So, the AP Calculus test was last week, and it was a doozy. The multiple-choice section won't ever be released, but the free response has been, and it was about the hardest I've seen. Certainly the hardest of the past 10 years. We took a look at it on Tuesday, and I think my students were relieved to hear that (a) I wasn't able to blow through it myself and (b) it's graded on a curve, so if it's hard, then everyone will have had a hard time with it.

But, on the email list for calc teachers, there's a lot of whining going on. Not from students (that happens on forums for calc students, though, I'm told). Rather, from teachers. Complaining that it was rough on their students, that their students are turned off from math because of this test, that their students won't take math in college, because this test was so hard.

Here's a portion of an email, which I thought better of and didn't send to that list:


What's interesting to me, on a personal level, is this: I've long since been aware that there's a sense of elitism associated with being able to do calculus. It was true of my class of 9 kids in our public school on the border of Detroit, back in 1991. It was true of my fellow engineering students at Northwestern. It was true when I went to graduate school-- even among the faculty, the biologists doing mathematical modeling had a slightly smug air, and grad students went to significant lengths to include SOME sort of differential equation in the work they submitted.
I'm a pretty egalitarian guy, working in a 99% minority school in the third largest city in the USA. More than half of my calculus students are immigrants, and only two regularly speak English at home. And here's what's interesting: I don't see myself as breaking down the elitist barriers that calculus creates. I see myself as *inviting* these students inside. Looking back, I've even actively encouraged them to buy into that elitism, emphasizing that they're learning a level of mathematics that most people never even attempt. Because, I don't mind this particular elitist bend-- because as long as there are capable teachers willing to put in the work to get these under-prepared kids up to speed, then it's a meritocracy.

So, from a purely selfish perspective-- if your kids are getting burned out, just remind them that I've got a dozen Mexicans who want their engineering job, four years from now.