I pulled homework duty the other night. One of the assignments was to study for a science test. I grabbed the flash cards that the teacher uses and began to run through them with my 3rd grade daughter. The subject matter was impressive for 3rd grade and I'm 100% sure I wasn't learning stuff like that at that age. It had a lot to do with water and it's different states and how it changes between states. There were also some questions about displacement and tools used for displacement which brought us to several items that use liters and milliliters. I'm getting older and my memory isn't perfect, but I think I remember being told about the metric system and how it was going to rule the world back in about 4th grade. The reason I remember that is because we broke up into groups and wrote the equivalent metric measurements of some very standard English measurements. I clearly remember rolling a metric wheel up and down the hallway and jotting my findings down. That was like, I don't know, 1977? It's now 2007. It took 30 years to get to, what? In 30 years, the only thing we've fully adopted is the 2 liter soda! 30 years! 30. How many metric years is that? They changed the PA Turnpike exits a few years ago to go from sequential numbering to the MILE marker of the exit....not the kilometer marker. Can we please end the facade that we're ever going to change to the metric system? Maybe this is why the terrorists hate us? We refuse to conform. I don't want a 355 ml Diet Coke.I want 12 oz. I don't want Ben Roethlisberger to have a 274.32 meter passing day. I want 300 yards! You get the idea. Isn't it about time to just give up? If we travel abroad, we'll use a conversion table or our iPods or something....but we will never compute this stuff in our heads or know it outright. Look how many other things have changed in the last 30 years and we haven't advanced the stupid metric system one centimeter. Obviously, we either didn't really want to, or we really wanted to and the idiots running the country at the time in the Dept of Education didn't know how to implement it successfully. Either way, I think it's funny that they're still trying to cram little bits and pieces into kids' lives. If they would incorporate metrics into Wii and PS3 games....then maybe the kids would learn something about it.
2 comments:
I have a photo clipping of me in the paper with some other kids from my class. Our picture was taken while we were measuring classroom objects in metric. I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, maybe? So that was at least 30-32 years ago? Funny.
It was decreed, by whom I do not recall, that the USA would convert to the metric system by 1980.
The PA turnpike started measuing distances in both miles and kilometers at some point. Detroit auto manufacturers dually gauged speedometers in both KPH and MPH.
The people said, "Screw that."
Meters and Liters are for scientists and Europeans. The world is going to hate us for being the assholes we are anyway. Adopting their metric measuring standards won't make a difference.
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