I don't know about the US having the worst education system in the world.  I 
have been teaching college for some years and the students that have come to 
me in the last decade are an embarrassment.  Most of them have not developed 
basic reading and writing skills.  The can pronounce the words they read 
(for the most part) but they have some difficulty in ascertaining the 
meaning of what they have read.  The essay assignments are in general a 
disaster.  But in every class there are a few students who are brilliant and 
that is the redeeming value of teaching.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Chops Westfield" <westfw@mac.com>
To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." <piclist@mit.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 11:56 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] Units rant


>
> On Jun 16, 2007, at 8:15 PM, Carey Fisher wrote:
>
>>> To put things even worse, the pupils in a 9th grade public school here
>>> in Sweden does not know how many cm (centimeters) is a m (meter).
>>>
>> That's odd.  We here in the USofA keep getting told by our news media
>> that we have the worst education system in the world.
>
> Hmm.  they USE the metric system, so perhaps they think they don't have
> to teach it anymore?  When the metric system is taught in the US, we
> make
> a pretty big deal out of the powers-of-ten aspects and the prefix
> meanings.
>
> You'd probably get a similar failure rate in the US asking how many feet
> were in a mile...
>
> BillW
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