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Jim,
It is distressing but I do not think it's a
real threat. I think that most teachers will not use this lesson. And
all these conversions can not be attractive to pupils at all. The worst thing of
this lesson is that it conveys the message that pupils should always convert
metric to ifp units if somebody from an English speaking country who
is in the Netherlands asks for such conversion. I know, that when I am in
Britain or if I should one day be in the USA I will NOT ask people to
convert for me; I make the conversion. (Do as the Romans do).
Schools and teachers use the internet a lot here,
but of course, most lessons are from text books. Most teacher will not bother
children with ifp units. But teachers who make up such lessons should think
before they act.
I will still try to find out where this came from
and let them know my objections in a polite way. Stop the
beginnings!
Han
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, 2004-12-07 15:56
Subject: [USMA:31600] Re: Imperial and
Dutch schools!
At 6 12 04, 05:14 PM,
Han Maenen wrote:
It has reallly
come that far: now Dutch children may be taught ifp in Dutch secondary
schools if their teacher picks up certain lessons from the Internet, for
instance, and then proceeds to teach them to his pupils! I have found
on the Internet this lesson in using graphic converters developed for Dutch
secondary schools with metric and British units. . .
.
Han:
As distressing as this may be on the surface,
several key questions pop into my mind:
(1) What portion of Dutch
teachers get their lesson materials off the net? I believe in US public
schools teachers are pretty much told what they can teach, and in general
would not be pulling stuff of the web.
(2) Of the portion of Dutch
teachers that may pull something off the web, what portion would see the IFP
stuff and still want to teach it? In other words, is it unreasonable to
presume most Dutch teachers are progressive enough not to subject children to
IFP calculations?
I guess what I am asking is this: although the
existence of such a lesson on the internet is unfortunate, is it really any
substantive threat to metric usage?
Jim
Elwell
Jim Elwell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-466-8770
www.qsicorp.com
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