Copied from a comment elsewhere. Statements like this are very saddening to me. They completely miss the point of calculus and other high school mathematics. Ho

Copied from a comment elsewhere. Statements like this are very saddening to me. They completely miss the point of calculus and other high school mathematics. Honestly, I think the idea of non-linear change should be taught starting in elementary school. The ideas underlying calculus are VERY intuitive (adding up small bits of change over time) but completely absent until you reach calculus. The mechanisms of calculus probably don't matter, but calculus is the study of change. In particular, how things change over time in non-linear ways. What things in real life change in non-linear ways? Almost everything! _Linear_ change is nearly fiction in daily life! Calculus is the abstraction of multiplication in the same way that multiplication is the abstraction of addition. THIS is the real reason why calculus is important. Knowing how to study, describe, and understand changes that are not constant. If that isn't important in real life, then neither is counting or multiplication. Unfortunately, calculus is so deeply embedded in the vocabulary and forms of mathematics that even people with a "full education in calculus" often can't describe that. So they resort to stupid metaphors. They only unconsciously understand its value and fail to describe it.