It's interesting that these classes have a particular character to them, and they are also coincidentally the core math "service" courses for engineering, the hard sciences, and pre-med students. The fun isn't allowed to begin until those kids are gone. Also, the accreditation requirements for those disciplines makes it very hard to change the lower level math curriculum.

To help my kids stay interested in math, I offered them the following promise: "Suspend your judgement until you get a chance to do proofs, because proofs are when math comes alive." One of my kids became a math major.