Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The Classical Reason for Calculus

From my post today at Exordium, the blog of the Classical Latin School Association:

 In a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Tianhui Michael Li and Allison Bishop question the utility of teaching calculus in high school. The reason? There are other fields of mathematics better suited for preparing a student for the job market.

... The irony is that classical education, whose purpose, along with passing on a common culture, is to train the mind, is the only philosophy of education that can provide a justification for calculus. Why study it? Because it will help a student to think better.

Read the rest here.

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