DenmarkThe ’world of work’ has a shadowy presence in modern school education. Schools are expected to provide young people with knowledge, skills and motivation relevant (in more or less general ways) to the labour market and prepare them to choose appropriate education and work careers. In the Danish school system, like in many others, the teaching and the everyday life of schools have become more and more shaped by a policy focus on academic outcomes and test scores. At the upper secondary level students can choose vocational schools with a strong element of workplace training; but in ordinary schooling there is little room for relating teaching and learning to work. Students’ perception of work is shaped instead by what they hear from family and the media. The importance of work for human development and quality of life is debated (Gorz, 1999), but there is no doubt that work is a fundamental condition in modern societies, not just for income but also for citizenship and identity. This clearly indicates a need for more explicit links between schooling and the world of work, links through which students may gain and reflect on direct experience. These issues were confronted by one of the early theorists of modern society, Karl Marx. He criticized separation of schools from social life and argued that the optimal form of education combines institutionalised teaching and learning with paid productive labour (Small, 2017). Marx’s approach and his concept of ‘Polytechnical training’ still hold inspiration for rethinking the relationship between schooling and work, even though today’s workplaces and labour markets are very different from early capitalism. One difference is that the economic role of knowledge and learning, in individual firms as well as in national economies has become much more evident (Lundvall, 2017). In this contribution we will discuss the possible forms and functions of such links between work, learning and schooling, focusing on public school systems at primary and secondary levels. Theoretically we will draw on critical social theory, not least on Oskar Negt (Negt, 2001), who has focused on the character and role of experience in modern societies and related this to both trade union education and progressive schooling. We will also draw on empirical studies of Danish education, especially of the so-called ‘Production schools’ (Rasmussen & Rasmussen, 2009) where young people can receive work-based training as preparation for later education or work.

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