Mathematicians in British universities are now being asked to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum. This autumn, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) – an independent charity which reviews university courses – launched a consultation that urged universities to teach a ‘decolonised view’ of mathematics.
It is easy when you work at a university to roll your eyes at this sort of thing and play along. But as a mathematics academic, I felt it was my duty to challenge this unscientific proposal. This week I published an open letter to the QAA criticising their consultation and was delighted that a number of high-profile professors and mathematicians from minority groups agreed to add their signatures.
The fact is that colonialism is irrelevant to the validity of mathematics. The Mayan civilisation was doing sophisticated mathematics in the Americas long before Christopher Colombus arrived on the continent.
So where does the idea of ‘decolonising’ maths come from? The academic theory of decoloniality states that as well as colonising the world physically, Europeans have dominated the world by promoting the ‘European paradigm of rational knowledge.’
The irony is that this statement seems itself to be racist. There is nothing particularly European about rational knowledge. Maths has always been an astonishingly international pursuit. The digits 0123456789 we use today were first written in India and inspired by Chinese mathematics. They were popularised by Persian and Arab mathematicians and then made their way to Europe via the Moors’ conquest of Southern Spain. Admittedly the Moors’ conquest of Spain was a form of colonialism, but apparently not the type of colonialism we are meant to be interested in.
Those who adhere to decoloniality don’t think they’re being racist. This is because, strange as it may seem, they don’t believe rational knowledge is superior to other kinds of knowledge.
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