ABSTRACT
If you have picked up and started reading this book then the chances are you feel more positive towards mathematics than most people. Although few of us have a problem-free relationship with maths, you probably associate the subject more with pleasure than pain. This is in striking contrast to most of the population of the UK and many other countries, and it can make it diffi cult to be critical of mathematics education. In particular it can make the fi rst section of this book a challenging and uncomfortable read as we ask you to engage with the ways in which mathematics is implicated in social inequality and in wider political issues. The chapters in this section cover issues that you won’t always fi nd in university courses of mathematics teacher education or on the agenda of mathematics departments in schools, colleges and universities. They deal with: the harm done by ideas that some people are naturally talented at mathematics (implying, of course, that some people aren’t); how practices exclude some young people from access to the powerful knowledge that is mathematics; how mathematics reinforces inequalities of social class and gender; and how we cannot divorce what we do in maths from these processes or from the way maths is involved in everything from pop to politics.
