Mathematics education, democracy and development: Exploring connections

knowledge is to be maintained and owned by all, then the relations between academic, Western or conventional mathematics and the different mathematical knowledges and practices of different groups and individuals have to be brought into dialogue with each other, to be connected and contextualised. By valuing different kinds of mathematics and ways of knowing (and doing) mathematics, different peoples are valued and respected. Notwithstanding that the playing field of the different mathematics are not level, for mathematics to have a restorative power in situations of conflict, there has to be at the very least, recognition that there are different ways of knowing the world mathematically, which may be relevant, useful and appropriate in different contexts. The enormous power of academic mathematics to cast its gaze on almost any human activity today and re-present or appropriate it through its discourse gives healing and restorative ‘mathematical truths’ a particularly important place in mathematics classrooms. The legacy of colonialism and apartheid, which damaged the growth of indigenous knowledge systems, must be addressed both for its own sake to reclaim lost and hidden ‘mathematical truths’ and also because it provides possibilities for new knowledge, even if defined in terms of academic or Western knowledge systems. The role of ‘acknowledgement’ in restoring dignity lies in the recognition that different cultures on every continent, in different periods of its history, have contributed mathematical knowledge. Acknowledging multiple histories is part of healing. The hegemony of Western or academic mathematics has been challenged for the ways in which conventional histories of mathematics have ignored, marginalised, devalued or distorted the contributions of peoples and cultures outside Europe – of China, India, North Africa and the Arab world – to that mathematics that is referred to as academic or Western mathematics. Joseph (1991) points out that [s]cientific knowledge which originated in India, China and the Hellenic world was sought out by Arab scholars and then translated, refined synthesised and augmented at different centres of learning... from where this knowledge spread to Western Europe. (p. 10) However, Eurocentric historiographies of mathematics have also been criticised from another perspective: for failing to acknowledge the independent histories of mathematics of peoples who have developed their own mathematics, particularly the indigenous peoples of different regions of Africa, America and Australia (Ascher, 1991). A healing and restorative mathematics would therefore be one that recognises the rich mathematical histories of peoples not only in terms of conventional mathematics but on its own terms and its own forms, which may or may not be easily distinguishable as mathematics, and would be dignified by being given a proper space and engagement in mathematical curricula. Recognising multiple ‘mathematical truths’, as well as the processes by which these truths come to be constructed, allows for improved possibilities for the critique of truths in mathematics to be found within mathematics. In particular, these varied forms of ‘mathematical truths’ have the potential