at 5 percent of the total expenditures for primary and secondary education,9 which are now running at the rate of $40 billion dollars per year. Thus we now spend about $2 billion dollars per year for instructional materials. If the replacement of textbooks for going metric were spread over a period of 3 to 5 years, then the cost would be easily absorbed in the usual replacement process. If in addition editors and publishers were given a lead time to prepare new materials, then the cost of curriculum revision would be minimized and unit prices not increased.

Too long a conversion period or a long drawn out drift toward metric conversion might dilute or sacrifice the sense of purpose and change and it would of course continue the need to teach two measurement languages, and delay the curriculum changes which we believe would save much time and effort in elementary mathematics.

Conclusion: Considering textbook replacement alone, it is clear that a 5year period of metric conversion borders on being too short, and that a 10year period would be easily accommodated. A 10-year period might include a lead time of 2 or 3 years for the preparation of new curriculum materials. Textbook replacement is a good example of the way in which the costs of conversion become inseparable from the opportunities that conversion might bring. The need for completely new textbooks and for the earlier introduction of decimal fractions in elementary mathematics affords us a new chance to revise that curriculum. 10 One cannot distribute the cost of such progress between going metric and the curriculum reform undertaken at this time.

The costs for replacing and modifying instructional equipment are more concrete, since much instructional equipment has a longer lifetime than any proposed period for metric conversion. This is particularly true of the equipment which is used in the shops, kitchens, laboratories, and workrooms of occupational education. These costs can, in principle, be computed by determining the cost for each kind of shop and multiplying the figure by the number of shops. (This subject is discussed in some detail in ch. IV. C.) We have come, after considerable investigation, to the conclusion that short of a doorto-door census, no more than the roughest approximation can be made for the cost of metric conversion. There is a wide variety of equipment in shops of any given type, and the classification of shops is in itself a problem. Furthermore, one must take into account not only the shops of existing programs but also those programs that would be started in a period of metric conversion. In light of the growth and development of the entire field of occupational education, presently available data and the trends of the recent past are of relatively little use in making predictions in this field for the next decade or two. Recent legislation11 is already encouraging changes in present

9 National Education Association Research Division, "Cost of conversion to the metric system," (September 1970).

10 A detailed recommendation on curriculum changes for school mathematics has been obtained and appears in app. V of this report.

11 Principally the Vocational Education Act of 1963, Amendments of 1968, and the Higher

patterns of occupational education, and pending and proposed legislation may be expected to produce still more changes. Meanwhile, our nation is getting new perspectives on its manpower needs and on the ways in which formal schooling can satisfy them.

In general, occupational education practices are closely linked, on a oneto-one basis, with the practices of the occupations for which the students are prepared. The educational benefits of going metric are not much greater than the benefits would be for the occupations and industries involved. In addition, much more is learned in occupational education than how to measure, and the value of that learning is not particularly dependent upon a measurement system. Many occupational educators say there would be no great pressure to replace or modify equipment, and others look forward to earlier retirement of existing equipment. Nevertheless, care and planning will be required in each occupational education program to achieve a metric conversion at minimal cost in parallel with the conversion of occupational practices.

Using various models, calculations can be made of the costs of the teacher retraining that would be required by going metric, either "instantaneously" or in a planned way. We shall show that in a planned and orderly metric conversion, this cost could be largely but perhaps not totally absorbed in existing programs of inservice training, since many teachers already participate in regular programs of various kinds. The current status and problems of inservice teacher training are discussed in chapter IVB; and a general view of the problem and detailed proposals for inservice training appear in appendix VI.

CHAPTER III-SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Methods

The education component of the Metric Study was carried out through a campaign of visits, interviews, and telephone conversations with a wide variety of people in education. Some were identified to us as experts in their respective fields by the steering committee and by the senior consultants, and others hold positions of responsibility in national organizations. The Education Conference of the National Metric Study provided a number of contacts and a wealth of authoritative information; and a small conference of Occupational educators was held to validate progress on that issue. This method does not provide statistically valid data in the classical sense, but one may expect to secure representative information which, by the agreement of various subjects with each other and by the agreement of subjects with different views of the same question, will permit conclusions to be drawn and recommendations to be developed. For example, both the editors of textbook publishing concerns and the state officers who are responsible for selecting and purchasing large numbers of textbooks in some state education departments agree that no serious difficulties should be expected in providing adequate metric texts and in getting them into the classrooms in accordance with any reasonable schedule of going metric. Indeed, both agree that very little is likely to be done unless there is an organized and coordinated national program of metric conversion or some evidence of national direction on the part of the national educational leadership if no such program should be undertaken.

Our interviews have been with publishers, suppliers of other educational materials, officers of state education agencies and city school departments, curriculum development people (including those charged with the prolifera

tion of new materials), supervisors, principals, and teachers. In various parts of the country we have visited elementary and secondary schools, vocational and technical schools, centers for the development of new materials, and centers of leadership and coordination in the proliferation of new curricula. Toward the end of the study a visit was made to the United Kingdom to observe British experience with metrication in education which was just begun this year on a large scale after several years of preliminary thought and preparation.

We have examined conventional and innovative instructional materials in the subjects which may be expected to be most affected by our going metric, in order to determine the extent of the changes needed in them. In addition, we have secured expert advice concerning the extent of curriculum modifications, particularly in elementary mathematics, which ought to accompany or follow shortly upon any metric conversion.

For a variety of reasons, the education component was not undertaken via a system of questionnaires, as were several other components of the U.S. Metric Study. An important factor was the time constraint: it seemed unrealistic to consider the mounting of a field-tested and Office-of-Management-and-Budget-approved questionnaire in the limited time available. An equally important concern was the impracticality of preparing a single questionnaire that would be adequate for the variety of issues which confronted this Study and for the variegated audience we expected to seek out. Finally, we decided that a mailed questionnaire would be likely to get only a meager response from an overworked audience which might well view the matter as a relatively frivolous one in comparison to the other issues which face education today.

Metrication in Education in the United
Kingdom

The U.S. Metric Study has been carried out in an atmosphere so different from that in which the United Kingdom approached metrication that many of the lessons learned there are not applicable to the problems of the United States. In the U.K., the manufacturing industries came to the national government with a proposal embodying the need which they perceived for going metric soon. Under the pressure of foreign trade with metric countries, they asked the government to adopt their plan as a national program and to provide the coordination necessary to see it through. Such a proposal is not likely to arise from U.S. industry, and the reason can be clearly seen in the relative unimportance of foreign trade in the U.S. as compared to the U.K.

In the U.K., nearly 20 percent of the gross national product lies in export trade, while in the U.S. it is only 4 percent (and over a fifth of that is export to Canada). The difference is amplified by the character of the exports (the U.S. exports relatively more in the way of bulk-measured commodities: chemicals, crude materials, food and live animals), by the negative

closeness to the continent, by the conviction that the U.K. must in the end be admitted to the Common Market, and by the need and intention of the U.K. to find trading partners in Eastern Europe and on the China mainland, all metric countries. In these circumstances, industry is leading, and education can afford to follow; as it did with a time lag of some 2 1/2 years between the Government's commitment to the metric system as the primary system of weights and measures and the beginning of activity in education with conferences called by the Royal Society.

By contrast, most firms questioned in the Manufacturing Industry Survey of the U.S. Metric Study stated that increased metric usage is in the national interest; yet very few are prepared to expose themselves to competitive disadvantage by stepping out in the lead of their industry. Indeed, in the absence of a national program it might be unwise for them to do so, although the pharmaceutical industry stands as a counter-example.1 In addition, some American industries tend to react to competitive imports by restricting foreign trade, as exemplified by the proceedings of the 91st Congress in which a major tariff war was only narrowly averted (if indeed it has not merely been postponed). In this situation, it seems clear that education could play a much different role; and if a nationally coordinated program of going metric were to be undertaken in the U.S., then it would be appropriate for education to lead.

The "political" differences outlined above, including the potential availability of a lead for education to prepare for conversion, and the structural differences between education in the U.K. and the U.S. to be described below, tell us clearly that we shall have to do things differently in the U.S. Yet the careful thought given to educational problems of metrication in the U.K. can provide significant guidance.

In general, education in the U.K. is much more uniform and nationally controlled than in the U.S., but with considerable local freedom in administration and especially in the individual schools and classrooms. Coordination is provided by a number of national official agencies. The national inspectorate of education is very effective at the primary level; national examinations for college and university admission are effective in controlling the secondary curriculum; and the City and Guilds of London Institute and joint committees for national certificates and diplomas have long been influential in occupational education. There is little in the U.S. that can be said to be analogous to these national bodies. Unless we have some strong national direction, coordination, and guidance in going metric in education, the U.S. may anticipate delays and difficulties. A recommendation appears below, chapter V, for the appointment of a national coordinating body, suggesting its constitution, and outlining its responsibilities.

A brief bibliography, mainly consisting of pamphlets produced in the U.K. for widespread distribution there, appears on page 200. It is important to note the range of interest of the pamphlets and the variety of originating agencies.