Chapter 5: Political Issues in Mathematics Education

Almost ten years ago, I delivered the Paulo Freire Memorial Lecture, at the First Mathematics Education and Society Conference (MEAS1) in Nottingham, UK, September 6–12 1998. I started stating that my views on Mathematics Education reflected my perception that much of the problems modern society faces is reflected in a system of codes of behavior, anchored in current knowledge, which accepts facts and events with a character of “normality”. The apparent success and the dominant presence, in both the people and the decision making elites, of the normopaths, which are individuals who a critically conform to what is normal, very often lead to a generalized hindrance and even repression of creativity, through censoring and silencing individuals. This scenario is seen nowadays.