Whose culture includes mathematics?

Leone Burton

pp. 69-83

in: Stephen Lerman (ed), Cultural perspectives on the mathematics classroom, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

In this chapter I argue that the ample evidence that mathematics is a discipline predominantly attractive to white, male, middle class students can, in part, be explained by the siting, in a socio-cultural context, of its content and the most commonly experienced teaching style. I identify the mathematics encountered through formal education as resonant of a powerful male, eurocentric culture which reifies its own perception of objectivity and reason, in an atmosphere promoting individualism and competition. To address participation rates in mathematics, I claim that we can no longer shelter behind a pretence that the subject is universal, objective and unrelated to the social conditions within which it is developed and practised. Furthermore, the images of the subject itself cannot be separated from the pedagogic style through which it is learnt.