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National Differences, Global Similarities

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Tables and Figures.............................................................................................................ixPreface................................................................................................................................xi1. The Global Environment of National School Systems...................................................................................12. The Declining Significance of Gender and the Rise of Egalitarian Mathematics Education..............................................163. Symbiotic Institutions: Changing Global Dynamics Between Family and Schooling.......................................................344. Demand for Achievement: The Worldwide Growth of Shadow Education Systems............................................................545. Rich Land, Poor Schools: Inequality of National Educational Resources and Achievement of Disadvantaged Students.....................716. Safe Schools, Dangerous Nations: The Paradox of School Violence.....................................................................867. The Universal Math Teacher? International Beliefs, National Work Roles, and Local Practice..........................................1048. Schoolwork at Home? Low-Quality Schooling and Homework..............................................................................1179. Slouching Toward a Global Ideology: The Devolution Revolution in Education Governance...............................................13410. Nation Versus Nation: The Race to Be the First in the World........................................................................15011. Conclusion: Observing Modern Schooling as an Institution...........................................................................169Bibliography...........................................................................................................................179Index..................................................................................................................................191

Chapter One

With all the importance attached to schools, it is no wonder that politicians and policy makers around the world place much emphasis on providing quality public education to their constituents. Operating and regulating a nation's schools-public or private-is of extreme importance to national leaders, and governments everywhere guide and direct the kind of education that children receive. In a very short time, public schooling has become the major means by which governments try to promote positive economic change, strengthen national identity, and inculcate citizenship values and behavior in entire populations of people. Consequently there is incessant public discussion about schooling, and political campaigns in all sorts of nations make educational policy and the performance of schools a central point.

By and large, most people most of the time think about education as solely a national undertaking. The trends we examine here, however, lead to quite a different vision, one where there is a considerable global process at work. To make sense of this contrasting globalized world of education, it is helpful first to describe the common image of schooling as a national enterprise. It is a vision with several components.

The everyday vision of schooling as a national enterprise sees it as chiefly a unique product of a nation's culture and governmental effort to foster prosperity for its citizens. This is thought to be true regardless of the particular level of governance of schools within the nation. It is common, then, to refer to French, Chilean, Japanese, American, and South African (or any nation's) schools as separate national entities. After all, what could be more deeply embedded in a nation's society than its schools preparing children for future adult lives in that country? The reigning image of education today is that schools are designed and managed within a national context for the specific needs and goals of a particular nation.

This vision also assumes that schooling is organized to educate and socialize children in a specific way that is directly linked to the future welfare of a particular nation. For example, German schools are thought to produce German adults with the technical skills, linguistic capabilities, and cultural awareness necessary to carry forth the entity of Germany into the future. A national product of educated citizens issuing forth from the school system is the main image of what schooling does in every nation. Educators may be aware of the larger global world, but their predominant image of a nation's schools is as a means to pass on a sense of national uniqueness and heritage, as well as meet the technical needs of its particular labor market. This image implies that schooling is limited to the specific needs of a nation, therefore schooling would not expand except as is needed for national reasons. Nor would schools engage in education that is separable from traditional values of the nation. Additionally, this image of schooling holds that because labor markets are hierarchical, so should schooling be hierarchical. For efficiency, the argument continues, the best and the brightest of a nation deserve the best educational opportunities for the best national outcomes, and those with lesser endowments should receive less. All of this is wrapped up in the picture of a national system of education operating uniquely to produce efficiently adults with the kind of skill necessary for a range of tasks in the labor market and adult life within a national context.

This common image of schooling bound up in a national context is further reinforced by the rhetoric of official comparisons of education across nations (Schmer, 2004). Observing schooling across nations is thought to reveal significant differences in specific and unique national features causing relative differences in academic outcomes, such as national achievement among nations. A common extension of this idea is that the specific characteristics of a nation's schools are partly responsible for its relative position in the world's economy, and that nations are different enough from one another in their...