Some Reflections on the philosophy of Mathematics Education: A Denunciation of the Time and Content Arguments

Abstract

Of all the arguments directed against presenting mathematical topics within a cultural and historical context, the most serious ones are those that we will refer to as the time and the content arguments. In this paper, after briefly describing these stances, we will endeavor to evaluate and refute their rationales using a social constructivist line of reasoning. To this end, we will first discuss the basic tenets of radical and social constructivism and then, through some simple concrete examples, show how social constructivism organically heralds the pedagogical methodology that imparts mathematical concepts in conjunction with their historical and cultural contexts.