Karen’s posting and the article it references bring up a whole raft of interesting issues. For one, it highlights the fact that no subject is immune from the Weltanshauung of the instructor. The “objective” sciences are not immune, particularly in a world where highly-degreed people argue over whether they themselves exist in fact or only perception, and “fact” is established by a vote of the “experts”, not by an independent standard or source of truth. Don Nickels’ book Mathmatics: Is God Silent? deals with the question of the philosophical, even theological, basis of Western mathmatics, and it arose from this very debate.
As Karen indicates, the present article is not so much about math as about atomizing cultural chauvinism. It’s not critical to the application of mathmatics to know whether certain concepts originated from India, China, Persia, or Peru; I would certainly expect teachers and students in those cultures to take whatever justifiable pride they wish in their teaching of the subject. But as Ravitch points out, in Korea, the schools don’t teach ancient Korean math — they teach math. Likewise, we don’t require the use of Latin or Greek in the study of civics, though the Roman republic and Athenian democracy were the obvious models for much of our political structure. But visit any rapidly developing country in the world, most especially China and India, and you will find significant portions of the population striving to master English, adapting Western popular culture into their own society’s context, and looking to Europe and especially the U.S. for a model for their future. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
We Americans don’t need to be ashamed of the heritage we received, nor do I need to jealously defend my particular Anglo-Scot-Irish-Germano-Huguenot identity to flourish in this uniquely American model of individuality within the larger community. There’s room for plenty more cultural heritages here, so come and welcome. Neither English literacy nor “Eurocentric” mathmatics destroy them.
Why is that such a problem?
