ABSTRACT
It is increasingly recognized (e.g., Walkerdine, 1988; Dowling, 1991) that mathematics education may be viewed as a discourse, and that it works as a system of social representations in as much as the content of any other media can be said to do so, such as advertising, television etc… In view of this it makes sense to subject education discourses to the same sort of critical enquiry that other media attract. The basis of this examination is that mathematical activity is to be seen primarily as a social event rather than a cognitive event (in the latter the social becomes known merely as an alteration in cognitive style).
