“Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, admitted yesterday that England’s state education system was failing too many young people as he pledged a new drive to raise standards.

“A decade after Labour took office, he told the party’s conference that it was not good enough for one in five children to enter secondary school unable to meet the required level of English.

“Children from poorer homes were still only half as likely to get five good passes in GCSE exams, even though results were rising faster among pupils entitled to free school meals, he said.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/school_league_tables/article2540096.ece

Btw do see this sad news report about local education authorities in Wales:

“Two-thirds of Wales’s local authorities are not spending enough on education, according to a teachers’ union. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said its research shows spending by 14 of the 22 councils is below expected budget levels.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7012744.stm

As Tony Blair said back in 2005, “More than one million people on incapacity benefit wanted to work.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4224721.stm

The problem is that they are not working. Besides that, we know from The Economist for 26 August 2006 that Britain is unusually well-endowed with low-skilled young people compared with other European countries:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7843638

Of course, that isn’t too surprising because of this:

“Last year [2004], a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates.”
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html

And this:

“Only half of those on apprenticeships in England finish them, the chief inspector of adult education has found.
Although standards of training had improved dramatically overall, David Sherlock said low apprenticeship completion rates were ‘unacceptable’.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6169843.stm

On (2) you may be right, but it strikes me as a differenent argument to the one that was previously put. It’s what they pay you for, sure: but that’s a very different thing to it being truly what you’re good at and what develops you as a person. Is that “crushing”? Dunno. Stunting perhaps.

On (3) it’s true to say that capitalism tends to find progressively more complex and potentially-fulfuilling work for us to do as the machines get on with (much of) the boring stuff, but it does then tend to spoil it by trying to deindividualise and mechanise it. There are all sorts of ways to view this process but personally I think it shows us our potential and then denies it.

On (4) I don’t think it’s just the bastards or the absence of control, true though both are, but it’s also the work itself. There is an interesting question that can be asked in response, to the effect that “if this is alienated labour, what would unalienated labour look like (Marx’s own answer to this is notoriously sketchy) and do you really think most of us would be able and allowed to do it?”

on 2) I agree with Charlie’s discussion of the same issue; work is pretty much definitionally what they pay you to do, but I don’t agree that this is crushing to the soul or whatever.

on 3), I think it’s pretty well established that Taylorisation is a step on the way to automation – the tendency of the economy is to simplify a task in order to remove the worker, and thus to move workers into the jobs that can’t be simplified. I don’t think anybody’s arguing that this is the state of affairs right now, but that’s the direction of progress.

on 4) I think I am on reasonably orthodox grounds in saying that the main bad thing about work is either a) not having control of your time or b) the actions of specific bastards who, it is sad to say, would probably exist and be doing just as much harm under most other economic structures.

First, is there any reason to think this?

Maybe there’s survey evidence and I’m happy to see it if there is, but the evidence of hearing people talk about their jobs doesn’t immediately back this up.

Second, is this true?:

If someone’s really good at talking and they spend all day in a sales job, that’s them using their talent

Isn’t the point about having a skill not just that you use it, but how you use it and how you develop it? If you have a capacity to write, you don’t just write, it matters what you write and whether your skill at writing is developed, adds to the lives of other people, gives you the satsifaction that it might and so on.

Third, is not the point about mechanisation under capitalism that it seeks, more often than not, to try and reproduce processes mechanically, to make them less individual, to find out how they are done and devise processes that will do them over and again?

Four, so far from being “patronising” to the working class, isn’t it a very, very commonly heard sentiment about work that “it does my head in”? That people do find that it does not develop them and does not test them other than physically?

All these points can be challenged with good examples and need to be qualified to some degree, but I wonder whether dsquared takes them into account to the extent that he might.