ABSTRACT
Multicultural developments during the 1980s were very patchy and were confined to certain areas of the country and to groups of enthusiasts. The Cockcroft Committee had not referred at all to this aspect, even though its terms were ‘to consider the teaching of mathematics with particular regard to the mathematics required in further and higher education, employment and adult life generally’. Multicultural mathematics teaching during the 1980s was mainly associated with schools having large numbers of ethnic minority pupils, and those schools which ‘didn’t have that problem’ rarely considered mathematics teaching from that perspective. From a cultural perspective, the current national mathematics curriculum is a disaster, but with the previous section as a brief backdrop, it is not hard to see why it happened. The same ideological stance illustrated in the Working Party’s report is evident by omission in both the statutory documents and in the non-statutory guidance.
