I agree that this is not an effective petition, it is just a rant against customary. A petition has to be simple or people won't read it. Also, you must keep in mind most Americans are terrified of math. That is why so many are against the metric system, they think (true or not) that using it will involve having to use math. All those numbers in the petition will scare most people away.
Al Lawrence ________________________________ From: USMA <[email protected]> on behalf of Pierre Abbat <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 12:01 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA 1710] Re: Started petition to teach metric 1st request your support On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 7:18:11 PM EDT Nodextrose Org wrote: > US schools should teach the metric system 1st and not introduce children to > the obscurantist medieval foot/pound before explaining the relation of the > units of electricity and magnetism to the units of mass and distance. > https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchng.it%2F8 > zmXG89HZg&data=04%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Ceed599190031452e43 > 0608d8f9524969%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C1%7C6375334790957357 > 05%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1ha > WwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=TzUm5pxkgMkOhBiF%2FRr87i74FGvro3S7c1qyell > tEVg%3D&reserved=0 A few problems and suggestions besides what Howard Ressel pointed out: In the USA, education is a power of the state governments and the people, not the federal government, so the petition should be addressed to the state legislatures. "Till exempel" is in a North Germanic language, not English, which is West Germanic. The English is "for example". The petition should state the advantage of metrication to competition in world markets. The number 299792458 may scare people into thinking that metric is too complicated. The number that should be used to scare people is 45359237. I think that children should be taught to measure in metric and compute in metric, then once they learn to do arithmetic with at least as many digits as are in the conversion factors, they can learn to solve problems presented in customary by converting everything to metric and calculating in metric. The petition should state the advantage of calculating in metric with quantities that everyone measures most days. Most days I put some food on the scale, measure its mass, and add some water from a measuring cup, and I think at least half the population measures food and water more than once a week. Calculating the amount of moisture in a soil sample is easier in metric (I slept through the teacher explaining pounds per gallon of water, woke up, and solved the problem by converting to kilograms and liters). Not many people calculate teslas or use E=mc² every week. The symbols "Kg", "wh", and "KWH" are wrong. I suggest posting the text of a petition here and having us critique it before posting a live petition. Pierre -- li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
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