I watched a very funny comedy routine by Wanda Sykes about this subject a few days ago. When I was in grade school they taught us the metric system, because they said the US would be converting to that system in the near future. I'm in my early forties and I'm still waiting. Almost every other country on earth uses the metric system besides us, whats up?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
It's not arrogance or laziness, it's just logic. Why spend millions of dollars changing things when there is going to be little discernible benefit?
for reals wrote:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
And you think it ain't broke? It's arcane and pointless and it's gotta be at least partially responsible for American school children lagging far behind others in math skills.
The reason it hasn't been abandoned is because that decision would have to be made by American adults who are scared of learning something new. Or maybe it's because Glenn Beck says it's the work of communists. He certainly would say that if Obama spoke out in favor of it.
People in the U.S. can't ever read, write, and do arithmetic. The U.S. is one of the dumbest countries in the world. How do you expect people in the U.S. to handle two systems.
Reedin Ritein Figurin wrote:
People in the U.S. can't ever read, write, and do arithmetic. The U.S. is one of the dumbest countries in the world. How do you expect people in the U.S. to handle two systems.
That would be even,would it?
Reedin Ritein Figurin wrote:
People in the U.S. can't ever read, write, and do arithmetic. The U.S. is one of the dumbest countries in the world. How do you expect people in the U.S. to handle two systems.
The US can't handle one system. Tell me how many people actually understand the Imperial system. My students, who tell me how hard metrics are, don't have the vaguest idea about the Imperial system.
formidable doer of the nasty wrote:
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And you think it ain't broke? It's arcane and pointless and it's gotta be at least partially responsible for American school children lagging far behind others in math skills.
.
Please explain how not using the metric system is in any way responsible for lagging math skills?
formidable doer of the nasty wrote:
And you think it ain't broke? It's arcane and pointless and it's gotta be at least partially responsible for American school children lagging far behind others in math skills.
It should improve math skills because it's harder to add up distances or weights using imperial measurements.
Yeah, it would be great if we moved metric, but the cost would be immense (even the UK isn't entirely metric and they started the change in 1965. They actually got a special exception from the EU that permits certain measurements to be made in imperial units) and the benefits, really, would be pretty slight.
Remarkably, USAians are perfectly comfortable with metric measurements for alcohol and soft drinks. It's only everywhere else that we start freaking out.
29 feet.
I can use my own feet to estimate how far that is.
I don't always carry meters with me.
Cuz WE, the U. S. of A. are the "leader of the Pack"!
american arrogance wrote:
When I was in grade school they taught us the metric system, because they said the US would be converting to that system in the near future.
They said the same about the Dewey Decimal system and we see how well that went over. I never thought the metric system would catch on here either.
Change now and we're Europe's bitch
I ran a 5K this weekend in the USA. What do you want, wicker?
Wow! Millions of dollars? Really? You said millions, right? Wow, millions of dollars. Whew. Let me catch my breath. Millions. Phew. That sure is a lot of money. It's no wonder Americans don't change. Well spoken! I was sitting on the fence, but your articulated and well-defended arguments have me swayed.Hey wait a minute. Didn't Americans destroy a satellite, by firing a Mars orbiting satellite directly into a planet at an extremely high velocity? I wonder how much that cost to build? If I recall correctly some bright programmer mixed up foot-pounds with newtons. Heck. What is a foot-pound and newton anyway? And who really cares about this indiscernable difference?That little imperial/metric mix-up alone cost Americans $327.6 million dollars. Wow. That's not millions of dollars. That's Hundreds of Millions of dollars. Several hundreds of millions of dollars. Boy, that indiscernable confusion sure cost a lot of money.But, I digress. What a good question. Why spend millions of dollars changing things? What discernable benefit could there possibly be, standardizing with the rest of the modern world, and attempting to minimize confusion? After all, it really ain't broke, is it.
for reals wrote:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
It's not arrogance or laziness, it's just logic. Why spend millions of dollars changing things when there is going to be little discernible benefit?
I would say it the other way around. American's don't have math skills, and couldn't generate the critical mass to convert to metric, for the same reason. It's in some powerful people's interest that Americans get dumbed down, so they believe the things they are told, and see on TV. This way they are quite happy achieving what little life gives them.Not adopting the metric system, along with lower math skills, is just one visible effect of this multi-faceted effort to keep the average intelligence low.
formidable doer of the nasty wrote:
And you think it ain't broke? It's arcane and pointless and it's gotta be at least partially responsible for American school children lagging far behind others in math skills.
The entertainment value was worth every cent.
because nobody cares
Ding ding ding! Don't mistake apathy for arrogance!
american arrogance wrote:
I watched a very funny comedy routine by Wanda Sykes about this subject a few days ago. When I was in grade school they taught us the metric system, because they said the US would be converting to that system in the near future. I'm in my early forties and I'm still waiting. Almost every other country on earth uses the metric system besides us, whats up?
You did not see anything funny by Wanda Sykes. You have no credibility.
It was entirely my pleasure!Did you know British pints are a little bit bigger than American pints? Boy that really cost me a lot of wasted days after, before learning that valuable lesson.
HRE wrote:
The entertainment value was worth every cent.