Page 416 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

33 “What Is Ours and What Is Not Ours?” 391

homogenisation, an approach to reducing diversities by privileging a particular
culture, worldview and ideology. However, I do not dismiss the positive aspect of
universalism that arises from several wisdom traditions that promote inter-being
and co-existence among dissimilar perspectives, views, ideas, people and ecologies
(Hanh 2000). Ironically, in the context of mathematics education in Nepal, the narrow
view of universalisation (equating one worldview with the universe!) appears to
discount such an empowering view of co-existence by embracing universalisation
as a project towards homogenisation with worldwide sociocultural convergence via
4
the western Modern Worldview. Such a worldview is oriented mainly by conven-
tional logics (propositional, deductive and analytical), which promote many unhelpful
dualisms, such as global versus local, western versus eastern, and rational versus
non-rational knowledge systems, historically preserved through seemingly successive
Greco–Judaic–Christian traditions. Here I agree with Edwards and Usher (2000)
who maintain that “privileging of certain position as universal has functioned as a
legitimated device, a means of drawing and maintaining boundaries of the valuable
and the useful” (p. 71). Perhaps, the notion of valuable is associated with those
knowledge systems, which help our teachers inculcate their cultural capital,
whereas the notion of useful is taken to bolster the legitimacy of the narrow view
of globalisation as universalisation. Thus, your suggestion of importing one par-
ticular model of teacher education and then fitting our teacher education program in
that framework may not be helpful for conceiving a contextually valuable model
that can transform our mathematics teachers from transmitters of one particular
form of mathematics to facilitators of multiple forms of mathematics.

Frogs in the garden
Butterflies’ funeral
Normalcy perpetuates

Let me share with you possible disempowering implications of the narrow view
of globalisation as universalisation for teacher education in Nepal. This one-size-
fits-all approach appears to position us at the receiving end of the production, legiti-
mation and distribution of knowledge, thereby un/wittingly being passive recipients
of such knowledge in the name of universalisation. In my view, the notion of same-
ness is exaggerated as if there are no marked differences between our context and
the western context in which such knowledge is seemingly generated, although the
western knowledge system does draw on other knowledge systems, such as the
algebra of Islamic writers, the Devenagari decimal numeral system of Indians and
the numerical methods of Chinese scholars (Almeida and Joseph 2007). For example,
one of the books you gave me mentions different types of tests, such as personality
tests, intelligence tests and aptitude tests, as if there is a single best method of mea-
suring and predicting our personality, intelligence and aptitude (e.g., Freeman 1962).

4 The Western Modern Worldview promotes a restricted way of knowing, being and valuing
imbued in reductionist thinking, instrumental actions and mechanistic ontology (Taylor 2008).