we present them here to show that this component of education is substantial but readily manageable, and that it will be no major obstacle from the point of view of the employers. At Ford Motor Company, the need for a variety of training programs has been established. They range from a 1-hour training period for clerical and administrative employees, much of which may be occupied by viewing a film; to a 48-hour training program allotting equal time to theory and to practice for scientists, engineers, and workers in the skilled trades. Ford estimates that about 80,000 workers would have to be trained, at a total cost of about $16 million, that is, at an average cost of about $200 per worker. About 95 percent of the cost is accounted for by the salaries and wages paid for the hours spent in (nonproductive) training.84 General Motors has made similar estimates and confirms the general picture, with perhaps a small spread in the variety of programs and an explicit recognition of a period of inefficiency.85 It is worthwhile to put this cost item into perspective. The total cost of going metric at Ford is estimated at about 4 percent of a year's gross sales. In terms of 1969 sales of about $15 billion, this would be about $600 million. The cost of metric training, $16 million, would thus be only about 2.5 percent of the total metric conversion cost anticipated at Ford. In making advance estimates of this character, it is virtually impossible to take into account the effects of a national THINK METRIC campaign. It seems reasonable to suppose that an early, imaginative, and widespread THINK METRIC campaign could make industrial training tasks easier and thus reduce the burden upon individual concerns. This would be an effective way to transfer some costs of metric conversion from the private to the public sector. However, the costs so transferred in heavy industry would be only a very small fraction of the total cost of metric conversion. On the other hand, Ford and other large industrial concerns and their trade associations expect to produce their own training aids for going metric. One may expect these materials to be available at least to schools and perhaps to other segments of industry and to the public through industrial trade associations and other coordinating bodies. Recommendation: A system of cataloging and critical evaluation of industrially produced instructional materials should be instituted as part of any national program of coordination for education. Materials and particularly films judged to be especially valuable ought to be widely disseminated, perhaps at the public expense, but at least with a public subsidy (it may be that the present reduced postage rate for educational films constitutes an adequate subsidy for this purpose). 84 William K. Burton, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan. 85 Roy P. Trowbridge, General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan. E. Some Concerns of Education That Are In this Study we have tried to obey Bowen's dictum of concerning ourselves with our own business and not with other peoples'.86 In this regard we recognize that many aspects of operating a school system are not properly the subject of our inquiry and we relegate them elsewhere, but we admit that they may involve some cost to the school system. And because people always ask about football, we cannot resist the temptation to make a few remarks about athletics at the end of this section. School building practices and maintenance procedures are the province of the construction industry; size and substance of paper are the concern of the paper and printing industry; and the measurement of fuel and food belong to those respective industries. Although clerical and administrative employees of schools will have to learn to handle ordering and billing in metric units, their training is part of the general problem of on-the-job training of business employees; that too is outside the scope of this Study, except that the cost of their training will be a charge upon the education system. Some arguments about the cost of training nonteaching employees can be set down: The number of people involved is probably closer to half a million than to a quarter million,87 and the cost of training each should be somewhat less than a hundred dollars.88 But very little of that would be an out-of-pocket expense to school systems - most training could be carried out during working hours, for the time of school employees is seldom as completely accounted for as that of production workers. Using these assumptions and data, we may compute an upper limit to the one-time cost of training nonteaching employees, and compare it with the annual noninstructional budget of U.S. education: Many schools have nurses in attendance who regularly weigh, measure and examine students, and give first aid. Going metric in the nurse's office is properly the concern of the medical profession, of the scale and balance in 86 "Going Metric in the United Kingdom," Gordon Bowen, Director of the Metrication Board, a paper presented at the General Conference of the National Metric Study Conferences, Gaithersburg, Md., 16 November 1970, p. 3. 87 An estimate of the number of people involved can be made as follows: about 70 percent of the total current expenditures for the operation of public primary and secondary schools in a recent year was attributed to the cost of instruction (Digest - p. 53). This mainly pays the salaries of teachers. The remaining 30 percent must include large expenditures for fuel and other supplies, and for contract work for maintenance, etc.; on this account one may expect that this fraction of the budget supports considerably fewer people in proportion, perhaps only half as many. If we apply the 70 percent to 30 percent distribution to all of education and to the 3 million teachers, then we may compute the number of nonteaching school employees. 