ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that moves made within psychology and elsewhere over the past 15 or so years to challenge the notion of a central processor model of cognition need to take on this whole historical baggage. The postwar mathematics education literature is full of the importance of reason over calculation, a distinction that is stated in a number of different ways: procedural and propositional knowledge, having concepts versus hard work or rote learning, and so forth. Schooling practices are no less practices than any other, but operate with their own relations of signification and modes of regulation. Evans gave some very interesting examples of adults’ discussions about standard numeracy test items in which certain practices have strong emotional connotations. The ‘truth’ about mathematical performance contains the fears and fantasies about those calculating others who threaten the very dominance of the government of reason.
