Children's literature, including school books, is a thick and chunky soup, and measurement units drift to the bottom along with many other subjects. The pages are full of misinformation on virtually any subject you care to check. In books about dinosaurs, for instance, we find pterodactyl depicted as pteranodon, steogosaur hobnobbing with triceratops, marine reptiles identified as dinosaurs, and brontosaurus straddling the Earth though paleontologists now say it didn't even exist, not with that skull and nomenclature.
The reason for misinformation is endemic to publishing: the authors of children's nonfiction are not experts in their subject but yeomen who do quick research for the project at hand. A corollary is the attitude that children are so far beneath us that it doesn't matter. Children's math and science books should be written by mathematicians and scientists. I am not sure how to contrive that. ----- > From: Pierre Abbat <[email protected]> > Reply-To: <[email protected]> > Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 09:47:05 -0400 > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> > Subject: [USMA:45182] Nonstandard units in elementary curriculum > > > I've been reading kindergarten and elementary math curricula, and one theme > that comes up (besides trying to teach inches and centimeters at the same > time) is nonstandard units. Why do they do this? When I was little, I used my > hand in an L to estimate a decimeter. It is now 140 mm. My step is 678 mm, > which is hard to compute with in my head (surveyors have to pace sometimes, > and measuring the pace was an exercise in Surveying 1). Why don't they stick > with standard units that don't change size as the child grows? > > Pierre >
