The Social Construction of Rural Mathematics: Conjectures, Contradictions and a Few Hypotheses. Working Paper Series.

This paper presents "conjectures" about how rural students from isolated or economically declining communities may come to understand and negotiate their academic classroom experiences. In contrast to the metropolitan culture of America, such students continue to define successful living in ways that do not assume obtaining college degrees and leaving home. While educators like to consider high school as a place for preparing students for real life, students consider school to be real life. Many "low achievers" actively choose what and how much they will study, based on goals that may not include academic higher education. These goals may lead fully able students to choose vocational courses and programs over academic ones. Most contemporary high schools have a status system that values courses and programs leading to college, and the axis of vocational versus pre-college curricula becomes a primary vehicle for stratification. Mathematics teachers are likely key players. These "conjectures" make explicit the likelihood that students and teachers are "socially reconstructing" school or mathematics as they understand and negotiate it. Viewing lack of interest in math as a character flaw of students, rather than an active appraisal of its utility, leads to teacher elitism that can interfere with school success. Reducing or eliminating the stratification of school knowledge is crucial if we are to transform rural high schools into mass preparatory ones, assuming this is our proper goal. (Contains 39 references.) (SV)