The Moral Component of a U.S./Global Math Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 54
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Globalization’s Impact on Our Childhoods, Languages, Minds, and Morals

Abstract

This paper presents the moral education embedded in the emerging US national math education. As related to this symposium, my analysis reveals the significant influence of global elites on the development of US math education, and specifically their interest to develop human capital through math education. In this sense, the US national education can be considered as a means to investigate an emerging global math education.
To analyze US national math education, I identified the social network surrounding it. Increasingly, private interests exert their influence via “nexus” of private and official power, where “social networks operate within and among organizations” (Wedel, 2009, p. 20). I identified three such nexus in the context of math education. These were the National Math Advisory Panel, a Federal Advisory Committee; the College and Career Readiness Standards for Mathematics (2009), the work of private research and policy institutes, and Adding It Up (2001), the work of a quasi-governmental organization.
I next researched the list of participating individuals, looking for any organizations they worked for or in which they held leadership positions. Organizations included Federal agencies, quasi-governmental organizations (those with both public and private legal characteristics), goods and services corporations, research and policy institutes, professional organizations, and foundations. Due to my data collection process, the resulting network of individuals and organizations is a sample from among the complete social network surrounding national math education and analysis of my network indicates the kinds of individuals, organizations, and interests at play in this domain.
After identification of the representative network, I then researched the individuals and organizations for their stance on math education. Data included publicly available writings and descriptions of activity. Such investigation began to reveal strong themes, including the primary purpose of math education to develop human capital, or those intangible qualities of humans that are usable by businesses (Becker, 1993). Most actors in the network express this as the need for US citizens to gain employment in the global economy, however, the true interest, that of the businesses who require human capital, is revealed by the inclusion of corporate elites from multinational companies, e.g. executives from energy and information and communications technology corporations.
While many in the network suggest math education's role in developing the human capital required for engineering new products, my analysis of the network also reveals that math education develops human capital by inculcating in its students a moral not unlike the Protestant work-ethic. Examples include network actors who state math education should not be fun, that students in East Asian countries perform better in math because of their culture's emphasis on work ethic, and others who align with the “compassionate conservative” view of education. Indeed, this theme in the network influenced the national math education events that I used to identify the social network. Both the National Math Advisory Panel and the College and Career Standards for Mathematics indicate “effort” as a component of a math student, whereas Adding It Up uses the term “productive disposition.”

Author

• Mark Wolfmeyer, Muhlenberg College