You're right on the mark with this, Paul. When the subject is childbirth, I hear many parents speak of how the mother's cervix was dilated to XX centimeters without hesitating or stopping to say, "That's about YY inches." If our physicians recorded our heights and masses in cm and kg, it would go a *VERY* long way toward getting these units accepted in the US.
I went to school during the same period you did, and I can never remember how many cups make a quart or how many quarts make a gallon, as I was taught *only* in metric units in school. -- Jason ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Seitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 8:30 PM Subject: [USMA:19419] (no subject) Dear All, I've been reading the messages from the list server silently for some time now. If I may I would like to add to the discussion a few observations and a proposal in metrication. Firstly, I'd like to congratulate USMA. Progress is being made! Here is a little background of myself in the context of metrication. I attended grade school and middle school between 1977 and 1985 in Washington State. During that time the metric system was strongly emphasized. As consequence I really have no easy concept of pints (other than beer), quarts, gallons (other than what goes into my car) or ounces and pounds (other than my own weight). I must look these up to be able to understand how many pints in to quarts or pints into gallons. Actually I find it so much easier, when faced with a quantity written in quarts to simply convert to liters and then I get an instant mental picture of how much volume that is. I would be confident to say the same holds true for the majority of my classmates from that time period coming from Washington State public school system. I write this to demonstrate that progress is strong at an individual level and based on the efforts of USMA in the area of children's education. As I would observe, the difficulty in U.S. metrication is at the social contact level. Please pardon me if my statement is too painfully obvious, I will get to the point. As individuals, everyone knows kilograms, centimeters, liters etc. By now the vast majority of the US workforce has been amply educated in this area. The trouble is we don't talk to each other in these terms. Neither do we think of ourselves in these terms. Around the world people think of their weight as such and such kg or their height so many centimeters. I would like to put forth that a strong effort be placed upon the medical profession and the manufacturers of daily medical forms to metricate. Reporting to people at their checkup that they weigh so many kilos and their height is so many centimeters would subtly yet have instant impact to daily lives. The way that we talk to each other would change. At first people would try to convert to their comfortable pound and feet/inches but with the majority of people receiving the same type of information from their physicians, it would simply be easier to refer to the kilos and centimeters without breaking out the calculators for converting. I believe that the medical profession is much more receptive to metrication as compared to the state transportation departments. Appreciate your comments and if this direction forward were considered as appropriate I would very much appreciate guidance how to become directly involved in the metrication effort and how to actively promote this direction. Best Regards Paul R. Seitz _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
