Abstract:

Western ancient labor education faces the public and production practice, and has a clear tendency to manual labor. Labor education exists in general education, and mainly focuses on the production of material products and maintaining the needs of people’s lives, as well as people’s needs for physical exercise and health. The biggest and most distinctive characteristic of modern labor education is the emergence of school labor education and special labor education courses in schools. Labor education has the characteristics of class, production, enlightening and leisure. Modern labor education pays more attention to the educational function, which is manifested in the obvious increase of labor education tasks, the increasingly diversified forms of labor education, and the more institutionalized and standardized content of labor education serving the country. The theories of labor education in western history have close connection with political, economical, cultural and scientific development of human beings at that time. The theories of labor education in each era have its own character and content.

Key words: western countries, labor education, educational thought