Calling a spade a spade: Mathematics in the new pattern of division of labour

TL;DR

This paper explores how evolving patterns of division of labor and increasing specialization have fundamentally altered the role and perception of mathematics in society and education, highlighting socio-economic roots of the current crisis.

Contribution

It provides a socio-economic analysis of mathematics education, emphasizing the impact of labor specialization on mathematical skills and cultural perceptions, which is rarely addressed explicitly.

Findings

Changing labor patterns reduce the need for broad mathematical skills.

Increased specialization deepens the disconnect between mathematics and the general population.

Socio-economic factors underpin the systemic crisis in mathematics education.

Abstract

The growing disconnection of the majority of population from mathematics is becoming a phenomenon that is increasingly difficult to ignore. This paper attempts to point to deeper roots of this cultural and social phenomenon. It concentrates on mathematics education, as the most important and better documented area of interaction of mathematics with the rest of human culture. I argue that new patterns of division of labour have dramatically changed the nature and role of mathematical skills needed for the labour force and correspondingly changed the place of mathematics in popular culture and in the mainstream education. The forces that drive these changes come from the tension between the ever deepening specialisation of labour and ever increasing length of specialised training required for jobs at the increasingly sharp cutting edge of technology. Unfortunately these deeper socio-economic origins of the current systemic crisis of mathematics education are not clearly spelt out, neither in cultural studies nor, even more worryingly, in the education policy discourse; at the best, they are only euphemistically hinted at. This paper is an attempt to describe the socio-economic landscape of mathematics education without resorting to euphemisms.