The authoress focuses on the positon of work education as a school subject, taught in the then special schools on the territory of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the period from 70s to 90s of the 20th century. Thereby one emphasizes an enormous significance of that school subject, being one of the most important school subjects regarding the professional orientation of students and their work training performed during the educational process of the then socialist system. The paper describes the implementation of the school subject with the largest number of teaching hours in the 7th and 8th grade, emphasizing the delivery of the planned educational content of work education through its connection with the subjects of mathematics, nature education and art education. It also discusses the significance of work education in the educational process for students, regarding their development of habits, skills, accuracy, orderliness as well as for the process of correcting certain psychophysical functions. Based on the relevant data, the specific features of the subject are described, the ones essential for the sensorimotor skills acqusition at students with difficulties, i.e. the skills being acquired through practice, frequent repetition of work techniques, through the knowledge of materials, tools and machines, and in the finalization during which the students made useful products. In the final part, one underlines the importance of work education by intensive manual activation of students, thus helping each student to be successfully included in the professional work training and to be fully included in the field of work.