Without warning, it appears that all inner-city school students in Knoxville collectively adopted the Metric System and abandoned all other forms of measurement.
Used in nearly every country in the world the Metric System was devised by French scientists in the late 18th century to replace the chaotic collection of units then in use. The goal of this effort was to produce a system that did not rely on a miscellany of separate standards, and to use the decimal system rather than fractions.
According to representatives from The U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc., this is happening within cities across the United States. USMA member, John Jenkins, believes this is partially due to the new belief that it’s cool to be French. “More and more youth are emulating the French, right now it’s cool for kids to act French. They want to be able to say that they measure like a Frenchman…and that’s something we can all certainly understand.”
Representatives from the Knox County school system were not available for comment. It is believed that they are all involved in an emergency training session to learn the basics of the metric system.