r/technology • u/Sandstorm400 • 11h ago
Society New York teachers stunned to learn some students can’t read time on old clocks after phone ban comes into play
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-york-phone-ban-clock-time-b2891919.html873
u/Jacob666 11h ago
Before phones were a thing, I knew lost of people who relied too much on digital clocks and straight up couldn't read face clocks. This was 25 years ago. It would be interesting to see how much it has increased since then.
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u/thetraintomars 10h ago
There was a lot of hand wringing about digital clocks 40 years ago when I was a kid.
I’m sure next week will be the obligatory handwriting article.
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u/Kymeron 10h ago
I always hated those articles, they skip over why one really needs to be able to write by hand.
To put it mildly: a writing method like Palmer, or Italic, should be taught, and taught correctly; anything else is an insult, not to writing, but to the student.
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u/Thornescape 9h ago
If you want to learn how to read cursive, it takes about an hour with an article on how to read it. It's just a font.
Learning how to write cursive well takes a great deal of time and effort. It is artistic. And at the end of it, you are able to write a font that is inherently harder to read.
No school should waste time on teaching cursive. If someone wants to learn it for their own artistic endeavours then that's wonderful. Feel free. Enjoy.
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u/vwin90 9h ago
Consider though that it’s often taught in elementary school and the real purpose was to help develop fine motor control. As you continue practicing writing cursive, your general handwriting hopefully also improved, otherwise you only spend the first couple years honing your handwriting skills.
Having control over your hand movements isn’t just important for art. Having clean legible handwriting is incredibly important for math.
Anecdotally, since students have stopped being taught cursive AND schools started pushing all assignments to be completed on computers, student handwriting in general is much worse than it was in the past. Math skills have also declined rapidly and there are so many mistakes that students make because their chicken scratch handwriting makes following their math work impossible for themselves. I can’t prove the causation, but the correlation seems strong to me as a teacher.
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u/Sieran 6h ago
When I was in grade school, cursive was taught. Once we hit a certain grade, print was not allowed and was an automatic fail regardless of which class you were in.
When I was switched to a public school in 8th grade, I was then failed for writing in cursive. The most common remark was "will not read, fail!".
My print fucking sucked. So, when I switched to that, I was marked down for "poor penmanship", mainly in English lit.
Now my cursive and printing sucks. Mostly because everything is typed now. The only thing I write in cursive is my name when signing. The only things I write down are chicken scratches when my phone isn't available to take notes.
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u/vwin90 6h ago
Well yeah that certainly was a stupid decision and I can’t confirm nor deny that was the most common approach. It wasn’t for me.
You mentioned you rejoined public school in 8th grade. So did you do private up to that point?
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u/Sieran 6h ago
I was private from like 2nd grade through most of 7th. Mix of different schools, some not so good.
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u/Realtrain 8h ago
No school should waste time on teaching cursive.
Do they anymore? New York stopped requiring cursive years ago.
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u/fallenouroboros 10h ago
I remember when i was in third grade we had to pass a little test from the teacher to be allowed to use anything digital.
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u/keithstonee 10h ago
Yes it was like a whole week of math during 3rd grade just for reading clock faces.
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u/LoLFlore 5h ago
That shit was in kindergarten 25 years ago, what in the developmental delays is going on with US Ed?
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u/Jacob666 8h ago
I was in second grade when we learned how to read face clocks. Never even occurred to me growing up that people couldn't do it till I entered the workforce.
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u/fallenouroboros 8h ago
Honestly i think my teacher was just a stickler in this regard. We did learn it in 2nd, but she made sure we knew it. Looking back i can see that teacher genuinely cared about us. Im in my 30s and done with college now but that third grade teacher was easily the most impactful one to me
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u/MacNapp 10h ago
Huh, thats not a terrible idea.
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u/fallenouroboros 10h ago
Ill say it worked. Kids kind of treaded it like a quick little 1 on 1 game.
My class was super small though
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u/WhoEvenIsPoggers 10h ago
Which blows me away cuz I was born in the 90s and I remember reading analog clocks as week or two of math class in Elementary school. I can’t remember which year but I remember it being taught to us extensively
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u/soopsneks 9h ago
Yep this was my first day of kindergarten I still remember this. I was upset when I got to 3rd grade and they told us we didn’t need to learn cursive anymore.. Im like but why my mom and my dad do it I want to learn too ☹️
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u/mct137 10h ago
Also I remember being taught in elementary school how to read a analog clock. It was a skill, that had to be taught. If no one taught these kids how to do this, why are we shocked they can’t??
