Have you people actually taken a basic statistics course that doesn't require calculus? They are all about memorizing formulas that you plug numbers in to calculate different statistical measures, they don't teach you to understand anything at all.
We teach students calculus at that age since teaching them statistics is basically a dead end, we teach statistics to those poor students who will need to calculate statistical measures without understanding them but we should not force every kid to suffer through that boring thing. Calculus is way more interesting, since kids can easily understand it and you can derive all results on your own, statistics is just plug and chug, much worse than calculus ever could be since students aren't ready for it yet.
We teach students calculus at that age since teaching them statistics is basically a dead end, we teach statistics to those poor students who will need to calculate statistical measures without understanding them but we should not force every kid to suffer through that boring thing. Calculus is way more interesting, since kids can easily understand it and you can derive all results on your own, statistics is just plug and chug, much worse than calculus ever could be since students aren't ready for it yet.