During 1965, the airways and TV-ways were saturated with a ditty that went…
In come the dollars, in come the cents
To replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence.
Be prepared for changes when the coins begin to mix,
On the fourteenth of February, 1966.
This marked the beginning of profound changes in the way that Australians counted money and measured things. It meant equally profound alteration to the time spent in primary schools to help our future citizens grasp the changes. Until this time they had been taught the intricacies of a currency that consisted of a penny, shilling and pound. It took twelve pence to make a shilling and twenty shillings to make a pound.
During this period, movements were also afoot to decimalise measurement and schools altered their syllabuses from, for instance, Imperial linear measurements of 12 inches = I foot; 3 feet= 1 yard; 22 yards = 1 chain; 10 chains = 1 furlong ; 8 furlongs = 1 mile to metric. Road signs and general transport notices were expected to use the metric system by July 1974. Weight and all other measurements, except time, also altered to base 10 during this period.
This changing process was constant from 1969 to 1977.
In 1964 the Australian Council for Educational Research [ACER] had undertaken a study that indicated that these changes to decimal money and metric measurement freed up considerable time from the teaching of Mathematics. The implications were relayed to schools.
In 1972, a Queensland Department of Education notice indicated that an hour each week had been freed from teaching the convoluted Imperial system; and Ray led his sceptical fellow Principals to sing…
METRICATION MELODY
[Tune : "You are My Sunshine"]
O Metric Measures,
You promise pleasure
Of extra leisure to come our way;
Without the babel
Of all those tables
We’ll be able to go out and play.
We feel the Kilo
Has mass appeal-o
And they can wheel old pound away;
We’re told the Litre
Will taste much sweeter,
And the Metre’s neater, they say.
Some think that Milli-
Sounds rather silly,
But willy-nilly she’ll come to stay;
And likewise Hectare
In every sector,
For he sounds correcter today.
O Metric Measure,
You promise pleasure
Of extra leisure – so shout Hooray !
Our one suspicion
Is of transition -
Please don’t take our sunshine away.
