Why does the U.S. lag behind our peers when it comes to educating our students? Dana Goldstein on a new book that looks at school systems across the globe to come away with a startling conclusion: they value the intellect more than we do.

For all our national hand-wringing about standardized testing and teacher tenure, many of us immersed in the American education debate can’t escape the nagging suspicion that something else-something cultural, something nearly intangible-is holding back our school system. In 1962, historian Richard Hofstadter famously dubbed it ‘anti-intellectualism in American life.