Firstly, A brief history about the origins of modern Math Phobia and Anxiety.
Rene Descarte’s
(1596 - 1650) “mathematically deduced method”, ( you may know 'I think, therefore I am') drew from a Rationalist Socratic/Platonist view, in which numbers are proof of facts beyond what humans can claim to ‘know’ by our sensations alone. In other words, numbers are true and impossible to deny, whether you like it or not. This Rationalist epistemology sought to establish ‘what can I know?’ inferred that if 'God is in the details', a God-sanctioned morality logically exists as well.
This is the 'dominant' view.
However, a contrary empiricist
‘Fallibilist’ tradition which suggests started with Xenophanes of Colophon, also ran
parallel to the Socratic one, (perhaps even predating it by two hundred years):
Certain
truth [about God or the world] has not and cannot be attained by any man; for
even if he should fully succeed in saying what is true, he himself could not
know it was so (Xenophanes, Fragment 34: (Glaserfield,1998. p.26).
This view indicates that 'truth' is not God-given, but is man-made according to how we perceive the world. That means that morality is not fixed, but is manufactured, and changeable.
The dominant view of maths represents it as decontextualised abstractions which are 'neutral' and 'above' everyday 'manufactured' ideas.. In adult
education this ‘neutral’ mathematics education and discourse continues to affect student and educator identity. Some would argue it does so in a negative 'alienating' way.
Descarte’s Method was just one of the Enlightenment’s contribution to
modern mathematics. It is considered that his tradition of scientism
continued into the late Nineteenth Century. Educators
employed the kinds of ‘alienating’ pedagogies that were considered suitable for to
educating the masses. The so-called 'Absolutist' tradition was further codified. As Traidaffilos (1998) states:
Platonism, on one hand, dissociated mathematics from
its profane origins. Formalism, on the
other, alienated mathematicians from their cultural attachment to the
socio-historical process, since they claimed exclusive custody of mathematical
culture and its becoming (p. 23).
Although later in the twentieth century Behaviourism,
cognitivism and Social Learning Theories cultivated interactivism, sociolinguistic
theory and constructivism even under the “New Maths’ system, mathematics education remained deeply invested in scientism
and ‘reification‘ (ie making knowledge obscure to the uninitiated).
Mathematics as a discipline emerged in isolation from other curriculum areas, and this affected learner identities, but in particular
in their views about how 'good' they were at mathematics. Consequently, many adult learners consider mathematics as a commodified and isolating 'discipline', having
little to do with their personal lives or having much relevance to the social practices
they engage in.
When an adult learner engages in mathematics, ie at the ATM, parking the car, doing tax-returns, calculating discounts, doing DIY, etc, they don't see that as 'Maths'. They can do 'Maths' but don't see it as such. Adults have been brainwashed into thinking that 'Maths' exists only in the classroom, and is something that ordinary folk are barred from participating in.
If that sounds anything like you, and your relationship with maths - you can see how it all began, generations before you were born!
