Let’s just say . . .

Walrus and I are both now retired.

‘A Bankrupt Concept of Math’: Some Educators Argue Calculus Should Be Dethroned
The 74 via Yahoo | March 13, 2023 | Jo Napolitano

Successful completion of high school calculus has long been an unofficial must-have for those seeking admission to the nation’s top colleges: The course has, for decades, served as a signal to admissions officers that a student’s coursework has been robust.

But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course.

Well, then, complain about the school’s administrators, not the course. Duh. “No one studies Shakespeare because we don’t offer it as a course.”

And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say.

“High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel, professor of integrative biology and physiology and medicine at UCLA. “The view … that math is a bunch of symbolic expressions, and you bang on them with tricks to get other symbolic expressions, is a bankrupt concept of math, dating from the 19th century.”

The course, as it’s often taught at the high school level, is inaccessible and often perceived as irrelevant to students’ interests, critics say. Just 16% of high school graduates earned credit for calculus in 2019, according to data culled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a statistic no doubt shaped by its unavailability.

I do have a bee in my bonnet about calculus:

It wasn’t a requirement in my high school.

(Nobody ever whispered to me that it was “an unofficial must-have.”)

We had something for the math dummies like me, called “Introduction to Calculus.” It explained limits and approaches-to-limits in basic, understandable algebraic terms. Never got to much calculus. This was a year-long course, mind you.

I was still a math dummy. (Algebra and trig, OK — just not calculus.)

Got to college — where it was assumed everyone already knew calculus. Whoops! Took some kind of remedial intro course. But you were allowed to drop one course and not have it count against your GPA. Guess which one got chosen.

As we English majors say, I still have a bee in my bonnet. If it’s not out of keeping with the situation.