I sent the following email to Dr. Francis Fennel, president of the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, who is scheduled to
appear on a TV program March 18 focusing in the NMAP findings. Those
findings have been found to contain virtually NO reference to teaching
the SI metric system.
Perhaps my email to him can get metric introduced into the discussion.
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
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Dr. McDaniel:
I was astonished to learn that the report of the prestigious
National Mathematics Advisory Panel did not include a single word
about teaching the metric system.
Now there is going to be a television program about the reports
findings (on March 18). This is one final opportunity to rectify
that dreadful omission. I understand that you will be a participant
in that program and I urge you to consider making a case for
teaching the SI metric system in our schools.
All the high sounding words and phrases make it abundantly clear
that the goals of the NMAP report and the TV program are consistent
with the idea that metric MUST BE TAUGHT. Yet it nowhere makes any
mention of teaching metric
If metric is not taught, the goals of the report, the panel and the
nation cannot possibly be completely achieved.
The title of the TV program is "Preparing Students to Succeed in the
Knowledge Economy". Students cannot succeed fully in any kind of
economy without a knowledge of the metric system. Everyone else on
earth uses it and in our global economy we cannot survive without
metric knowledge.
Fully 95% of the earth's population uses metric and the US Congress
has declared the SI metric system to be "the Preferred system of
weight and measures for trade and commerce" in the US.
How can students succeed if they are metrically ignorant in a world
that is 95% metric?
Please address this glaring error in the NMAP report when you appear
on TV to discuss it.
Sincerely,
William Hooper, Ed.D.
Professor of Physics (retired)
The University of Virginia's
College at Wise
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Make It Simple; Make It Metric!
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