Mason, R.T. (2006). A Kinder Mathematics for Nunavut. In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (131-148). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
This chapter introduced me to the idea of “ethnomathematics”. It’s exactly what it sounds like – the acknowledgment that there are cultural aspects in math curriculum. I don’t teach math, but the idea is transferable to any discipline, in my opinion. “It is most useful to view the curriculum as a site of struggle in which pupils, teachers, parents, as well as voices from industrial, commercial, and other settings have at various times competed in various ways and with varying relative strengths to assert their priorities…From this perspective, the curriculum is neither free from nor determined by the economic and political space in which it operates: it makes more sense to ask how ideas fit with society, how they encourage particular ways of seeing particular ideologies” (135). I found this quote striking because of course the curriculum that we teach is value-laden – someone has chosen to prioritize some knowledge over others, and as such the chosen knowledge is laden with the beliefs and values of the curriculum-maker. It does make sense to question the curriculum and to make choices that create culturally sensitive lessons, as this chapter instructs.