Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Is Algebra Necessary?

I think precisely what HowlerMonkey was doing was avoiding that recall problem - that this is roughly what the words "integration" and "differentiation" mean is about what you would expect someone to retain if they took calculus decades ago and haven't used it since. And that level of knowledge is of value, I would argue; it helps someone to have a very rough idea of what kind of thing scientists might be doing when they make a model of climate change incorporating data and use it to make predictions, for example, which is one example of an idea a scientifically literate person needs to have these days.

On the "respect" question: "having passed calculus" is something with a lot of US-specific cultural baggage because of calculus's status as the peak of school maths education. There's no reason why everyone shouldn't have the basic ideas HK refers to, and in some countries everyone who has completed compulsory education will have - this is not a claim that in some countries the population is better educated, but a comment on sequencing within school syllabuses. I would hope that even people who don't take calculus in the US system come across the basic ideas HK refers to, later, if they are scientifically interested and want to be scientifically literate - don't they? If not, I do think that's a problem.