In this speech the author examines the contact points between education and the world of work and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the relation of the two systems. He identifies and evaluates the following major areas of contact: (1) pre-school education, which is growing for children as both parents increasingly choose to work, but whose value is unclear and requires more research; (2) basic education, which often stresses ranking children according to their performance so that the outside world may judge them as potential employees, rather than giving them the orientation they need towards their living environment; (3) lower secondary level, which often divides students into vocational or theoretical training and thus unfairly determines their future; (4) upper secondary and higher education, in which many students try out their career interests and capabilities while in school by working during vacation or at part-time jobs, but which suffers from the same classification problem as earlier schooling; and (5) adult education, which of all the types of education is least influenced by the distinction between general and vocational education and should be defined in terms of the student's own preferences. The author concludes that both schools and work life are undergoing periods of change during which the role of education as a disseminator of knowledge and in social selection is weakening and society's attitudes toward work is turning from negative to positive. His vision for the future pictures the conscious development of the two systems in a way that each may contribute to the desirable development of the other. (ELG)