One Obvious Indicator of Why the United States Trails other Developed Nations in Science Education — the American Mentality that Opposes Adoption of the International System of Units — and Our Continuing National Stupidity in Not Fixing this Mistake

© 2012 Peter Free

 

18 February 2012

 

 

Sometimes the obvious is so “everywhere” that no one notices it — like air

 

When American leaders wonder why the U.S. trails other nations in science education, we sometimes need look no further than asinine governmental policies.

 

For example, the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar (formerly called Burma) are the only 3 nations on the planet that have not governmentally adopted the International System of Units — usually called “SI” units.

 

That’s forward-looking company to be in.

 

 

Citation — to source of “3 nations” statement

 

United States Central Intelligence Agency, The World Fact Book: Appendix G — Weights and Measures, CIA.gov (2012) (at first paragraph entitled “Note”)

 

 

Why not using “SI” units negatively affects American education

 

SI units are the units of science.

 

People who are not raised to instinctively use SI quantities are already a few steps behind better educated people in thinking scientifically.

 

The SI system is almost universally used because it is based on multiples of 10s.

 

A convenient list of SI measures is here:

 

Physical Measurement Laboratory, International System of Units (SI), National Institute of Standards and Technology (2012)

 

Calculations and conversions are very much easier to make (and think in) than the archaically obtuse British Imperial System that the United States Government continues to use as our American standard.

 

Note

 

Even Britain and its Commonwealth no longer give governmental approval to Imperial measures, although they remain in use among elements of the population.

 

The Imperial system is mathematically idiotic — with, for example, its 1/16th, 1/8th, 1/32nd inches and 5,280 feet per mile linear measures.  And I won’t even begin to get into the obtuse lack of internal integration within the Imperial list of weights and volumes.

 

The Imperial system is medieval in its mathematical foolishness.

 

Note

 

I have first-hand experience with these competing measurement systems.

 

I initially took physics in high school in 1962.  It was taught in Imperial units.  (Being an advanced placement class, I assume this also reflected university education at the time.)  Imperial Units were a pain to manipulate, especially without a slide rule.

 

In the early 1990s, I took physics again in preparation for medicine.  This course was taught in SI units.

 

The difference in integrated terminology and conceptual ease of use between the two systems was remarkable.

 

 

“But, Pete, why can’t we use both systems — one in day-to-day activities and the other in science classes?”

 

Even though SI units are used in American science classes, the continued day-to-day use of the Imperial system in ordinary life means that American students almost certainly do not have an intuitive grasp of, and facility with, SI units that students in other countries do.

 

This unnecessarily disadvantages our youth.

 

Our lack of facility with the International System means that we have a corresponding lack of appreciation for its mathematical simplicity.

 

This lack of conceptual appreciation, in turn, probably hampers our students’ ability to recognize the mathematical proportions and magnitudes that so often characterize scientific phenomena.

 

Science is not a subject conceptually apart from ordinary living.

 

Yet, American insistence on maintaining two inharmonious measurement systems tempts people into thinking that science has nothing to do with our day-to-day lives.  As our students leave science class, they unconsciously convert their mindsets back to an Imperial System that implicitly conceals the “metric” elegance that they have just learned.

 

American governmental perversity in not fixing this dichotomy is “wake up, buster” stupid.

 

 

Taking a perceptual step back — letting “Dummy Inertia” limit our national progress is a bad idea

 

The Imperial System remains in use because our leaders decided that they did not want to challenge the industries and people that continue to use it.  This, despite the incredible time-wasting that goes on while carpenters, for example, try to interpolate eights, sixteenths, and thirty-seconds.

 

The Imperial System’s continued use in the United States, despite its obvious flaws, is a classic example of social inertia.

 

Government’s continued sanction of this medievally obtuse measurement system is an equally classic illustration of political cowardice among elected leaders.

