ABSTRACT
Textbooks are part of an international system of knowledge that affects virtually all intellectual endeavors. The fact is that a relatively small number of countries dominate the world's knowledge system, and this system has an impact on textbooks as well as on other knowledge products. School textbooks are assumed to be a product of a particular nation to be used in its educational system. Textbooks, despite the recent criticism of them in the United States, are virtual icons of education. Textbooks also have an important and rapidly expanding international dimension. In the industrialized nations, textbooks at the elementary and secondary school levels are, on the surface, domestic products. They are prepared to meet the needs of domestic educational systems and are not published for export. Educational policy-makers in the United States are increasingly concerned about how American students rank in comparison with their peers in other countries and what American students are learning in comparison with students abroad.
