Stuff Americans SHOULD be learning in high school

It is the same old, same old, with the United States and its quest to be different and to say its better than anyone else. The fact that other countries had thousands of years to work all of this and other cultural things out our arrogance keeps us behind in a lot of things. Mostly in the area of common sense. It is ironic that the only things we lead the world in are violence, number of citizens we execute, and number of citizens we keep incarcerated. At the rate we are going it is only a matter of time before we implode.

A friend of mine is a college professor and he says half of his students don’t know where New Jersey is and almost all have barely heard of Germany. Sad.

I love your cartoon! I began teaching in 1970 and remember having to teach elementary kids the metric system. It was quite simple really because it uses 10’s, 100’s, etc. to relate everything from linear and mass etc. in kilometers and kilograms etc. The only problem is trying to unlearn what you’ve been used to. When I measure something I tend to still use inches and feet for projects around the house. I still like pounds over kilograms better. However, I am used to Kilometers for traveling and degrees celsius for temperature. I think it will be a long time before we are completely integrated into the metric system. I even see some stores displaying prices of meat in cost per pound and cost per kilogram or milligrams. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks unless they make a special effort to want to learn or are just laughed out of the store! I still remember that there are 12 inches in a foot or 30 cm. But when measuring certain items, somehow the centimeters make it seem a lot bigger! LOL By the way, I am Canadian.