Chapter 8: The Hegemony of English Mathematics

In reading The Hegemony of English by Macedo, Dendrinos, and Gounari (2003), we were struck by how many of the statements therein retain sense and force when “English,” “language” or “language teaching” is replaced by “mathematics” or “mathematics education.” Accordingly, we present here a selection of quotations from their book, relating them to themes common to hegemony in the two domains. In so doing, we follow the example of Jean Lave and Ray McDermott (2002) who, for extensive sections of Marx's 1844 essay Estranged Labor, replaced “labor” by “learning,” with results that make excellent sense; in other parts, the transposition was less direct. Lave and McDermott commented (2002, p. 23) that “in evaluating the theories of political economy available in 1844, young Marx unwittingly wrote a quite devastating critique of the theories of learning available in 2002.” Likewise it is fascinating and significant—but surprising only at first sight—that an analysis offering insights into the largely concealed ideologies underlying mainstream mathematics education is provided by a book that is about English and the teaching of English.