Calculus is not the solution to all our problems?

I missed an article in January's AMS Notices titled "Is the Sky Still Falling?" The author takes a close look at the number of incoming mathematics and engineering students to universities. A followup letter was published in the April 2009 issue of the AMS Notices titled "Why the Sky is Still Falling" that was written by our very own Walter Whiteley along with Peter Taylor (Queen's University) and Ed Barbeau (University of Toronto).

Let me give a list of pointers to the buzz on the blogs:
Math Forum: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Ars Mathematica

The Math Underground

Nabble

Matthew Leingang

Rational Mathematics Education

A followup article on MAA

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My two cents: I will agree that calculus isn't for everyone and I would agree that there should be at least a couple of math paths for university bound students.

However, if one advances far enough along in mathematics, calculus becomes a fundamental tool that cannot be ignored. As a university math teacher I assume calculus as a tool which is as basic as logarithms and exponentiation (e.g. basic concepts of calculus come up regularly in just about all the courses I have been teaching: cryptography, gambling, computer graphics, combinatorics and number theory...subjects where one would not expect to need calculus at first glance).

I would not rush to force high school students through calculus in order to encourage them to do well at university. Too many learned little or nothing from an inadequate calculus education and need to retake it when they get to university anyway.

When I was in high school I found calculus to be absolutely fascinating and loved learning it. I don't think that it can be completely dismissed as a university preparation course because for some people it works well. I remember in 11th grade my "Functions" teacher answered a question that I had asked by writing down the formula for the area of an ellipse by integrating the equation for the curve a year before I would learn what differentiation and integration were about. For some reason that memory became a vivid example of the exceptional education I was exposed to (thanks Mrs. Keim!).

Moving away from calculus being a capstone course for college preparation is going to require much better preparation of our teachers. They will need exposure to a broad range of mathematics if they are going to be able to convey to students the applications and importance of mathematics (e.g. see the topic list for the advanced mathematics course discussed in one of the blogs).