Taking as main reference the writings of Marx, Vigotsky, Duarte and Saviani, this study discusses issues related to the universality of knowledge and the influences of liberalism and postmodernist ideology in mathematics education, which hinder this universality. Inside a theoretical research, our overall objective is to analyze and highlight the influence of postmodernist ideology in education, present in some research in mathematics education. To achieve this goal, we draw the following specific objectives: a) evidence that in the learning how to learn, the school mathematical knowledge has no meaning and that as such, the meaning is in the practices and popular knowledge; b) indicate that in the postmodernist pedagogies there is the valuation of fragmentation and construction of mathematical knowledge to the detriment of its universalization and transmission; c) point multiculturalism as belonging to postmodernist ideology and as a defender of the differences in mathematics education, as a sign of respect for diversity; d) Show multiculturalism, present in the learning how to learn, as an advocate of cultural relativism; e) discuss the appreciation of differences, in order to maintain inequalities, deviating the attention from the larger problem of capitalism, which is the class struggle. In the various works in the area of mathematics education here analyzed, we found the presence of postmodernist ideology expressed in the pedagogies of the learning how to learn and constructivism, that manifest in the appreciation of everyday life over the academic; the construction of knowledge to the detriment of its transmission by the teacher; the relativism; the uncertainty; the harmfulness of the most developed mathematical content; the defense of everyday math expressions as something libertarian and democratic; the defense of differences, too, on behalf of the differences; the combating of universality; the apology to the local and fragmented; the deviation of the class problem to racial or gender problems, contributing to the fragmentation of the fight for a greater cause that is to emancipate all oppressed classes. In other words, liberalism and postmodernist pedagogies hinder the process of humanization, of universalization of knowledge and overcoming the established order. The process of transmitting, by the teacher, of the elaborated mathematical knowledge in school, or the socialization of school mathematics, is of paramount importance to the process of universalisation of knowledge that aims, firstly, the humanization of the individual and, secondly, overcome, by incorporation, the capitalist society.
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