Dear Sir, Re your article in today's Washington Post, on students not doing so well in tests that require math skills, i.e. in quiz shows etc, this would seem from an outsider that the poor kids don't stand much chance. With the USA's persistent refusal to do what everyone else has bothered to do (i.e. adopt the metric system) then you are preventing the use of their minds to think in decimals instead of your fractional system or using arbitrary bases (12 for inch/feet, 3 for feet/yards, 16 for oz/pounds, 640 for acres/sq. miles, and so on).
Give them a break for goodness sake and have teachers use metric units ONLY. This will clear their minds for productive mental arithmetic calculations by not cluttering up their thought processes by having to use the old system of measures. Best wishes, Mike Joy Perth, Australia
