Thanks for your comments, Jim. I'm now thinking of an e-mail to Ms. Berger followed promptly by a telephone call to try to get a more accurate assessment of the decision-making guidelines and processes of NCTM editors, and answers to our specific questions.
To be sure, Ms. Berger did, in fact, disclose to me by private e-mail that she believes that instruction in non-metric units is *just as important* as teaching metric units. I'll see if her actual written words are still in my electronic (or printed) files. "Just as important" or "equally important" are only my vague recollection of her actual words. A pertinent question for the NCTM to answer is the ideal *number of curriculum hours* devoted to teaching metric units vs number of hours for teaching non-metric units; as suggested by your reference to ranking the two. My curriculum would allocate zero hours for *classroom* instruction in non-metric units! Let that be on-the-job training until non-metric units are completely obsolete. Gene. .............................................. On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, James R. Frysinger wrote: > ... > She did not say that both were important, though I strongly suspect that > to be the truth. ... She merely stated that teaching metric units was > important and she did not rank that against teaching non-metric units in > her statement...
