Upon more careful reading of Ken Butcher's email, Gene, I believe he is
right. The EO directed agencies to metric, with some wiggle room
provided. That had to do with their internal affairs. It did not call
upon them necessarily to metricate their customers, except to the extent
perhaps of requiring metricated inputs required of industry by the
various agencies.
Thus, for example, the Education Department might require reports by
schools of their classroom floor areas in square meters, but it did not
direct or authorize the Education Department to require the teaching of
the SI in schools. Note, of course, that mandates from the federal
Education Department are a "quid pro quo" situation, less politely known
as extortion. "We won't give you any Title 1 funds unless you ....".
EO 12770 pertained to the operation of federal agencies. It said nothing
about their operations upon us.
Jim
On 2011-03-17 1418, [email protected] wrote:
Here is a reply from Ken Butcher. Unfortunately, he does not seem to support my (our?)
recommendation that SI should be the fundamental (if not exclusive) language of measurement
instruction in STEM Education, or he, more simply, has the view that the DoC (and NIST) do not have
the authority to "direct" other elements of the Executive Branch to adopt SI. What
became of the "shall" duties of DoC and NIST in Executive Order 12770? EAM,
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
