Mathematics for makers and mathematics for users

Alexandre Borovik

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-61231-7

Mathematics for makers and mathematics for users

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

Abstract

The current crisis in the school evel mathematics education is a sign that it reaches a bifurcation point and will inevitably split into two streams:

* education for a selected minority of children / young people who, in their adult lives, will be filling increasingly small share of jobs which really require mathematics competence (I call them makers); and

* awareness classes for the rest of population, end users of technology saturated by mathematics which however will remain invisible to them.

In this paper, I discuss challenges arising in mathematics education for the makers. This is a theme which is rarely discussed in the mathematics education literature. It demands re-thinking of basic assumptions underpinning the mainstream mathematics education.

I invite the reader to discard taboos and start a frank and open discussion of this difficult problem:

What is Mathematics Education, Really?

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Humanizing Mathematics and its Philosophy
Subtitle of host publication	Essays Celebrating the 90th Birthday of Reuben Hersh
Editors	Bharath Sriraman
Publisher	Springer Nature
Pages	309-327
Number of pages	19
ISBN (Electronic)	9783319612317
ISBN (Print)	9783319612300
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61231-7
Publication status	Published - 2017

Keywords

Mathematics
division of labour

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-319-61231-7

Cite this

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Mathematics for makers and mathematics for users

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