 

 

Here are two examples of “our” lazy avoidance of taking advantage teachable moments in regard to adopting SI units as the national standard

 

 

Given that most of us won’t budge into saving ourselves, until the metaphorical tiger literally has one of our ankles in its jaws, taking advantage of teachable moments in education is persuasively important.

 

Yet, in regard to sanctioning SI units for the benefit of American educational progress, our government has ignored at least two rather prominent teachable moments during my lifetime:

 

First, the crash of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter.

 

Second, the much publicized STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education “crisis” that we face today.

 

 

Missed Teachable Moment One — crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter

 

In 1999 the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed on Mars because the people who designed and operated it inadvertently used both the SI and Imperial System measures in its design, manufacture, and operation.

 

This mistake is hard to believe, but true:

 

Specifically, the flight system software on the Mars Climate Orbiter was written to calculate thruster performance using the metric unit Newtons (N), while the ground crew was entering course correction and thruster data using the Imperial measure Pound-force (lbf).

 

This error has since been known as the metric mixup and has been carefully avoided in all missions since by NASA.

 

© 2012 Mars Climate Orbiter, Wikipedia (retrieved 18 February 2012)

 

If you prefer, a video presentation of the same thing:

 

Sunday Morning, Almanac: U.S. dia-METRIC-ally opposed, CBS News (12 February 2012) (at 1:35 minutes into the video clip)

 

 

Missed Teachable Moment Two — remaining sleepily blind to one of the reasons for our STEM education “crisis”

 

The STEM “crisis” began when American education and economic policy-makers noticed that the United States high school students were not doing especially well compared to those in other developed nations.

 

The test was developed by an Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.  The United States government recognizes it as a valid indicator.

 

A U.S. Department of Education statistical interpretation of the 2009 OECD test indicated that American students ranked:

 

18th among 34 nations in math,

 

13th among 34 in science,

 

and

 

7th among 34 in reading.

 

These rankings are probably higher than most readers recall from media reports at the time.  The reason is that the Department of Education recalculated absolute scores into ones that showed statistically valid differences between nations.

 

 

Citations

 

John Hechinger, U.S. Teens Lag as China Soars on International Test, Bloomberg News (07 December 2010) (reporting on Department of Education interpretation of OECD report)

 

Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA], Comparing countries’ and Economies’ performance, Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development [OECD] (2009)

 

As I have indicated, formally adopting the International System of Units in the United States would almost certainly advance our students’ day-to-day science mindsets in a helpful way.

 

But, insofar as I know, no one in leadership has proposed this idea — being apparently afraid of historically proven resistance from affected industries and an often unaware public.

 

Note

 

The above Sunday Morning clip includes a quotation from an anti-SI “stuck-in-the-mud.”  He says that he is too old, and it is too confusing, to learn something new.

 

Apparently, it has not occurred to this narrowly focused man that he will be dead soon, and his children and grandchildren will still have to compete with the rest of the world.

 

That’s why leadership, combined with the concept of personal sacrifice for the good of the nation, is important.

 

With the United States falling farther behind competing economies and educational systems — and being only one of 3 remaining out of step, non-SI nations in the world — one has to wonder, “What the heck are we thinking?”

 

American leaders have been wringing hands about the STEM crisis for the past couple of years, but without tackling this inherently obvious step to correct it.

 

 

An aside for the interested — how did SI measures get started?

 

The “SI” designation comes from the international name, Le Système international d'unités .  The system originated via a treaty among 55 countries, including the United States.

 

The treaty is called the Convention of the Metre (Convention du Mètre).  French was the original language.  The agreement was reached in 1875 in Paris.

 

The SI system’s calibrating body is the International Body of Weights and Measures.  Its acronym, BIPM, is based on its French name, “Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.”  BIPM’s headquarters remains near Paris.

 

 

The moral? — American politicians continue to let complacence determine the nation’s obviously declining course

 

Given the reservoir of greatness that our population holds in reserve, Leadership’s ethical responsibility is to draw it out.