2 X 300 X 3,000,000 = 640,000 nonteaching school employees 88 Based upon Ford Motor Company's estimate of an average of $200 per person for 80,000 clerical, administrative, technical and scientific people. Most school employees would fall into the first two classes, for whom Ford has proposed shorter training programs. The cost will de dustry, and of the thermometer industry. A beam balance costs $50 to $150- it is durable and could be modified at a cost of about 30 percent of the cost new. Thermometers are fragile and expendable - at any rate, they cost only a dollar each. Other general equipment needs on a one-per-school basis or on a one-perclassroom basis include metric wall charts, kits of metric manipulative materials and other materials, the modification of paper-cutting boards with pasted-on scales, etc. These are all comparable in cost to the nurse's scale and thermometer. We choose to make an exception here to Bowen's dictum, and to deal with the question of that part of athletics which is based in educational institutions. Some games are played over precisely dimensioned fields (tennis courts and baseball infields), and others over fields specified to lie within upper and lower limits (basketball courts), but most games are scored by counting or by the tally of score points. Sometimes ratios of numbers are important. In track and field sports, achievement is measured in distance for jumps and throws and in time over a fixed course for races. Small amounts of new equipment would be needed in the form of tape measures and high-jump and pole-vault standards. The layout of metric track distances should present no difficulties, and American athletes regularly compete over metric distances in international competition every 4 years. Let us take a moment to consider swimming and football, two sports that have precisely dimensioned facilities measured in yards. Swimming is literally "cast in concrete." American swimming competition is standardized on the 25-yard (short-course) pool and on the 50-meter (longcourse or Olympic89) pool. In general, the same people compete over both courses and the same champions excel over both courses. Economics will surely dictate that schools and colleges will build only indoor short-course pools for year-round use, and therefore competition will continue at this distance. There are only a few indoor long-course pools, notably in the Payne Whitney gymnasium at Yale and at the military academies. Football is the only mass spectator sport in which measurement plays a central role. An argument can be set forth for keeping customary (yard) measure in football, based upon the observation that the game is played only in the U.S. and Canada.90 On the other hand, a change to meters would be an important step in a THINK METRIC campaign, and it would open the field for new achievements and records. Putting aside the notion of playing on a 90-meter field91 with stripes every 4 1/2 or 5 meters and a first down after 9 meters, one observes that the distance between goal lines has always been a hundred yards, but the location of the goal posts is not sacrosanct. In professional football the goal posts are now on the goal line, while in collegiate and 89 The term "Olympic pool" does not necessarily imply 50-meter length, and it frequently means just a large swimming pool. 90 Discussion following the NCAA presentation at the Conference on Consumer-oriented Industry of the National Metric Study Conferences, Washington, D.C., 21-25 September 1970. (News report on the conference prepared by R. W. Carson, p. 10.) school football the goal posts are at the end of the endzone, that is, 10 yards behind the goal line. Finally, we must ask whether space is available for larger football fields. Many school and college fields are inscribed in quarter-mile ovals used for track events.92 Jump pits and areas for other field events are often laid out within the oval and beyond one endzone of the football field. By relocating these facilities one can make room for a 100-meter field. However, much professional football is played in baseball stadiums, most of which have barely enough space for a 100-meter field, and some may not have enough space. In addition, there may be a few football stadiums especially built for the 100-yard field. If these are the governing considerations, then football too is "cast in concrete." 92 One-quarter mile = 440 yards = 402.3 meters: 400 meters and multiples are common track distances for dashes, runs, and relays. CHAPTER V-A PROGRAM FOR METRIC CONVERSION IN EDUCATION The program proposed here deals with a schedule for metric conversion in education, recommends a lead time for the preparation of new educational materials, and suggests guidelines for making effective use of that lead time. This proposal differs from the metrication program of the United Kingdom, which provided no such lead time. The reader may recall that in 1963 the British Standards Institute published the results of a wide consultation with industry which showed a large majority in favor of changing to the metric system without delay, and that in 1965 the President of the Federation of British Industries informed the government that its membership was in favor of changing and that it sought government support for the principle and timing. Accordingly, in May 1965 the government announced its support in the House of Commons and early in 1966 set up a committee to coordinate government and industrial policies. In May 1969, it appointed the Metrication Board. The guiding principle of metrication in the U.K. has been that it is voluntary and advantageous to all, and that any government agency would have advisory powers only. All this from a standing start in 1965 to completion in 1975. At the Education Conference and in our data-gathering efforts we have frequently heard the opinion that very little could be expected to be done spontaneously in the U.S., and that there seems to be a very small likelihood that American industry will make requests or recommendations similar to those made by the Federation of British Industries. Indeed, we usually hear that there will be reluctance to take any voluntary steps in the absence of a national mandate, that is, a program sanctioned or perhaps even legislated by the Congress. Therefore, in designing the program outlined below, we have assumed that there would be a centrally directed (or coordinated) and |