On Sunday 30 August 2009 05:59:46 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.
I'm 45; when I entered school they were still teaching feet and inches. When they introduced the metric system, they taught conversions. I don't remember whether they had rulers that had only millimeters on them, besides the meter sticks in physics class; I do remember that the scales displayed in kilograms, but whether there was a switch on the bottom I don't know. I weighed 36 kg back then. I had already learned millimeters and grams before the school introduced them, and could square 1048576 by hand. The EGR 115 class, which I took a few years ago, is now teaching units and conversions, and a woman who was in my CAD class, and is now in my surveying class, is now taking EGR 115. They teach conversions wrong there. The proper way is that one unit is defined in terms of other units, all the way back to the SI base units. Some of the conversion factors are built into the calculator used in that class. I'll see if I can set her straight. Pierre
