The Social Constructs of the Mathematical Experiences of African-American Students

With complex ethnic and social ramifications apparent in schooling, it is important to conceptualize the impact of the existing social order on the mathematical experiences of culturally diverse students. As mathematics educators embrace the charge of reform documents (NCTM, 1989, 1991, 1995) that accentuate “opportunity for all” and “mathematical literacy for all,” it seems that a fundamental responsibility for mathematics educators is to question those schooling practices that undermine the charge and work to maintain those aspects of social structure that are oppressive. “Education does not simply reproduce the inequality existing outside itself; it plays an active part in reinforcing the differences and inequalities that already exist” (Campbell, 1995, p. 238).