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asr comments on February 2012 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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We teach a lot more calculus in high school in America today than they did when Feynman was a student (my impression is that this changed in the 50s and 60s in response to Sputnik). As a result, the humor of Feynman's response might not have registered with MIT freshmen in the 1930s the way it would with MIT students (or even high school seniors) today.
He clarified in that section that he knew that the people he was speaking to were familiar with and had taken calculus.
While true, it might give the false impression that the amount of calculus taught in secondary in the States has stayed more or less constant since then. There's been a giant disaster of other economic incentives and disincentives that has driven what one might call "calcification", among them the widening gulf between public and private schools, the development of advanced placement classes, updating the GI bill, and so on.
Sorry. I'll get off my bete noire now.