BOOK REVIEWS

Finally, even given his synthetic grasp of a large amount of international litera-
ture, there are times when the gaps in his references yawn wide. An important in-
stance of this can readily be found in his interesting Durkheimian discussion of the
changes from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity in relations among com-
panies in the economy. As Bourdieu indicates, the implications of this transforma-
tion in terms of credentialling and the relative weight of specific kinds of schooling
in the social field of power are important. Yet, much of this is similar to Basil Bern-
stein's insightful and lengthy discussions of the transformations of such forms of
solidarity and of their implications for the formation of identities, institutions, and
"legitimate" knowledge. I was puzzled and disappointed that Bourdieu did not draw
on Bernstein's work here.
However, while such criticisms should not be taken lightly, there is still so much
power (forgive the play on words here) in Bourdieu's analyses that he is alwaysworth
reading carefully, and this book is no exception. Yet, there is another part of The
StateNobilitythat I need to mention. LoicJ. D. Wacquant's "Foreword"to the volume
is cogent and does a fine job of outlining Bourdieu's general arguments and what is
at stake in them.

MICHAEL W. APPLE

John BascomProfessor
Universityof Wisconsin,Madison

Learning:.-The TreasureWithin:Reportto Unescoof theInternationalCommissionon Edu-

cationfor the Twenty-First
Centuryby Jacques Delors et al. Paris: Unesco Publish-
ing, 1996. 266 pp.
Those who choose to write about a century of education face a difficult task. Much
can happen in 100 years. Should the author describe the beginning of the period
or its end or attempt sweeping generalizations that cover the entire span? Should
the emphasis be on what will happen or what should and could be made to happen?
These issues may have been addressed by the authors of the Reportto Unescoof
theInternationalCommissionon Educationfor the Twenty-First Century.The commission,
organized in 1993 byJacques Delors for Unesco, included 14 leading world public
figures, held eight working sessions in all the continents and consulted with a wide
range of government and private groups, including educators and social scientists.
The commission sought to discuss education in all its diversity. Not clear, however,
is whether the title of the report refers to the dawning of the twenty-firstcentury or
to the entire period.
The content of Learning:.-The TreasureWithinsuggests that this report is about
education in the next 10 or 15 years but not the twenty-firstcentury in its entirety.
The value of the report lies, therefore, in what it suggests about immediate educa-
tional reforms rather than long-term trends, possibilities, or strategies. Although it
cites many illustrative cases, the argument is essentially normative rather than em-

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 BOOK REVIEWS

pirical. It offers a vision of what education should be rather than evidence of the
differential effectiveness of elements of the current version.
The report's introduction locates the work in the tradition of Philip Coombs's
The WorldEducational Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) and Edgar
Faure's Learning to Be (Paris: Unesco, 1972). The report also lists a series of con-
tinuing tensions, which, though "not new, will be central to the problems of the
twenty-firstcentury" (pp. 16-17). These tensions include global versus local inter-
ests, universal versus individual concerns, tradition versus modernity, long-term and
short-term considerations, competition versus equality of opportunity, the expan-
sion of knowledge and our capacity to assimilate it, and the tension between spiri-
tual and material pursuits. All the problems facing education have been commented
on before, as much as 29 years ago. What is new perhaps is the intensity with which
they are now felt.
The commission is firm in its belief that the development model of the twenti-
eth century, for all its benefits, cannot and should not be continued into the next
century. "The truth is that all-out economic growth can no longer be viewed as the
ideal way of reconciling material progress with equity, respect for the human con-
dition and respect for the natural assets that we have a duty to hand on in good
condition to future generations" (p. 15).
More education is seen as a requisite to the mitigation of the negative effects of
the tensions exacerbated by the current development model. Understood in terms
quite different from those espoused, for example, in "Priorities and Strategies for
Education" (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1995), the World Bank's most recent
paper on education, the commission offers education as the means to generate a
more positive human development: "[an] attempt to attain the ideals of peace, free-
dom and socialjustice" (p. 13).
Learning: The TreasureWithinis sketchy on characteristics of a society and econ-
omy characterized by human development. Nor does it develop in much detail how
education will contribute to the construction of such a society and economy. In fact,
the "education" in the report's twenty-firstcentury looks pretty much like that we
have known in the twentieth century. This may be a problem of time horizon. After
all, if the twenty-firstcentury is 2001, we should not expect much to change.
There are some changes in emphasis. First, the commission recommends re-
thinking the concept and practice of lifelong learning. Formal schools will continue
to be the fundamental educational experience, but schools should teach people
how to learn. In addition, specific attention should be given to the "educational
potential of the modern media, the world of work [and] cultural and leisure pur-
suits" (p. 21).
The major impetus to education reform (understood here as revision of exist-
ing education) is the forces of globalization as they affect capital markets, commu-
nication and information and is associated with high levels of migration and con-
sequent political instability. These changes, already on us, require a shift from an
education that prepares for social cohesion to one that prepares for democratic
participation. Consistent with the premise that more education will be better, the
report ignores the question of whether the expansion of education has contributed
to the forces that add up to globalization and generate worrisome outcomes. The

