Abstract
School mathematics is usually associated with a set of formal procedures related to deductive reasoning, algebraic language, and abstraction. We do not deny the importance these characteristics have for mathematical development. However, they are the same elements that can generate learning difficulties in mathematics since, in many situations, students do not understand the meanings of the concepts they are learning. History shows us that many mathematical concepts emerged from situations and needs experienced by different cultures over time. However, history is presented from a colonial point of view and, therefore, has contributed to maintaining a very specific way of teaching this discipline, collaborating to make mathematics distant and of little significance for students. We discuss how the history of mathematics has reconfigured and erased different ways of knowing and doing - here exemplified through the myth of the emergence of mathematics in ancient Greece and the numerical thinking of the palicures - building an idea of universality and the impossibility of accepting other types of knowledge outside the canon. For this debate, we mobilize concepts such as hellenophilia, hellenomania, colonialism, coloniality, decoloniality, monocultures of the mind, problem-posing education, and decolonial pedagogy. The purpose of this article is to reflect on how the history of mathematics has been presented and, therefore, contributed to maintaining a particular way of teaching this subject, helping to make mathematics distant and of little significance to students.
Hellenomania; Decoloniality; Monocultures of the Mind; Problem-posing Education; Decolonial Pedagogy