We have talked about education and work in communism. As part of this discussion, I want to tell about some small experiences that I had in my youth.
Since capitalism is a system of exploitation, it is full of contradictions. One of many is to make the youth believe that an academic education is the solution to their future economic problems. But we know that many students who finish their university studies face mass unemployment that makes it impossible to find a job for which they studied, even more so if they never or almost never put into practice what they studied. Many other youth have not been able to continue their studies for economic reasons, because it has been impossible for their parents to pay the costs that this entails.
In my childhood, due to my family's extreme poverty, I could only study to the third grade of elementary school, leaving me with only the desire to continue studying. I was doomed to be a simple day laborer in the fields doing everything for the miserable wage of 30 cents per shift for a whole day's work. They paid the adults 60 cents per shift, but because I was a minor, the boss paid me 30 cents. But he made me do the same amount of work as the adults. When I became an adult, I went to the city to look for a better job and a better wage.
Going from place to place I found myself with a friend who worked as a carpenter in construction who, on seeing my pitiful conditions, asked me if I would like to be his helper at work. I gladly accepted. He made the necessary arrangements in the union and that's how I began to work as his helper. I wanted to learn and he wanted to teach me. I did my best, so that in just six months I could do any job related to carpentry. And to my great satisfaction, the union declared me a journeyman carpenter.
Since we are discussing education and work in communism, it seems to me that this will be a good way for youth and adults to learn, not only carpentry but countless other jobs. Children and youth should study until they learn to read and write enough to learn and understand history, science, mathematics, etc., since we don't want an illiterate society. But we must always relate this study to physical work, to combine theory and practice. Otherwise it would be as someone said, "that you could only be theoretical," but then what is conceived is not always realizable in practice. Or a person could only be practical, but in such a case, things are only done as routine. So theory and practice need to be linked.
I know that in my experience, my teacher and friend was teaching me what he had learned, and now we were correcting and improving the theory.
Under capitalism, the laborers, those who haven't studied, are at a disadvantage compared with those who studied, but they are the ones who do the heaviest and lowest-paid work. Parents want their children to study as much as they can; they don't want them to end up being laborers. It is not that this is an unseemly job, but since for the bosses a laborer is synonymous with ignorance, this benefits the bosses to pay miserable wages to these workers.
Communism will be different. There will not be laborers, because, assuming that those who know will teach those who don't know, anyone can be trained to do any work. Thus the contradiction between physical and mental labor will disappear, along with the term laborer.