The prologue is 100% dead on and what I have always thought in terms of the easy part of calculus needs to be taught early. I would have never been able to voca

The prologue is 100% dead on and what I have always thought in terms of the easy part of calculus needs to be taught early. I would have never been able to vocalize what he said in the short half page of text. We teach math backwards. We have a population that can barely do 4th grade arithmetic and it is socially okay. Children and people believe that decimal points are accurate and that fractions are abstract when the exact opposite is true. 1/3 of a pizza is real and 0.333333 is a fake number. We also teach movement and change as a word problem i.e. a train leaves Chicago at 25 MPH and another train leaves Flint, MI at 35 MPH when will the trains meet? That answer is an estimation of an unattainable constancy but people believe it is logical conclusion. Pre-Calculus (needs to be repackaged with the idea of the one consistent in our world is change) should be taught before Algebra and Geometry. Make math into something where people can truly understand abstract and concrete. People actually think calculus is a hyper abstract algebra when in fact it is putting math into real world solutions. The number one problem is calculus is 100% dependent on the teacher. A great teacher will make this work and a lower skilled teacher can absolutely kill almost all learning.