Metric System
Our students deserve our elected officials’ support of the metric system. U.S. students and eventually everyone will be better off as a result of the switch.
Education in this country seems to be continually under fire for a variety of reasons. One such reason is the degree of technical literacy achieved by most of our students compared with students of other countries. Currently U.S. students spend time learning “scientific” units, such as the meter, liter, kilogram and degrees Celsius. (If it is of any comfort, U.S. students are not entirely alone with this burden. However, the only other students having to learn these units as an additional and separate hurdle are from Burma, South Yemen and Tonga. Everyone else is on the metric system.)
U.S. federal agencies (as of Nov. 30, 1992) are using the metric system. The metric system is easy to use because it is based on multiples of 10. For example, our distance units include miles, yards, feet, inches and various fractions of inches, but the metric system uses the meter and its multiples, e.g., the kilometer, centimeter and millimeter.
If you care about American students scientific literacy, then please support the switch by asking your officials to support it.
STEPHEN V. HYMOWITZ
Los Angeles
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