Last Thursday I went to my kid's high school open house. The high school is in Montgomery County, Maryland just north of D.C.
The last class of the day was engineering. We used to call this "shop", and, yes, there are a lot of power tools around, but the kids actually design and build interesting things, not just stools and paper towel holders. The teacher went into some detail about some of the projects the kids would be working on. They include building a canoe out of cardboard (which has to float), model bridges, and the like, all of which teach them basic engineering skills as well as the use of tools. At the end of the short presentation, I asked what measurement units the class would be using. The teacher replied that they would be using predominately metric, with the exception of the canoe, which is taught by an 82 year old colleague who is too far along to have learned it. He went on to say that some of the kids don't really understand inches and feet and only know metric! (This is suburban Maryland, remember!) I commented that it sure would have helped if we had taken care of business 30 years ago. ALL the other parents nodded in agreement (but remember this is a somewhat educated group of people). The job may not be as difficult as we think once we get the politicians and backsliders out of the way. Carleton
