"Everyone knows that nearly no engineers use calculus in their day job. Therefore, the purpose and measure of success isn't whether an engineer uses calculus in their day job. It is a great signal of technical problem solving ability, it is really powerful having a large pool of people who are trained in working with rates, areas and margins."
I'm not saying that calculus is useless in an engineer's education - far from it.
I'm arguing that knowing the algebraic tricks required to take the limit of (x^2)sin(2x)/sqrt(x) as x->0 is useless. It's just a display of the mastery of very intricate algebra, exactly the same as all the other displays of mastery of intricate algebra she has had to master and will continue to be required to master.
What she actually needs is a solid understanding of the physical meaning of derivatives and integrals, how we arrive at them via numerical approximations, the fact that the velocity of a rigid body can be described as the integral over the forces that body is experiencing, etc.
That connection is literally never made in calculus.
The connection is of course made in the parallel calculus-based physics class she is taking. Which has its own problems, but is far superior as an introduction to calculus than the actual calculus class is.
I'm not saying that calculus is useless in an engineer's education - far from it.
I'm arguing that knowing the algebraic tricks required to take the limit of (x^2)sin(2x)/sqrt(x) as x->0 is useless. It's just a display of the mastery of very intricate algebra, exactly the same as all the other displays of mastery of intricate algebra she has had to master and will continue to be required to master.
What she actually needs is a solid understanding of the physical meaning of derivatives and integrals, how we arrive at them via numerical approximations, the fact that the velocity of a rigid body can be described as the integral over the forces that body is experiencing, etc.
That connection is literally never made in calculus.
The connection is of course made in the parallel calculus-based physics class she is taking. Which has its own problems, but is far superior as an introduction to calculus than the actual calculus class is.