Citizenship Education in the Context of Mathematics

It was interesting to read about how mathematics ties in with citizenship and the society. Simmt suggests a few strategies in mathematics that have the potential to help shape our society. One of these strategies relates to our class discussion, the art of problem posing. Instead of focusing on a fixed problem, problem posing allows the students to think critically about the issues that may arise from the fixed problem. I agree that posing problems creates active participation of the students and let the students be critical about any given problems. However, posing problems also have a down side. Posing problems can get really messy as real world problems can arise from problem posing. If someone were to be critical and to problem pose, he or she may find loop holes in our society and may take advantages of the situation instead. How can we ensure the students to be critical and to be ‘good’? This is certainly an issue we still need to ponder about: how can we ensure the people to utilize mathematics for the good of the society and not for disrupting it?