The OECD and Cold War Culture: thinking historically about PISA

In this article, the Cold War is understood as an encompassing cultural agenda according to which an enduring global peace and welfare under the leadership either of the United States or the Soviet Union was being promised. In the West the notion of ‘One World’ had become popular; it indicated the idea of a safe and united world based on the security and well-being of common people throughout the world, provided by US world leadership. However, when one of the former allies, the Soviet Union, started to express similar ambitions on its own agenda it became an increasingly distracting factor for the global vision of ‘One World’ under the leadership of the United States. As much as the 'Weltanschauungen' and the political legitimation rhetoric between the two competitors for world peace differed, many of its means and measures – especially in the field of education – were surprisingly similar. This chapter demonstrates this thesis, taking the example of the genealogy of PISA, understanding it as a tool whose roots have been developed ideologically and methodologically in the course of the Cold War.