Pedagogy of Work: historical reference coordinates

To outline the characterizing traits of work as an aspect of human education, it is essential to cross the pedagogical reflection diachronically, underlining those plots on which the pedagogical discourse around work is based. Work, a word used to identify both actions related to fatigue and effort, and for activities freely carried out and pleasantly carried out (Totaro, 1998), opens to various interpretative possibilities. Historically, work has had different functions and characterized by different factors. The meaning has therefore changed over time in a very diversified way according to the historical period, the current of thought and the social dynamics of the time. Today's theoretical framework in which the pedagogy of work is inserted is also the result of what has been produced over centuries of reflection; the humanization of work and its necessary recovery are the premises to adequately reread the present.