Totally agree - not important for most adults to lead a happy and useful life.
However, a grasp of calculus and statistics (those two came to mind, there are surely others) is useful if you want to break past existing boundaries because they give you some tools to think abstractly. Personally, I want my kids to learn that. They already have plenty of time to explore on their own - the time spent in a classroom should, in my opinion, be spent on learning fundamentals very deeply.
It's not only hard to teach yourself calculus, it's also something you wouldn't think of doing unless you're Gauss or one of those guys.
It's not only hard to teach yourself calculus, it's also something you wouldn't think of doing unless you're Gauss or one of those guys.
Agree with the rest, kind of disagree with this part. Measure the slope of a curve, measure the area under a curve. No big whoop. Sure, the details get fiddly but 90% of anxiety over calculus comes from its arbitrary place as the capstone of a suffocatingly rigid elementary math sequence, not its inherent difficulty or magisterial importance.
Stats and discrete math are harder imho, and people teach themselves those all the time. Helps that they're much more useful (outside physics and engineering anyways...)
I've been considering trying to teach my middle school kids the basics of calculus as an experiment to see what happens. I'm curious to see whether I'm capable of explaining it well enough because I agree with you - the basic concepts are not that hard.
However, a grasp of calculus and statistics (those two came to mind, there are surely others) is useful if you want to break past existing boundaries because they give you some tools to think abstractly. Personally, I want my kids to learn that. They already have plenty of time to explore on their own - the time spent in a classroom should, in my opinion, be spent on learning fundamentals very deeply.
It's not only hard to teach yourself calculus, it's also something you wouldn't think of doing unless you're Gauss or one of those guys.