Chapter 2: Ethnomathematics: A Response to the Changing Role of Mathematics in Society

The world's civilization is anchored in mathematics. No one disagrees that mathematics is the dorsal spine of the modern world. But this leads to focus the concerns about the future on Mathematics. I give the word to Mikhail L. Gromov, the Abel Prize laureate of 2009, who, in an interview given to Raussen and Skau (2010), said:

The tensions within our contemporary societies add to create this feeling of scare and fear. As a mathematician and mathematics educator, I feel I have a responsibility with the future. We have to find ways both to recognize and to respond to these feelings. The critical perception of past and of future may be a guide for action in the present.