A sto­ry by Bar­ry Cipra in [the Mar. 25, 1988] issue of “Sci­ence” draws atten­tion to a loom­ing “cri­sis in math­e­mat­ics.” The cri­sis has to do with the teach­ing of cal­cu­lus, the branch of math­e­mat­ics that has long been the cor­ner­stone of edu­ca­tion in sci­ence and engineering.