School mathematics and "real" mathematics

Bonnie Gold

pp. 125-137

in: Bharath Sriraman (ed), Humanizing mathematics and its philosophy, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2017

Abstract

This is a good time in the history of mathematics to reconsider the question "What is mathematics?" due to the large number of new fields of mathematics, and fields close to mathematics that we don't consider to be mathematics, developed in the last century. What do subjects that are considered mathematics have in common, that those that are not part of mathematics lack? As a contribution to this approach, we discuss here the extent to which school mathematics is "real" mathematics.