Choice Review

Marxist views on education are far from popular, but McLaren (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) is one Marxist thinker who cannot be disregarded. He uses his latest book to deplore the waning role of critical pedagogy, which questions the hard sciences' claim to objectivity and points to the political nature of education's influence on all areas of life. McLaren sees standardized tests as ensuring that the educational system is aligned with the global economy, and moves toward educational choice only sapping the strength of public schools and contributing to educational privatization. He complains that the liberal Left is "less interested in the class struggle than it is in making capitalism 'more compassionate.'" Postmodern educational theory, he feels, does not help, serving only as a means of distracting attention from capital's goal of global accumulation. Although McLaren employs coauthors in each of his eight chapters, the work is essentially his. This is particularly so in the final chapter, which he and Nathalia E. Jaramillo pointedly title "God's Cowboy Warrior: Christianity, Globalization and the False Prophets of Imperialism." Appropriate for students in education or political science. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through research collections. R. O. Ulin emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill