Segregated not integrated

On occasion I have asked my father who was a teenager during the civil rights movement what it was like for him as a black man. He explained what it was like to go through desegregation and busing. He told me that when you looked at the big picture integration allowed him to see the real world for the first time. As I reflect on learning math when in school I feel like my teachers looked at the subject with the same eyes of a segregationist. Math stood alone. We learned something important in the four phases of problem solving. I think they are still relevant to math instruction today, however that was the only process we ever used. And where was the integration of math to the real world and its experiences. Where were the reasonings and proofs. Math was the subject that was only tolerated if you were problem solving. If ever you wanted to know why it was then treated like the Little Rock 9, that just the way it was and we weren't standing for anything else.