Norris teacher pushes for conversion to metric
Posted: Sunday, April 06, 2008
FIRTH, Neb. (AP) -- In an empty middle school classroom in rural Lancaster County, a mild-mannered math teacher engages in subterfuge.
He speaks animatedly into a video camera, his voice rising and falling as he explains the metric system's many advantages.
"Hi. My name is Tom Price. I'm a math teacher, and I want to change this country to the metric system," he says. "Why? Because two systems do not work."
Later, he'll upload the video to YouTube. He hopes it will light the spark necessary in federal lawmakers to convert the United States to the metric system.
As a seventh-grade math teacher for Norris Middle School for the past 24 years, Price knows how difficult it is to teach students two systems of measurement year after year.
And how entrenched the standard English system of measurement -- pounds, feet and inches -- is in this country.
The 48-year-old is sending e-mails to math professors, high school teachers and government officials across the country. He created a Web site to spread his metric revolution.
His goal: to get enough people involved to persuade Congress to enact a law by 2010 making the metric system king.
What's so great about the metric system?
Easy, Price said.
It's based on the number 10. No messy conversions -- like 12 inches in a foot or 5,280 feet in a mile -- to memorize to convert to larger units.
Just add a zero.
Only two other countries have yet to convert to the metric system: Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in Southeast Asia, and Liberia in western Africa.
In the United States, several efforts have been made to convert to the metric system, including the congressional Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
The effort lost steam, said Ted Watson, assistant roadway design engineer for the Nebraska Department of Roads.
Watson recalls a time in the 1990s when the department began switching projects to metric units in anticipation of a federally mandated Sept. 30, 2000, deadline for all federally funded highway construction to convert to the metric system.
"But, as that date drew closer and closer, it seemed that a lot of the (roads departments) were in a quandary about whether the feds were really going to hold us to that date," Watson said.
As it turned out, Congress rescinded the deadline while still recommending federal agencies convert to metric units.
But Nebraska roads officials, seeing the movement falter within the ranks of construction contractors and other state roads departments, backslid.
"We started going back the other way," Watson said. "We're not completely back to full English, but we're almost there."
He said it likely will take a grass-roots effort, like that started by Price, to persuade national leaders to once again take up the metrication banner.
So where does opposition to metrication come from?
Price has some ideas.
Among the hundreds of e-mails Price has sent as part of his campaign, he has received only eight responses from people he didn't already know.
Half supported his proposal.
Half opposed it, saying they worried the cost to change road signs, product labels and tools would be too heavy a burden on the U.S. economy, Price said.
"We don't have to redo a lot of things," he said. "We just rename them.
"I think it's just tradition, the fear of change."
Next month, Price is scheduled to speak on metrics at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' annual conference in Salt Lake City.
The reason for his mission, he said, is clear.
"It would make America better," he said. "We could also spend time on other math topics."
He speaks animatedly into a video camera, his voice rising and falling as he explains the metric system's many advantages.
"Hi. My name is Tom Price. I'm a math teacher, and I want to change this country to the metric system," he says. "Why? Because two systems do not work."
Later, he'll upload the video to YouTube. He hopes it will light the spark necessary in federal lawmakers to convert the United States to the metric system.
As a seventh-grade math teacher for Norris Middle School for the past 24 years, Price knows how difficult it is to teach students two systems of measurement year after year.
And how entrenched the standard English system of measurement -- pounds, feet and inches -- is in this country.
The 48-year-old is sending e-mails to math professors, high school teachers and government officials across the country. He created a Web site to spread his metric revolution.
His goal: to get enough people involved to persuade Congress to enact a law by 2010 making the metric system king.
What's so great about the metric system?
Easy, Price said.
It's based on the number 10. No messy conversions -- like 12 inches in a foot or 5,280 feet in a mile -- to memorize to convert to larger units.
Just add a zero.
Only two other countries have yet to convert to the metric system: Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in Southeast Asia, and Liberia in western Africa.
In the United States, several efforts have been made to convert to the metric system, including the congressional Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
The effort lost steam, said Ted Watson, assistant roadway design engineer for the Nebraska Department of Roads.
Watson recalls a time in the 1990s when the department began switching projects to metric units in anticipation of a federally mandated Sept. 30, 2000, deadline for all federally funded highway construction to convert to the metric system.
"But, as that date drew closer and closer, it seemed that a lot of the (roads departments) were in a quandary about whether the feds were really going to hold us to that date," Watson said.
As it turned out, Congress rescinded the deadline while still recommending federal agencies convert to metric units.
But Nebraska roads officials, seeing the movement falter within the ranks of construction contractors and other state roads departments, backslid.
"We started going back the other way," Watson said. "We're not completely back to full English, but we're almost there."
He said it likely will take a grass-roots effort, like that started by Price, to persuade national leaders to once again take up the metrication banner.
So where does opposition to metrication come from?
Price has some ideas.
Among the hundreds of e-mails Price has sent as part of his campaign, he has received only eight responses from people he didn't already know.
Half supported his proposal.
Half opposed it, saying they worried the cost to change road signs, product labels and tools would be too heavy a burden on the U.S. economy, Price said.
"We don't have to redo a lot of things," he said. "We just rename them.
"I think it's just tradition, the fear of change."
Next month, Price is scheduled to speak on metrics at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' annual conference in Salt Lake City.
The reason for his mission, he said, is clear.
"It would make America better," he said. "We could also spend time on other math topics."
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Concerned Customary User wrote on Feb 19, 2009 4:57 PM:
And about 7.5% of the world's population still lives in countries that use either U.S. or Imperial Gallons.
Customary Units are the only system of measure that has landed man on the moon.
I am all for simplifying/rationalizing the U.S. customary system. But why get rid of it? The rest of the English-speaking world's transition wasn't nearly as seamless as the USMA leads Americans to believe.
It is now a criminal offense to sell a pound of bananas in the U.K. Do we really want to allow nonsense such as this to migrate over to this country? "
MLW wrote on Apr 14, 2008 10:04 PM:
Philip Bladon wrote on Apr 7, 2008 12:11 PM:
www.simetricmatters.com
"
Derek wrote on Apr 6, 2008 9:23 PM:
"
BUDAI, Andrew E. wrote on Apr 6, 2008 10:05 AM:
I'd wish to comment directly to him and offer support in his quest to help ease America's isolation from the rest of the world. Technically speaking, our measurements are a
hold-over from the 19th century with our inch-pound-bushel hodge-podge, left behind even by the inventors of the English system. The UK is ahead of us on the road to metrication.
Please convey my best wishes to this intelligent pedagog. "