As a young boy in the 1970s, robert remembered that there was a push for public schools to teach children the metric system. the movement to adopt metric measurement was eventually abandoned in the united states. how might robert explain this outcome? '

The adoption of the metric systemis a discussion that starts around the late 19th century, as it became necessary to have a standarized measuring system around the globe. In fact, in 1875, United States signed the Treaty of the Meter, an international treaty signed by other 16 countries in which thet accepted the commitment of adopting the metric system, originated in France, creating the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Since then, all the American customary measurements such as pund, quart and foot among others have been converted to the metric system.

In 1960, the metric system was updated and countries such as the United Kingdom, started a transition to the metric system, and  in 1968 there was a comission in United States,responsible for researching on the implementation of this system, which was concluded after 3 years with a report called "A Metric America: A Decesion Whose Time Has Come" . The result of this,was the awareness of the need to make official the metric system, and so the Metric Conversion Act was passed in 1975.

According to this Act,the public education system would be responsible for teaching the use of the metric system, which afterwards, was not really developed.

Robert might say, that due to the commercial leadership of the United States, there was not a real need to use the metric system,as other countries  would actually understand and use it, and so there wasn´t a real practical obligation to oficially convert into the metric system, that´s why this discussion was and not actually important during the following years.  

c. it required that townships set aside land for public schools.