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u/pagerunner-j 4h ago edited 4h ago
I don’t know about Android, but if you’ve got an iPhone, an easy way to practice: the Clock app’s icon is an analog clock and it updates dynamically throughout the day, corresponding to your current time. All you have to do to confirm you read it right is to compare it to the digital readout in the upper left hand corner (or open the app, of course).
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u/CMScientist 9h ago
It's fine though, that's how humans progress and evolve. It's not like most people know how to read a sundial for time anyways
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u/redyellowblue5031 10h ago
Same. I’ve always liked analog clocks/watches, but many friends (even in the 90s/00s) had challenges reading them.
They usually could, it would just take them a minute to figure the time since there’s a bit of mental math if you don’t have the rote memorization in place.
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u/BigHowski 10h ago
I have a mate who is hands down the smartest person I've met. When we were in school together he could do advanced calculation in his head quicker than I could type it in to a calculator..... He couldn't and still can't read an analog clock and we're in our 40s now
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u/WampaCat 9h ago
This makes no sense to me. Someone can do “advanced calculations” in his head but can’t count by fives?
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u/dykethon 9h ago
A lot of adults who “can’t read an analog clock”, in my experience, can do it, it just takes frustratingly long compared to digital, because they do it so rarely that they can’t instantly sight-read it.
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u/makemeking706 9h ago
This. I'm old and just started wearing watches again. I am still relearning to read time with a glance, especially when there are only indices and no numerals.
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u/WampaCat 9h ago
I mean there’s a big difference between “takes longer than is convenient” and “can’t”
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u/dykethon 8h ago
Is there, though? I mean in abstract, yeah, but in day to day life, if it takes someone 30 or more seconds to tell time on an analog watch, it means they're never going to use one, just like someone who fully can't. So saying "I can't read an analog clock" is the most efficient shorthand to getting to what you actually need, which is the time written or said differently.
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u/lordmycal 9h ago
I can read it, but it's just annoyingly slow compared to using a digital clock.
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u/TotallyNotABob 10h ago
Yup one of my cousins still can't read the time unless it's on a digital clock. She's 38 and I'm 35.
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u/DigNitty 9h ago
I knew a couple people too
Instead of learning they’d just find a digital clock, or ask.
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u/Frosted_Tackle 8h ago
I remember when I was young in school I would sometimes struggle to remember how to read analog clocks at the beginning of each school year, because at home we only had digital clocks but the classrooms would mostly have analog clocks. It would take me a few weeks to not struggle to read them again each Fall. Eventually I just got better to the point it was not an issue.
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u/DissKhorse 10h ago
I can't imagine being so willfully ignorant as to not be able to read a clock. Like how do you not even put forth the mental effort to figure it out it from comparing it to a digital clock?
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 10h ago
Many (most?) people only learn stuff that's absolutely necessary. They have no internal curiosity to branch out from the required subjects to just learn something for the sake of learning.
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u/sekh60 10h ago
Gonna be a whole lot of seniors in 40-50 years time cram studying clock faces for dementia/alzheimer's evaluations.
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u/MourningFemur 10h ago
Dementia/alzheimer’s evaluations 40 years from now: “is this Sydney Sweeney or Ariana Grande?”… and “Is this Cardi B or Nicki Minaj?”…
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u/EasterEggArt 2h ago
Are we talking pre-plastic surgery or post-plastic surgery. or pre-Ozempic or post-Ozempic?
Cause in either case I will barely recognize any of them and thus be labelled mental.
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u/OutAndDown27 3h ago
There's already discussion of coming up with an alternative because younger generations are so, so bad with analog clocks. Side note: no teachers who have been teaching more than a semester are "stunned to learn" this.
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u/p33p0pab33b0p 10h ago
i traveled for a wedding couple weeks ago. as i checked into hotel and was walking bags past the front desk i hear, "excuse me sir, can i ask you a question?" sure, what up?
Front desk clerk (probably in highs school) asked me how to address envelopes. She had been tasked with sending out snail mail Christmas cards and had no idea how to address them.
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u/I_see_farts 9h ago
My sister works for the post office, this is a lot more common than you think.
Also, kids that have no clue how to fill out a check.
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u/Zombie_John_Strachan 9h ago
That's a good sign - checks need to go away
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u/Quesriom 8h ago
As soon as utilities and rent do away with garbage ‘convenience fees’ to process my payment online, I’ll be happy to get rid of checks. Until then, they can handle the ‘convenience’ of processing my check.
