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During the last decade mathematics educators have increasingly realised that mathematics education is part of education and, therefore, is political because it is concerned with access to power and privilege; furthermore, mathematics education research also is political because it cannot operate outside of the politics of mathematics education. This realisation as motivated mathematics education researchers to attempt to lay bare the political dimensions of mathematics education. Thomas (1992) has argued that the politics of mathematics education has two dimensions: first, there is the social context, which takes into account factors such as language, culture, gender, socio-economic-status, and access to technology; and second, there are government policies and practices which have an impact on how such research is funded.

In this section we shall take into account both of these dimensions, but not necessarily separately - in fact, we shall be especially concerned with the intersection of the two.

The folly of trying to impose fairly common mathematics courses on students at any level, and from different cultures, has become increasingly evident. Such attempts inevitably result in learners from major groups (like, for example, females, the working classes, and ethnic and racial groups) being disadvantaged, yet this happens in a social climate aiming to achieve "equality of educational opportunity " (Clements, 1989). Surely it is important that politicians, education administrators, mathematics teachers and mathematics education researchers in all countries do not continue to condone procedures where a majority of students who want to learn mathematics become sacrificial lambs at the twin altar of education efficiency and economic rationalism (Pitman, 1989).

Many people, and especially politicians, employers, and education administrators, believe that what goes on in a nation's school mathematics programs is intimately linked to the economic condition of that nation. Often powerful elements of communities call for back-to-the-basics approaches to school mathematics, supported by regular state- or nation-wide mathematics testing programs, which will ensure that mathematics teachers are publicly accountable for their actions. A problem can arise if these powerful figures think they know more about mathematics education than they really do, and are unwilling to be confronted with research results which suggest that back-to-the-basics, behaviourist approaches, supported by externally prescribed curricula and heavy written assessment programs, will not generate generate better mathematical understanding in learners.

The point we are making was amplified in the mid-1970s by data obtained in the large-scale investigation into the literacy and numeracy skills of Australians aged 10 and 14 years carried out by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in 1975. The large sample for this study included subsamples of tribal Aborigines, mainly from the Northern Territory, and urban Aborigines from different parts of Australia. The urban Aborigines performed significantly less well on the numeration tests when compared with white children of the same age, and the tribal Aboriginal children showed next to no understanding of the written tasks. Bourke and Parkin (1977), in reporting these findings, concluded that the questions on the literacy and numeracy tests involved ideas that were largely foreign to the tribal Aboriginal children's cultures, a point emphasised by Pam Harris (1987, 1989, 1990) and Helen Watson (1988, 1989). Of course, such a conclusion came as no surprise to tribal Aborigines and to those with an empathy for Aboriginal cultures.

One example from the 1975 ACER study will serve to illustrate the point we are making. Both the 10- and 14-year-old students who were tested were asked to write down the time shown on a watch-face: the watch used for the younger students had Arabic numerals on its face, but that used for the older students had only strokes. The times shown were 11:35 and 4:40 for the 10- and 14-year-olds, respectively, and results obtained are set out in Table 1.

Performance on Time-Telling Tasks by Three Groups of Students

	% of Correct Responses for . . .
Age Group	Tribal Aboriginal Children	Urban Aboriginal Children	Australia Overall
10 year-olds	2	25	71
14 year-olds	3	73	89

Bourke and Parkin (1977, p. 149), in commenting on the very small percentage of tribal Aboriginal respondents who gave correct answers to these time questions, stated that the tasks themselves were "certainly outside the experience of many." Harris's (1991) book on Aboriginal time, space, and money concepts lends strong support to this view. The point is that what is regarded as "basic" in one culture can be irrelevant in another, and the mere existence of a national curriculum in which student "entitlements" are listed is likely to be sufficient to ensure that many teachers will waste much time trying to help unprepared and increasingly disaffected students acquire skills that although described as "basic" are, for these learners, almost meaningless.

Who Should Make Mathematics Curriculum Decisions?

Historically, according to the UNESCO Report entitled Mathematics For All (Damerow, Dunkley, Nebres, & Werry, 1984), mathematics curricula were developed for an élite group of students who were expected to continue their mathematical and scientific studies in tertiary institutions (on this, see also Ellerton and Clements, 1988). But with more and more children attending schools on a regular basis, students from less selective backgrounds, and with different vocational aspirations and daily life requirements, have entered the education systems in greater numbers. These students have often found existing mathematics curricula to be unduly abstract, impractical, and irrelevant.

