In the history of human development, it is the emergence of schools that marks the first separation of education and productive labor. In the early stage of the development of human society, education has not been divorced from social production and social life. Later, people gradually realized that it was necessary to separate the activities of imparting knowledge from the process of social production and life and form a special field of activities, so a special educational institution, namely schools, appeared. Therefore, starting from the special requirements of human knowledge and its dissemination, the school is an organization for educators to systematically educate the educated in a planned and organized way.

The separation and combination of education and labor is in capitalist society. Separation was in the period of ancient slave society and feudal society, and integration was in the period of capitalism.

According to different historical periods, education can be divided into primitive social education, slave social education and feudal social education (collectively referred to as ancient education), capitalist education and socialist education. Influenced by productive forces, education and productive labor have gone through the process from combination to separation, and then to gradual combination.

One of the characteristics of primitive social education is that education is carried out in productive labor. Due to the improvement of social productive labor force, school education was separated from productive labor force in slave society and feudal society, which provided intellectuals specializing in educational activities for the emergence of schools. School education is monopolized by slave owners and landlords, and it is hierarchical and hierarchical.

During the capitalist period, natural science knowledge was paid more and more attention, practical education was developed, and the connection between education and productive labor was strengthened. In the socialist period, we should take Marxism–Leninism as the guide, combine theory with practice, and combine education with productive labor to cultivate talents with all-round development in morality, intelligence and physique.