2 - Mathematics and General Educational Goals

Summary

Mathematics in the School Curriculum

Before trying to subdivide the problem area, it seems useful to consider some general issues that arise from the specific social contexts in which mathematics is taught, and the fact that mathematics is but one component of school life.

School systems are a relatively new phenomenon in historical terms, having only developed during the last hundred years or so. Before then, there were schools in some societies, but these tended to live independent lives united only by their religious underpinning, be it, for example, Christian or Moslem. Education, however, took place before there were schools, and much of what children learn is still learned outside school. Yet much of the socialisation that previously took place in and around the home now takes place in school, and it has now become the prerogative of the school to teach certain limited and specific skills and areas of knowledge. This range of knowledge and skills comprises the formal school curriculum, and contained within it is much of the mathematics that children learn.

How did mathematics come to achieve its central place in the school curriculum? Originally school systems offered education principally at what is now called primary (or elementary) level, and the secular curriculum was almost wholly devoted to the ‘Three R's’: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic.