Norris teacher pushes for conversion to metric
RURAL FIRTH — In an empty middle school classroom in rural Lancaster County, a mild-mannered math teacher engages in subterfuge.
His hands on his hips, the red-haired “math man” 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 in the hopes it will light the spark necessary to pressure 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
But that isn’t stopping him from trying to wake America up to its reliance on what he considers to be an outdated measurement system.
“If there’s enough people pushing, enough pressure, enough voices being heard, it’ll become law,” he said of conversion to the metric system.
The 48-year-old has launched a grassroots campaign that has involved him sending e-mails to math professors, high school teachers and government officials across the country.
He created a Web site, www.grassrootsmetriccampaign.orgto spread his message of metric revolution.
His goal: to get enough people signed on to the effort to convince Congress to enact a law by 2010 making the metric system king.
So 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 in recent decades to convert to the metric system, including the congressional Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
But something happened on the way to metrication.
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 grassroots effort, like that started by Price, to convince national leaders to once again take up the metrication banner.
Converting to the metric system would certainly make Watson’s job easier, he said.
“It actually is, from an engineering standpoint, easier and more logical than the conventional English system,” he said.
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.
But the Norris teacher believes other forces are at work.
“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.”
For his part, Price plans to continue working to convince others of the metric system’s superiority.
Next month, he’s scheduled to speak on that topic 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.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.
His hands on his hips, the red-haired “math man” 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 in the hopes it will light the spark necessary to pressure 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
But that isn’t stopping him from trying to wake America up to its reliance on what he considers to be an outdated measurement system.
“If there’s enough people pushing, enough pressure, enough voices being heard, it’ll become law,” he said of conversion to the metric system.
The 48-year-old has launched a grassroots campaign that has involved him sending e-mails to math professors, high school teachers and government officials across the country.
He created a Web site, www.grassrootsmetriccampaign.orgto spread his message of metric revolution.
His goal: to get enough people signed on to the effort to convince Congress to enact a law by 2010 making the metric system king.
So 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 in recent decades to convert to the metric system, including the congressional Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
But something happened on the way to metrication.
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 grassroots effort, like that started by Price, to convince national leaders to once again take up the metrication banner.
Converting to the metric system would certainly make Watson’s job easier, he said.
“It actually is, from an engineering standpoint, easier and more logical than the conventional English system,” he said.
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.
But the Norris teacher believes other forces are at work.
“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.”
For his part, Price plans to continue working to convince others of the metric system’s superiority.
Next month, he’s scheduled to speak on that topic 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.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.
Copyright © 2002-2008 Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved.