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National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling, by David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. 216 pp. $19.95 paper. ISBN: 0-8047-5021-1. $50.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-8047-5020-3.
Reading this book is like cycling through Tuscany on tree-shaded lanes-the ride is smooth, the going is easy, and the eye is repeatedly pleased by both great vistas and striking close-up views. Baker and LeTendre guide the reader thoughtfully through terrain they know well, in a journey that covers key issues regarding educational ideology, system development and reform, and schooling effects. The road is paved empirically with analyses of data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TTMSS), a massive 1994 project sampling students in grades four, eight, and twelve in 41 countries (some analyses use the 1999 TIMSS wave for 50 countries). Covering most of the developed countries but rather few less-developed countries, TIMSS includes extensive information about schools, teachers, structures, and systems, enabling the authors to explore a great many topics beyond the mathematics and science tests that are their primary focus. The chapters in the book are correspondingly wide-ranging.
A careful reading of the tide reveals much of the book's central message: education-that is, mass schooling systems operated and funded primarily, if not exclusively, by national states-is...