For decades, in the community of mathematics educators, we have been discussing moves from ‘mathematics’ and ‘education’ to ‘mathematics education,’ alongside the relative distances between ‘mathematics’ and ‘mathematics education,’ and between ‘education’ and ‘mathematics education.’ Today, we know that there are also questions about the relative distance between ‘mathematics education’ and ‘humanity.’ For instance, what mathematics education aspects might be unrelated to humanity, that is, unrelated to the challenges that humanity faces, including helping people act in ways that are humanitarian?
Even if the role of mathematics education in the present and future is undeniable, a question is, therefore, mathematics education for what? In the work of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI), the importance of mathematics education for humanity remains a continuing invariant. The ICMI work is in this sense a strong instance of the relationship between ‘mathematics education’ and ‘humanity.’ A global understanding of mathematics education confronted with challenges that range from alleviating suffering and lessening vulnerability to reducing social, economic and environmental risk, in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [12], adds value to a diversity of ICMI initiatives.
In this brief text, I develop the argument of the relationship between ‘mathematics education’ and ‘humanity’ in the work of ICMI with a focus on the most present times. I choose the following four lines of evidence: (1) the scientific program of the 15th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME), (2) the launch of ICMI Study 27 “Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological,” (3) the ICMI’s second and seventh Felix Klein Medals to Professors Ubiratan D’Ambrosio and Alan Bishop, and (4) the creation and enactment of the Capacity and Networking Project (CANP).
The interest of ICMI in issues of mathematics education for humanity, and the question of mathematics education for what, certainly parallels the interest of the International Mathematics Union (IMU) in issues of mathematics for humanity, and the question of mathematics for what. Christiane Rousseau, at the time of her IMU vice-presidency, wrote a beautiful editorial for the IMU Newsletter [10] about the role of mathematics as a powerful tool for issues of sustainable development in its three dimensions: social, economic and environmental. Recently, IMU signed the commitment with the 2024–2033 International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development [11, 13]. For the case of mathematics for humanity and IMU, thus, several lines of evidence could also be detailed. Moreover, for both ICMI and IMU, a basic premise is the solid link between goals of sustainable development and goals of humanity. Sustainable development demands are viewed as necessarily having humanitarian connotations and consequences, and vice versa.
