Dear John,
Do you remember this? I think that it is from the UK. Your reference
to your children made me think of it again.
##
Dear Editor,
I am 40. I have never been taught Imperial measures in school and yet
I am surrounded by people who talk about inches, pints, miles and
ounces. I find it quite obscene that I have to learn about measures
that were declared moribund before I could walk.
Why did the government listen to the old stick-in-the-muds? It didn't
happen with decimal currency because it couldn't. Talk to a twenty
year old about shillings and he will think you are talking about
Austria, before the Euro. This is how it should be. The past is a
different country, we have moved on. But why did we allow some
conservative old fogeys to keep on talking about their miles, pints,
ounces, stones, feet and Fahrenheit? We should have buried these
things in the 1960s when we left the shillings and 240 pence in the
pound nonsense.
Tens, hundreds and thousands. So easy to calculate. So much easier
than twelve pennies in a shilling, twenty shillings in a pound,
sixteen ounces in a pound, fourteen pounds in a stone. Not to mention
gills, chains, rods, poles, fathoms, bushels and firkins.
A cube 100 millimetres by 100 millimetres by 100 millimetres defines a
volume of one litre, if you fill it with water it has a mass of one
kilogram. If you raise the temperature to 100 degrees the water boils.
Cool it to zero degrees and it freezes. This is simple, this is
elegant, and this is beautiful.
The oldies say: 'Don't talk to me about them kilo-whatsit things
laddie I think in inches'.
But, the oldies are trying to force me to think in old measures too —
despite the fact that all the old measures were scheduled for
replacement four years before I started primary school.
It is time we buried the imperial system. The only way do do it is to
be draconian about it. Do not allow people to ask for, demand or even
talk about imperial measures.
If you don't draw the line like that, the old fogeys will force it
down our necks for ever more. Why must my children, and probably
theirs as well as our grandchildren and great grandchildren, have to
learn about pounds and inches just because some older people will not
make a little effort?
Name and address supplied
##
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
On 2009/08/30, at 19:59 , John M. Steele wrote:
And who scuttled the teaching? My two older children (now 36 and
40) BOTH learned metric-only in elementary school (in two different
school systems because we moved). My youngest child (30) learned a
mixture and was pretty confused by it. At least the second school
system changed its policies between child #2 and child #3. It is
another example of the US "retreating" on metric, along with
Imperial bricks, lighting fixtures, and highway construction,
scuttled by special interests whining to Congress, and lack of
enforcement, sucgh as NASA refusing to obey EO12770.
--- On Sat, 8/29/09, Pierre Abbat <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Pierre Abbat <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:45716] Re: Mandatory metrication
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 10:51 PM
On Saturday 29 August 2009 20:31:59 Pat Naughtin wrote:
> * Why was metrication in Australia so successful – and so quick?
>
> * Why is metrication in the USA apparently so unsuccessful –
and so
> slow?
Not having experienced metrication anywhere but the USA, I can only
say why
it's been unsuccessful in the USA. I see two reasons:
*The process was scuttled by people who, for political reasons,
rescinded the
requirements to set deadlines for metrication.
*School curricula attempt to teach both sets of units at once.
Pierre
