This is like saying we use quantum physics every day of our lives because physics. It's true, I guess, but you don't have to know anything about quantum physics and the vast majority of people don't need to know anything about calculus.
It's also clearly not the reason we are educating children in calculus. We can know this because we don't teach children to do weather calculations, we don't test them on statistical analysis, and so on.
The real reason public schools teach calculus is that they started doing it at some point for some reason and then never quit because they are bureaucracies resistant to change. All the people involved have a kind of status quo bias preventing them from saying "yeah, I guess that was useless, let's teach something else."
If I'm wrong, we could imagine a test. Take a comprehensive calculus exam from senior year of highschool or freshman year of college. What grade do you think the average adult would get on this test? How about top ten percentile adults for intelligence, wealth, or whatever? If, as I do, you think the average score would be F, can you explain why it's important to teach the general population of kids something that the general population of adults demonstrably do not know?
It's also clearly not the reason we are educating children in calculus. We can know this because we don't teach children to do weather calculations, we don't test them on statistical analysis, and so on.
The real reason public schools teach calculus is that they started doing it at some point for some reason and then never quit because they are bureaucracies resistant to change. All the people involved have a kind of status quo bias preventing them from saying "yeah, I guess that was useless, let's teach something else."
If I'm wrong, we could imagine a test. Take a comprehensive calculus exam from senior year of highschool or freshman year of college. What grade do you think the average adult would get on this test? How about top ten percentile adults for intelligence, wealth, or whatever? If, as I do, you think the average score would be F, can you explain why it's important to teach the general population of kids something that the general population of adults demonstrably do not know?