Politics is a Mathematical Act: A Beginning Mathematical Archaeology on the History of School Boards

• In Event: Reckoning with histories of politics and racialization in STEM Education

Abstract

We present part of a historical perspective on school governance and the role that mathematics and mathematics education plays in the tension between the centralization of power within local communities and state legislative policy makers. Our work considers (briefly) the mathematics-civic engagement-governance relations at two points in time: 1) the rise of school boards in the US; and 2) contemporary school board elections and financing. These two book ends represent centralization of power—consolidating and influencing decision-making capabilities for larger communities in a smaller concentration of elites. A mathematical archaeology helps in seeing the role mathematics plays within politics—the mathematics embedded within the practices, discourses, and institutions that attempt to create order of the political.

Authors

• Carlos Nicolas Gómez Marchant, University of Texas at Austin

• Emma Carene Gargroetzi, University of Texas at Austin