2002-02-23 And in the late 1990's Saskatchewan decided that decision of 30 years ago was wrong and reintroduced FFU in the classrooms. Back-sliding.
We spend a lot of effort bring up the achievements of the '70s, but that was a different generation. This generation, for some reason, doesn't seem interested in conversion and is making efforts to reverse the decisions of decades ago. The so-called progress we speak of is metric introduced in the '70s. Since then there has been more regression then progress. The only real progress is in Britain, and even they are fighting it. If the US is allowed to control the global marketplace, you will a tremendous amount of backsliding on the part of the world. The only way to prevent it is for a strong EU to emerge with clear goals to promote the metric system and its standards world-wide and to counter any and all American efforts to establish footholds for American units. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph B. Reid" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2002-02-22 19:43 Subject: [USMA:18354] Re: Math Within, 2002 January (fwd) > James Frysinger wrote in USMA 18346 > > >So this is the usual line from NCTM (as from others) stating: > > > >1. We got burned on this once in the 70s. We don't want to get burned > >again. > > > >2. We're not interested in doing anything to force the issue. We're > >going to let someone else take the heat. > > > >3. We're going to take the safe position of riding the waves, like a > >ship without propulsion. Meanwhile, we're going to continue trying to > >improve our job of doing something that is ineffective, rather like a > >crew running laps faster and faster on the weather deck of a ship which > >is dead in the water. Maybe someone will think we're going somewhere. > > > >4. Say what you want, but we're not interested in changing our minds. > >We're going to ignore what you (and others) say about the negative > >impact that teaching two systems of measurement has on our student's > >abilities in math and science. In our reply we won't even try to counter > >that arguement because that might mean we feel it's worth discussing. In > >otherwords, we will pretend that the subject has never come up. > > > >(Gee, I hope that I don't sound cynical.) > > > >Jim > > > In 1968, the Canadian Teachers' Federation passed a resolution "That the > C.T.F. encourage conversion to the Metric System". > > In the 1970s all school textbooks removed all references to or examples of > imperial units. The imperial system was no longer taught officially in > Canadian schools, although some teachers may have given their pupils some > information about it so that their pupils could understand their parents. > > Joseph B.Reid > 17 Glebe Road West > Toronto M5P 1C8 TEL. 416-486-6071 >