The UNESCO Report laments the fact that the old élitist curricula have frequently been transferred to developing and third-world countries, where different social and cultural traditions have often emphasised their inappropriateness (Damerow et al., 1984, p. 4). And there is increasingly strong evidence that children in non-Western cultures, for example, often have different ways of thinking about measurement concepts, and about numerical and spatial relationships (Clements & Del Campo, 1990; Harris, 1991; Hunting & Sharpley, 1988; Wheatley & Bebout, 1990). Mellin-Olsen (1987) asked his readers to consider what would happen in mathematics education in a nation if it were not infiltrated by European educationists and publishers. He stated:

To sort out all the possibilities this nation confronts, let us merely consider two marginal cases:

A. It can stick to its traditions and original culture, and base its production on farming and scattered population.

B. It can aim at industry and technology in order to obtain the material standards set by Western measures.

So what then about the choice of curriculum? Is it in the hands of the academics or not? Is it the psychologist or the anthropologist who really makes the decisions if their advice is followed? Whether yes or no the result is a political result. (p. 129)

Mellin-Olsen went on to argue that such curriculum decisions should not be made by "expert" outsiders, but by the people themselves, for "it is really their decision, and this decision is related to a much wider context than that embedded in the walls of the educational institution: it is related to the context of society" (p. 129).

We believe that Mellin-Olsen has not gone far enough: we would want to know exactly who he means when he uses the expression "the people themselves" (whom, he says, should make the mathematics curriculum decisions). If, in the end, mathematics curriculum decisions are made by politicians or education administrators who are prepared to sacrifice the immediate needs of the majority of students in order to institute and support programs which history, and education research, suggest are doomed to failure then perhaps the meaning of the expression "the people themselves" needs to be carefully examined. As Mellin-Olsen himself makes clear, mathematics education is a far more political arena than most people imagine.

There is a real danger that such is the power and prestige of Mathematics that, in Southeast Asia (as indeed in our own country, Australia, and in fact around the world), well-meaning leaders of society have foisted on unsuspecting school children a type of mathematics learning and content which many were not ready, both from the cultural and cognitive points of view, to learn. This has created so-called "minority" students who are regarded as "disadvantaged" (Secada, 1988, pp. 48-49). It is likely that in Southeast Asia, as in other parts of the world, rigid streaming or setting policies, and traditional patterns of discourse in mathematics classrooms, have served to bolster false claims, to perpetuate myths about what is true and what is false, and to preserve racial, gendered, and social inequalities (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; McBride, 1989; Mellin-Olsen, 1987; Perkins & Salomon, 1989; Popkewitz, 1988; Secada, 1988; Walkerdine, 1988; Wheatley & Bebout, 1990).

Most teachers of mathematics do not, of course, deliberately set out to teach in a way that will produce unequal outcomes, and mathematics education researchers are faced with the perplexing question of what needs to be done to reshape school mathematics curricula and pedagogy so that a genuine equality of opportunity will be the result.

It could be the case that in Southeast Asia, as in our own country, Australia, the net effect of up to ten to twelve years of compulsory mathematics instruction has been to convince most school leavers that they cannot do Mathematics (Ellerton & Clements, 1989a, p. vii). Capital M Mathematics is being presented in schools around the world as if it were a form of external, objective, knowledge that "bright" students will acquire if they apply themselves diligently. It is accepted as part of the culture of schooling in many countries that "other," not-so-bright students will gradually fall by the wayside, mathematically speaking, although teachers hope that these students will have acquired enough of the powerful "objective" knowledge to be able to survive with dignity in their society. Yet, for many learners there can be no doubt that attempts to root "tomorrow's knowledge in the knowledge of yesteryear" (Mellin-Olsen, 1987, p. 131) have been inadequate.

One is reminded of Paulo Fréire's (1985) words: "Propoganda, slogans, myths are the instruments employed by the invader to achieve his objectives: to persuade those invaded that they must be the objects of his action, that they must be the docile prisoners of his conquest." Fréire (1985, p. 114) added that "it is encumbent on the invader to destroy the character of the culture which has been invaded, nullify its form, and replace it with the by-products of the invading culture," and argued for the establishment of dialogue which avoids cultural invasion, and dialogical manipulation or conquest.

Mathematics educators need to consider, carefully, the extent to which current practices and assumptions in school mathematics constitute, for many pupils, an invasion of culture. In a nation like Papua New Guinea, for example, with many of its 750 or so indigenous counting systems still surviving in the villages (Lean, 1985-1989), a real tension has been created by the introduction in the Community Schools of a form of Mathematics that simply does not fit. It is true that school systems in many countries produce a small number of education survivors who proceed to higher educational studies. But, meanwhile, what has the education system done for the vast majority who exit from mathematical study believing not only that they cannot do the subject, but also that they never will be able to do it (Clements & Jones, 1983)?

Anthropology South-East Asia

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