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 BOOKREVIEWS

new tasks assigned to education are laudable, but Learning:The TreasureWithingen-

erally is silent on what current practices will have to be abandoned and which orga-
nizations will have to disappear.
The report calls for an education that will enable us to shift from economic
development to human development and, to that end, delineates four kinds of
learning: learning to live together, learning to know, learning to do, and learning
to be. Recommendations based on these types of learning are a mixed bag of apho-
risms and testable hypotheses. For example,
1. Education can be increasingly diversified without worsening social differen-
tiation.
2. Schools can stimulate increased political participation.
3. Education policy can contribute directly to programs to encourage self-
employment and the spirit of enterprise.
4. The relationship between pupil and teacher is the most fundamental factor
in learning.
5. Universities are central to the development of any society and contribute to
economic as well as political development and the production of culture.
6. Educational reform can only succeed with the active support of teachers and
local communities.
7. Education is a community asset that should not be regulated by market
forces alone.
8. Distance education is a viable and positive technology for education.
Other shibboleths include "knowledge of an international language will be es-
sential in the global village and global market of the twenty-firstcentury"1 and "sci-
ence and technology must be an integral part of education for everyone" (p. 128).2
Finally, the commission urges that educational institutions of all kinds and at all
levels be linked more closely with other social organizations. Primaryschools should
be open to and penetrated by the local community; secondary and tertiary institu-
tions should form partnerships with government and private sector, production,
and distribution organizations. These are the most radical proposals in the report.
But while they would seem to require fundamental changes in educational institu-
tions and processes, the report only hints at what those might be.
Learning: The TreasureWithinfalls into the same trap as that of the World Bank
in prescribing a specific set of common remedies for a highly diverse world. For all
its positive emphasis on democratic participation, the report provides a list of what
developing countries shoulddo to escape the situation that (by inference) has been
caused by the inadequate education provided in the past. It even falls into the trap
of condescension by employing a deficit model to explain underachievement. It is

1The term "global village" is of course an oxymoron. As the report and others insist, globalization
breaks down traditional community and destroys villages.
2Jon Lauglo ("Banking on Education and the Uses of Research: A Critique of World Bank Priorities
and Strategies for Education," InternationalJournal ofEducationalDevelopment16, no. 3 [1996]: 221-33),
commenting on the World Bank education paper ("Priorities and Strategies for Education" [WorldBank,
Washington, D.C., 1995]), notes that there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates that investments
in science education would make any more contribution to development, however defined, than would
investments in moral education.

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 BOOK REVIEWS

what the poor lack that best explains their condition of ignorance and consequent
disadvantage (and we can provide their salvation).
The most interesting part of the report may not be the unsurprising analysis
and list of recommendations in the main body of the text but the personal state-
ments made by 11 of the coauthors. These statements reveal the difficulty of the task
faced by the commission: how to integrate the views on education of people from
different continents, cultures, and ideological perspectives.
A similar task was faced in the eight meetings in which a deliberately diverse
group of "experts" offered their diagnoses and recommendations for reform. Pro-
cesses of this kind suffer from a "leveling" in reporting. Brilliant and radical ideas
are likely to be lost in the editing required to satisfy the diverse committees respon-
sible for the report. Speakers at the meeting I attended proposed a number of radi-
cally new ways to "do education." None of their ideas survived the chairperson's
summary of the meeting. The consequence of this kind of "smoothing" is a docu-
ment that captures well the conventional wisdom of the end of the twentieth cen-
tury and projects it a few years into the twenty-first.A challenging mandate for
the twenty-firstcentury remains to be written, perhaps through action rather than
through committee.

NOEL F. McGINN

Professorof EducationEmeritus
Harvard University

Educationand CulturalDifferences:
NewPerspectives
edited by Douglas Ray and Deo H.
Poonwassie. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992. 567 pp.
The central place that culture is assuming in our study of globalization and its im-
pact on education and society poses a distinct challenge to many who find it difficult
to see beyond economic dynamics and behavior as the underlying driving force.
To be sure, globalization needs to be understood in terms of economic integration,
but the speed and depth of that integration remains dependent on how its ser-
vants-information and communications technologies and the increasing mobility
of goods, services, and persons-interact with those same economic forces. That is
the real story of globalization and is a story that has culture at its heart.
Stuart Hall is perhaps the first name to spring to mind among those who have
consistently argued that cultural standardization and homogeneity are not necessar-
ily the products of globalization. A globalizing world can, and will, remain a diverse
and diversifying world. The sticking point, however, is that despite its tolerance for
(and even insistence on) political and cultural diversity, globalizing forces work to
neutralize them, working against their potency to forge fundamental realignments
of power and economic alliances. Cultural difference, then, becomes trivialized and
has as much to do with our behavior as leisured consumers as with anything else.
This insight becomes important as the position of minorities is considered.
As a gay male, I am puzzled by the increasing liberalism-even libertarianism-
evident with the march of globalization, reducing me to a more-than-tolerable

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