688 Book reviews / International Journal of Educational Development 23 (2003) 679–705

hand and obtaining and maintaining employmenton the other hand.

Stephen Drodge,University of Nottingham, Centre for

Comparative Education Research, School ofContinuing Education, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton

Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK

doi:10.1016/S0738-0593(03)00067-1

The OECD, Globalisation and Education PolicyMiriam Henry, Bob Lingard, Fazal Rizvi and San-dra Taylor. IAU Press and Pergamon. Oxford.2001. ISBN 0-08-043449-5pp. xiii + 197. Noprice given

If the WTO, IMF and World Bank are the bodyof globalisation’s dark side, the Organisation forEconomic Cooperation and Development (OECD)is its head. This is the opening passage from a May2002 NGO electronic article ‘The OECD’s Croco-dile Tears’ , which was prefixed for its transmissionwithin the Organisation with the words “paranoiais alive and well out there!” .

This book engages and annoys, which makes itworth reading. The three elements signalled in thetitle do not always fully come together, althoughChapter Three does directly examine the changingrelationships between the three elements, andpages 59-60 provide a useful summary of the firstpart of the book. While the central subject is theOrganisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment (OECD), an interesting andimportant figure on the post-War and contempor-ary international and intergovernmental stage, andits work in the education sector, the authors alsotake the opportunity to set out their philosophy andvalue system in respect of globalisation and econ-omic rationalism. At times this becomes a strongcritique of globalisation itself rather than of therole of the OECD. Chapter Two is best read thus.The role of the OECD is seen as presenting anintellectual if not caring face of global capitalism,mediating, interpreting and disseminating its impli-cations for education in a consensus-making andrationally unavoidable way.

The book suffers from a delay in productionwhich sits at odds with these times of instantaneousglobal communication and e-publication. Theresearch informing it was undertaken in 1995-97,with a concluding symposium in 1997. One of theauthors has since both joined and moved on fromthe University where I now work, since typesettingidentified him as being at Monash. More important,things have moved on at the OECD itself and sug-gest that there is more complexity in the situationthan met the authors’ eyes. In particular, and con-tradicting a central theme of this study which con-cerns the tendency for the educational to be domi-nated by globalisation interests and economists’perspectives in the Organisation, a separate Direc-torate has in 2002 been created for Education, ledby the Australian Barry McGaw who succeededanother Australian Malcolm Skilbeck as theOrganisation’s most senior educationist. This doesnot mean that the subordination of education toeconomics is at an end, but it is certainly put alittle more at arm’s length. It does suggest that theanalysis is selectively determinist in its account ofglobalisation and of the service, not to say servile,status attributed to the OECD as handmaiden ofthe global and of the World Trade Organisation.On the other hand, the account (page 87) of theUnited States’ rather naked pressure on Centre forEducational Research and Innovation (CERI) in1984 to focus on statistical input and outcomemeasures, and more generally on performativity,and the subsequent general support for Indicators,shows how the Organisation has at times to bendto explicit political reality. Yet this book itselfgives the lie to the assertion a little later (page 99)of a ‘new consensus in educational policy thataccompanies globalisation’ . Here as in the laterdiscussion of recurrent education and lifelonglearning, the account is incomplete enough to bewrong - blind men feeling only parts of the eleph-ant.

Australia has had a long-term love affair withthe OECD. In the early seventies, the federal Edu-cation Department hosted a lively OECD Edu-cation Committee, the task of which was to nurtureand amplify links with OECD in Paris and to fosterthe dissemination of educational ideas and insights

689Book reviews / International Journal of Educational Development 23 (2003) 679–705

within Australia. Affection for the OECD appearsto be in roughly inverse relationship to proximity.The British are often notoriously disrespectful andbluntly pragmatic, despite the large contributionmade by individuals to the OECD’s work. The hostFrance is often remarkably under-represented atOECD events. OECD offers a form of compen-sation for Australian remoteness from Europe. It isused to keep the country attuned to internationalleading edge trends – for better, for worse, as theauthors of this study might say. As the book shows,Australians give much to the Organisation, fromsenior bureaucrats to robust critics, and get muchin return.

There are rewarding analyses of the impact ofglobalisation on educational theory and practice,woven into a study of the history and evolving roleof the Organisation in developing, refining andtransmitting educational ideas and interpretingthem into practice. The text relies heavily, perhapstoo heavily, on semi-privileged and unavoidablyselective quotations from actors in the OECDstory. The problem is that the Organisation is athing of many parts. It leaves significant spaces inwhich its own professional staff, and the muchlarger network of consultants on whom it relies,can create new agendas and ask critical and innov-ative questions within a planning framework (five-year mandate periods) set from the politicalgovernance level. Within the education area, thereis a cluster of activities: the main Education pro-gramme, the Centre for Educational Research andInnovation (CERI), and IMHE which is concernedwith Institutional Management in Higher Edu-cation, each with its own accountability and lin-eage, influenced by different intellects and person-alities among its different staff, governing bodiesand consultants.

It is too simple to see this diverse system asserving the interests of global capital, even at ageneral, aggregated system level, but naı̈ve to denythe tensions and judgements that have to be madein the creation and execution of programmes andin the exercise of intellectual inquiry. Just to notethe range of issues addressed over recent years –the future of schools, learning cities and regions,e-learning, and now brain research, and knowledge

management – is to show that not everything iscorralled into a single ideological frame.1

This book is a valuable exploration of animportant subject – the role and influence of anintergovernmental organisation in developing,mediating and promoting policies, practices, andbehind them consensus-making ideologies betweennations. Like the OECD, the book is itself an arte-fact of interest in such an inquiry, both subject andobject of global development. To put it anotherway, much is in the eye of the beholder: the subjectis a tool and agent of global capitalism, or amediator, modifier of extreme tendencies. Theglass is half-full as well as half-empty.

Chris Duke,RMIT University, PO Box 187, Clifton Hill,

Victoria 3087, AustraliaE-mail address: chris.duke@rmit.edu.au

doi:10.1016/S0738-0593(03)00068-3

New Paradigms and Recurrent Paradoxes inEducation for Citizenship: An InternationalComparisonEdited by Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Judith Torney-Purta and John Scwille; Elsevier Science Ltd,Oxford, UK, 2002, ISBN 0-7623-0821-4, pp. 295,index, diagrams and tables, no price given.

Learning Democracy and Citizenship: Inter-national PerspectivesEdited by Michele Schweisfurth, Lynn Davies andClive Harber; Symposium Books, Oxford, UK,2002, ISBN 1-873927-29-0, pp. 304, index, noprice given.

Why is it, I wonder, that I put down these twoweighty and worthy volumes with somewhat

1 The recent volume celebrating the thirty yearcontribution of the retiring Head of CERI, Dr Jarl Bengtsson,is a good balance to the book here reviewed – seeInternational Perspectives in Lifelong Learning, FromRecurrent Education to the Learning Society, edited by DavidIstance, Hans Schuetze and Tom Schuller, all long-serviceOECD men as periodic staff and consultants (OpenUniversity Press 2002).