feotakahari

I figured out what really bugs me about that “kids should learn calculus” article. It starts with the idea that kids are bored in math, and it suggests that in calculus, they won’t be bored. Some kids will be bored in either, because any mandatory school activity will have kids in it who’re bored out of their skulls and wish they were somewhere else. Child me could accept being bored doing multiplication tables, because I thought I needed to learn multiplication tables. But if you don’t actually need to learn calculus when you’re that young, and it’s just supposed to be “fun,” then it should be something you learn because you want to, not because the teacher says you have to.