While many accept that math is a universal, culturally indifferent subject in school, this book demonstrates that this is anything but true. Building off of a historically conscious understanding of school reform, Diaz makes the case that the language of mathematics, and the symbols through which it is communicated, is not merely about the alleged cultural indifference of mathematical thinking; rather, mathematical teaching relates to historical, cultural, political, and social understandings of equality that order who the child is and should be. Focusing on elementary math for all education reforms in America since the mid-twentieth century, Diaz offers an alternative way of thinking about the subject that recognizes the historical making of contemporary notions of inequality and difference.

Bringing together the sociology of knowledge, cultural studies, and post-foundational and historical approaches, this book asks what schooling does, and what are its limits and dangers. The focus is on how the systems of reason that govern schooling embody historically generated rules and standards about what is talked about, thought, and acted on; about the "nature" of children; about the practices and paradoxes of educational reform. These systems of reason are examined to consider issues of power, the political, and social exclusion. The transnational perspectives interrelate historical and ethnographic studies of the modern school to explore how curriculum is translated through social and cognitive psychologies that make up the subjects of schooling, and how educational sciences "act" to order and divide what is deemed possible to think and do. The central argument is that taken-for-granted notions of educational change and research paradoxically produce differences that simultaneously include and exclude.

Bringing together the sociology of knowledge, cultural studies, and post-foundational and historical approaches, this book asks what schooling does, and what are its limits and dangers. The focus is on how the systems of reason that govern schooling embody historically generated rules and standards about what is talked about, thought, and acted on; about the "nature" of children; about the practices and paradoxes of educational reform. These systems of reason are examined to consider issues of power, the political, and social exclusion. The transnational perspectives interrelate historical and ethnographic studies of the modern school to explore how curriculum is translated through social and cognitive psychologies that make up the subjects of schooling, and how educational sciences "act" to order and divide what is deemed possible to think and do. The central argument is that taken-for-granted notions of educational change and research paradoxically produce differences that simultaneously include and exclude.

While many accept that math is a universal, culturally indifferent subject in school, this book demonstrates that this is anything but true. Building off of a historically conscious understanding of school reform, Diaz makes the case that the language of mathematics, and the symbols through which it is communicated, is not merely about the alleged cultural indifference of mathematical thinking; rather, mathematical teaching relates to historical, cultural, political, and social understandings of equality that order who the child is and should be. Focusing on elementary math for all education reforms in America since the mid-twentieth century, Diaz offers an alternative way of thinking about the subject that recognizes the historical making of contemporary notions of inequality and difference.