ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an op-ed piece in a South African newspaper, in which it examines these role players to their complicity in the problem of persistent poor performance in school mathematics. Poor mathematics performance is created in multiple places in schooling and the community. The chapter also discusses that Bongi's written solution and her method for solving the inequality look familiar. Bongi did not talk about the symbols in her solution as if they represented mathematical concepts and the relations between them. The chapter explains about Ms. X and the learners in her mathematics classroom. Ms. X said the mathematics problems she uses in the classroom are selected from past assessment papers. Ms. X started the lesson on solving quadratic inequalities by revising the steps for solving the equation x2 = 9 on the board. The chapter focuses on current textbooks that offer learners little more than rules to memorise and follow, and images of mathematics learners as performing poorly.
