Not surprisingly I'll have to disagree.
I cannot see a point in any time where the teaching of fractions becomes
obsolete.
Once again "metric" has been mixed with "decimal" and "fraction" when it
should not be.
For a country that has not metricated (US, and infact, the UK) it might be
wise to use, as examples, fully metricated countries such as Germany to
realise that fractions remain part of the curriculum, speach and everyday
transactions.
From what I've heard on these forums and others I note that the vast
majority of pro-mets can seperate and distiguish between the
fraction/metrication argument.
From: Bill Hooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:34843] Re: fractions
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:09:25 -0400
Stephen H. stated:
One can't expect a kid to only recognise a pizza cut into 10 pieces to
make sense of the words that describe what that looks like.
to which I responded:
Why not?
Then Stephen replied (to my rhetorical question) with:
Because you might not want to cut a pizza into 10 pieces?
That's not relevant, Stephen. Your original question was about whether a
kid could RECOGNIZE a pizza cut into 10 pieces. It had nothing to do with
whether one would actually want to cut it into 10 pieces.
I think a child could understand the concept of dividing a pizza (or
anything else) into any number of parts, including ten. If one wanted to
cut one (hypothetically and figuratively) into 10 parts to assist a child's
learning the concept of the number 0.1 then I see no problem with that.
Thus decimals can be taught without using common fractions and therefore
adopting metric (which is decimal) virtually eliminates the need to teach
common fractions at all.
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Go Metric America! Or get left behind!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
