognitive, moral, social, etc.); the second aim is to carry out a comparative study between the Finnish and Italian VET (Vocational Educational Training) systems, defying first of all what comparing means and referring to a specific approach. An empirical study is included in this part. The relevance of this topic consists in examining how rapid changes in our society, especially in the labor market, can affect one of the traditional roles of the school: to support the transfer between school and work. These transformations influence the whole school system, but they are particularly evident in the VET. Because of this, the vocational system still has some open questions, like the necessity of updating curricula that can keep up with the contemporary conditions or providing new skills and knowledge. The present situation encourages a discussion regarding concrete solutions for reducing the gap between owned knowledge and required knowledge and the debate quite often ends in reproducing the dichotomy between general/academic and specific/vocational education. Although this particular division could seem current and fundamental in an epoch where one speaks if we must have general or specific knowledge and skills, the separation between these two types of education is rather old in Western tradition. Even if we can find a primordial sign of this division in the Classic tradition (liberales artes and labores), its roots date back to the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization generated new workers (working class) who had to be familiar with specific operations and tasks, but who did not know the whole and general productive process. This kind of production supported a clear separation between mental activity and manual labor and Taylorism has been a crucial organizing assumption of this division of labor with its ideas of rationalization, scientific organization, efficiency expert and its support of negative effects on personality. During the Industrial Revolution home, school and work became three different realms, while during the communal period, for example, apprentices often lived with their craftsmen. Their life in the craftsman's workshop represented both a professional and an educational experience, and it gave a precise position in the society. This division mentioned before created incoherencies that had to be resolved and it was necessary to re-connect the realms. In the specific case of school and work, vocational schools were possible ways for providing the right relation between the two spheres. In this mode the vocational system became the school of the working class and just reflected the separation between intellectual and manual, which was implied in work. It is clear to understand that the working activity has become an important element of the VET system and, according to Agazzi, replicates the idea that a particular society has about work and its values. Grasping how work went and still goes into the vocational school system and had/has an effect on it, it also implies to understand the meaning of work in a historical viewpoint (intellectual work vs. manual work) and considering the present situation (globalization, flexible labor market, etc.) in addition to a particular culture (European, national and local). A comparative study can show how those elements affect the school system in two European countries, Finland and Italy, belonging to different cultural and historical starting points, with different local realities, even if both they are under the influence of the European and global "laws".