I would agree with that advice through the elementary grades, and probably through 7th grade. Somewhere in grades 8-12, it might be good to teach basic conversions to everybody, and more specialized conversions to students on certain "college prep" tracks. (I am not fond of the "priests of knowledge," only an expert can answer that syndrome) While dissuading teachers from teaching conversion to young children, I would also discourage "stupid" problems like how many nanometers in a kilometer, and instead teach proper selection of prefix, conversion from inappropriate prefix to an appropriate one, and conversion to and from prefixes and unprefixed with scientific notation. Using youthful apprehension about large, unwieldly numbers to make metric seem frightening is worse than conversion.
--- On Tue, 4/7/09, Bill Hooper <[email protected]> wrote: From: Bill Hooper <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:44469] Re: Algorithm To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 10:16 PM Here's the way I put it to my Metric Classes and to my seminars/talks for teachers: "Don't teach or do conversions from one system to another. That is the most difficult and the most useless thing to learn. "Yes, there will be some conversions that have to be done as we adopt the metric system, but they will be done by experts or specialists in the field. It will not need to be done by the everyday consumer. When you need to know a converted value, these experts will provide it for you." Regards, Bill Hooper Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ========================== Make It Simple; Make It Metric! ==========================
