If someone is having trouble understanding the absolute most basic part of classical mechanics (masses undergoing acceleration) something tells me they're not going to understand Calculus no matter what lens you view it through. It's not even about the equations, it's simply using it as a backstory for the motivation of the mathematics.
> If you can find an application the student is interested in, then by all means, use that approach. For a general purpose textbook, though, it hinders learning for many students who don't care for the particular choice of application the book decided to use.
This seems absurd. Just because some people will find a particular application less interesting, I don't think the answer is to throw out ALL applications and turn it into a generic boring slog through which no one will be able to see when and how it's useful.
> If you can find an application the student is interested in, then by all means, use that approach. For a general purpose textbook, though, it hinders learning for many students who don't care for the particular choice of application the book decided to use.
This seems absurd. Just because some people will find a particular application less interesting, I don't think the answer is to throw out ALL applications and turn it into a generic boring slog through which no one will be able to see when and how it's useful.