Mathematics Education: Is It Ethical?

In this chapter, I want to ask the question, ‘is mathematics education as practiced, primarily in schools, an ethical activity?’ I shall illustrate the point of my question by reference to several cases, including school textbooks. Mathematics textbooks come under ethical scrutiny when it is found that they represent socially different categories of students differently or when, for example, they code mathematical ability in terms of social distinctions. For example, femininity was notable by its invisibility in school mathematics texts in the UK until comparatively recently and represented in stereotype, even in the 1980s when there was also evidence of tokenism. The same was true of racial diversity and diversity in terms of able-bodiedness. The chapter includes two schemas from my organisational language, ‘social activity method’.