Democracy as Cover for Settler-Colonial Aims in Mathematics Education

For decades, we've been told that mathematics education is the great equalizer—a neutral, objective pathway to democracy, economic opportunity, and social justice. The idea is that by mastering math, students gain the skills needed to participate fully in civic life and strengthen national competitiveness.

But critical scholarship—and lived experience—tell a different story. When we look more closely, mathematics education in the United States has long been entangled with state-building. At the center of these projects lies a powerful, often unspoken force: settler-colonialism.

Settler-colonialism is not an artifact of the past. Its logics of land dispossession, elimination, and racial hierarchy continue to shape contemporary U.S. institutions, even as multicultural narratives celebrate diversity and progress. As scholars like Mahmood Mamdani remind us, the “American autobiography” is still written through the eyes of the settler. Racial struggles have transformed certain aspects of the political order, but they have not unsettled the fundamental structure of a settler state.

Mathematics as a Tool of War and Wealth

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, major reforms in mathematics education have emerged in response to geopolitical threats. From World War II to the Cold War to post-9/11 national security priorities, math classrooms have been asked to supply the cognitive labor necessary for U.S. military and technological dominance. The New Math movement, university-based weapons research, and today’s STEM-to-military pipeline all reflect this alignment.

At the same time, math has been mobilized to support capitalist development. Since the 1980s, national commissions and accountability policies have tied math achievement to economic competitiveness, workforce productivity, and global supremacy. Even movements carrying the banner of equity—like the “Mathematics for All” reforms—have frequently adopted neoliberal logics of efficiency, objectivity, and performance metrics. These narratives reduce students to human capital while obscuring the oppressive experiences of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee learners.

When international tests and national assessments become the arbiters of “success,” Eurocentric norms are quietly naturalized. Racialized disparities are framed as deficits rather than as evidence of structural inequity. Math education, often unintentionally, ends up reproducing the hierarchies it claims to undo.

Rethinking Mathematics Education as a Political Act

Recognizing mathematics education as political does not diminish the beauty or creative power of mathematics. Instead, it opens the door to imagining what math could be if it were not tethered to militarism, capitalist extraction, and settler futurity.

The challenge before us is to reclaim mathematics as a site of epistemic diversity, relational care, and collective liberation. This requires more than improving instruction or closing achievement gaps—it requires rethinking the very purpose of math.

What futures can mathematics education help us build when it is no longer bound to the political projects of the settler state? That is the question worth asking.

References

Gutiérrez, Rochelle. “Context Matters: How Should We Conceptualize Equity in Mathematics Education?” In Equity in Discourse for Mathematics Education: Theories, Practices, and Policies, edited by Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Jeffrey Choppin, David Wagner, and David Pimm. Springer, 2012. http://www.springer.com/series/6276.

Gutiérrez, Rochelle. “The Need to Rehumanize Mathematics.” In Annual Perspectives in Mathematics Education: Rehumanizing Mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Students. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2018.

Mamdani, Mahmood. “Settler Colonialism: Then and Now.” Critical Inquiry 41, no. 3 (2015): 596–614. https://doi.org/10.1086/680088.

Martin, Danny Bernard. “Equity, Inclusion, and Antiblackness in Mathematics Education.” Race Ethnicity and Education 22, no. 4 (2019): 459–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592833.

Sengupta-Irving, Tesha, and Shirin Vossoughi. “Not in Their Name: Re-Interpreting Discourses of STEM Learning through the Subjective Experiences of Minoritized Girls.” Race Ethnicity and Education 22, no. 4 (2019): 479–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592835.

Vossoughi, Shirin, and Sepehr Vakil. “Toward What Ends? A Critical Analysis of Militarism, Equity, and STEM Education.” In Education at War: The Fight for Students of Color in America’s Public Schools, edited by Arshad Imtiaz Ali. Fordham University Press, 2018.

Yeh, Cathery. “Democratic Accountability in the Neoliberal Era: The Politics of Teaching and Teacher Education in Mathematics Classrooms.” Policy Futures in Education 16, no. 6 (2018): 764–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210318776470.