Asserting that the development of educational theory requires scientific study based on comparative data, the author analyzes the objections to data comparison between societies and finds this to be a nonissue. This is the Presidential Address, delivered to the Comparative and International Education Society, Mexico City, March 1978. (SJL)

The leading model used to explain comparative education development has been inadequate, and we need to account more competently for ideologies that have influenced the field's development. If, indeed, ideology is an inescapable part of whatever epistemology we subscribe to, we must recognize its existence in our own scholarship. (BRR)

The author suggests an agenda for comparative education research based on the metropolitan-hinterland paradigm, which emphasizes the economic and cultural exploitation of the Third World by rich nations. This is a revised text of the presidential address delivered at the 23rd Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society. (SJL)

Argues that education has an inherent political dimension. Provides illustrations from various historical periods and societies of the ways in which educators can be considered political actors. Focuses on curriculum decision making, classroom techniques, teacher-student relations, student evaluation, research, institutional politics, unions, and…