Forms of work during school

Through historical accounts, we can find different forms of employment that required a special kind of education. This education did not only involve learning the theory from an institution, but also involved working with the institution in the very business it taught. Fields such as teaching, philosophy, exegisis and translation, vocational skills (building, cutting, refining, binding, etc.) were all fields in which you went to someone to learn something, and learned by doing.

Today, we may regard schools as being completely absent of paid work. In some cases, we may even go so far as justifying why paid work during school is a bad idea.

But I think we would be contradicting ourselves if we went into this justification. There are forms of work that exist in schools today. Examples such as apprenticeships, interships, externships, work-study schemes and co-ops all point to the existence of learning programs that call for practical experience. The practical experience compliments the theoretical learning. 

The complimentary relationship between work and study seems to be part of how we have always learned how to be productive. It seems, therefore, that any initiative that eliminates the practicality of learning from learning itself is training young minds for something else.