Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Popular Science Monthly

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arithmetic were made more simple, vast numbers would; stay longer, since they would not be driven out of school by the terrible inroads on their interest in school work by dull and to them impossible arithmetic. If metric arithmetic texts were substituted for our present texts, it is safe to say children would average one full year more of education. What the increased earning power would be from this it would be hard to estimate, but clearly it would be a huge sum. Consider also how much more life would be worth living for children, teachers and parents if a very large portion of arithmetical puzzles inserted to qualify the children to understand our crazy weights and measures were cut out of our text-books. If we were to adopt the metric system, literally millions of parents would be spared worry, and shame, and fear lest Johnny fail and drop out of school, or Mary show unexpected weakness and have to take a grade over again; uncounted thousands of teachers would be saved much gnashing of teeth and uttering of mild feminine imprecations under their breath; and, best of all, the children themselves would be saved from pencil-biting, tears, worries, heartburns, arrested development, shame and loss of education! A committee of the National Educational Association has recently reported that Germany and France are each two full years ahead of us in educational achievement, that is, children in those countries of a certain age have as good an education as our children which are two years the foreign childrens' seniors. Surely one of these years is fully accounted for by the inferiority of our American ARITHMETIC and SPELLING. This much, at least, of the difference is neither in the children themselves, nor in the lack of preparation of our teachers, nor in educational methods. Professor J. W. A. Young, of the University of Chicago, in his work on "Mathematics in Prussia," says: "In the work in mathematics done in the nine years from the age of nine on, we Americans accomplish no more than the Prussians, while we give to the work seven fourths of the time the Germans give." Professor James Pierpont, of Yale, writing in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (April, 1900), shows a like comparison can be made with French instruction. Pierpont's table exhibits only one hour a week needed for arithmetic for pupils aged 11 and 12! As the advertisements sometimes say, there must be a reason. But if the children are kept in school two thirds of a year longer somebody pays for this extra expense. Now children do not drop out of school until they are about 12 years of age and have both appetites and earning power. The number of these children that drop out each year is probably about 2 1/2 millions. Of this number let us say 1 1/2 millions would become wage earners, thus passing from the class that are supported to the class that support themselves and earn a small wage besides. We have then three items in this count: (1) The cost to the state in taxes for the education of 2 1/2 million for two thirds of a year, or $50,000,000; (2) The cost to the parents for support of 1 1/2 millions for two thirds of a year at $67 each, or $100,000,000; (3) The wages of 1 1/2 millions over and above the cost of their support, say $50 each, or $75,000,000. The above figures are put low purposely so that they can not be criticized. It should be remembered that 46 per cent. of our population is agricultural, and that on the farm, youths of from 13 to 15 very often do men's and women's work: also that in many manufacturing centers great numbers of children get work at relatively good wages, and that the number of completely idle children out of school is not large. With these figures in hand let us consider now a kind of debit and credit sheet against and for our present system of weights and measures. PRESENT SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES In ANNUAL account with UNCLE SAM Cr. By culture (?) acquired by the children through learning more common fractions and our crazy tables of weights and measures.......... $? Dr. To cost in school taxes of keeping 2 1/2 millions of children in school 2/3 year. $50,000,000 To cost to parents for supporting 1 1/2 millions children 2/3 year............. 100,000,000 To loss of productive power of 1 1/2 millions youth for 2/3 year ............. 75,000,000 To loss of earning power by having children driven out of school by difficulties of arithmetic as now taught .................................... 25,000,000 To loss of time in making arithmetical calculations by men in trade, industries and manufactures.......................... 30,000,000 To extra weighing and measuring instruments needed for sundry tables....... 10,000,000 To loss of time in making cross reductions to and from our system and metric system .............................. 5,000,000 To loss of profit from foreign trade because our goods are not in metric units ..................................... 20,000,000 ------------ Total annual loss ................. $315,000,000 Commenting for a moment on the credit side of the above ledger account, it can be said that recent psychology shows conclusively that training in common fractions and weights and measures can not be of much practical help as so-called culture, or training for learning other things, unless those other things are closely related to them, and there are not many things in life so related to them once we had dropped our present weights and measures. It may be complained that the expense of changing to the new system is not taken account of in the above table. The reason is that that expense would occur once for all. The above table deals with the ANNUAL cost of our present medieval system. One powerful reason for the adoption of the metric system different in character from the others is the ease of cheating by the old system. In the past the people have been unmercifully abused through short weights and measures. Many of the states have taken this matter up latterly and prosecuted merchants right and left. Nine tenths of this trouble would disappear with the new system in use. Let us consider now for a little time the reasons why the

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