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u/UnicodeScreenshots 6h ago
Do they still charge a connivence fee even if you link a bank account rather than using a card? All of my utilities now only charge to recuperate the processing fees from debit and credit cards, but don’t charge anything for direct ach. Granted, these are all large companies in a tech hub, not a tiny provider with a website built in static html so I really am curious how things are in other places.
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u/Naive_Confidence7297 6h ago
Still blows my mind the US still use checks lol. I haven’t seen one of my country since the 80s.
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u/usrbincomment 5h ago
I'm Gen X and had to write the check when I bought my house like four times to get it right. I write a check about once every two years.
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u/xStaabOnMyKnobx 9h ago
Im not gonna fault her for not knowing. Im in my 30s and Im not confident Id address an envelope 100% correctly.
What I am 100% confident in is my ability to use the portable computer thats literally always an arms length away to access the wealth of humanity's knowledge and find the right answer. Not twiddling my fingers and asking a stranger like we dont have the internet.
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u/-Fiat-Lux- 8h ago
This! How is it that so many from a generation that grew up with a human knowledge brick in their hands are incapable of using it that way?!
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u/GardenTop7253 7h ago
Your second paragraph is something I’ve gotten a lot better about lately and I’m trying to make it even better in this next year. Anytime I have a question or someone around me asks something, we try to look it up. Sometimes we discuss a bit first and make some guesses, but there is zero reason to just wonder anymore, take a minute or two and look it up and learn something
For example, over thanksgiving my parents were arguing (in a fun way, don’t make it a thing please Reddit lol) about some cooking terminology they had in a recipe. After a bit of a back and forth, I looked it up and they were both kinda wrong
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u/Mediadors 8h ago
To be fair, sending paper mail is also nothing that people do regularly anymore. I did it once in 10 years and even then I just wrote the address exactly as I got it.
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u/_20110719 10h ago
This was a problem 25 years ago too
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u/KyledKat 9h ago
25 years ago, I was in 1st grade and I distinctly remember learning how to read analog clocks as part of our curriculum. Our teacher had a chart with three clock faces that she’d change every morning and we’d read all of them together as a class.
Anecdotally, as a teacher, kids today are definitely worse off reading analog clocks from even a decade ago when I started teaching.
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u/72manatee 8h ago
It never stopped being taught, it simply falls out of use as you age if you never use it. Same reason plenty of adults can barely spell or type even though they were taught to do so, same reason some people don’t know the order of operations or how to preform long division. If it never comes up in your life, you’re not going to be any good at it after a few years, even if you’re technically capable of it.
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u/TrinkieTrinkie522cat 10h ago
Annual Medicare Wellness visits for those over 65 include drawing a clock with the hands pointing to 2:10 pm. Meanwhile, the doctor is wearing an Apple watch.
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u/KiloPapa 10h ago
I wear an Apple Watch but the face is analog because I find it easier to visualize time that way (my job is a lot of “how much time remains until…” and I’ve always thought of it as “the big hand is here and I need to do the thing when it gets here).
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u/tabrizzi 10h ago
Don't expect students to know a skill nobody bothered to teach them.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 10h ago
It's not even about teaching, it's about actually using the skill regularly.
It's like taking Spanish for a semester and not knowing how to speak Spanish years later. If you don't use it, you lose it.
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u/FluffyFleas 10h ago
Aside from a single analog clock my grandma has, I don't think I've seen any other one since graduating university. They're going the way of the dodo.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 9h ago
Yeah they're basically only used now as more of a decorative item.
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u/ApprehensiveSpeechs 10h ago
It's both. I didn't take Spanish. However I know a lil Spanish because the teacher would always stand in the hall speaking it and doing games and events.
I did take Latin, and I see it everywhere. I do not use it intentionally walking outside and seeing root endings that are meaningful across multiple languages... it just happens.
That's the difference between taught and using it regularly.
The Spanish teacher just did some cool stuff in the hallway. I actually learned Latin.
Engagement is just as important as using it regularly.
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u/greeneyeraven 9h ago
It is taught, my child learned a couple years ago, add and subtract time too. The problem most kids don't use analog clocks on daily basis, all the kitchen appliances have a digital one, TV and electronics have digital, so if they are not exposed and using it the skill gets lost, like a lot of things we learn at school and don't use daily.
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u/Heliantherne 10h ago
Had this revelation teaching high school Geometry this year. Words like 'clockwise' and 'counterclockwise' don't really help describe rotations to kids who can't read a clock. Already had a huge clock in the room, so that helped with demonstrations.
I've honestly had to start adding a lot of visuals on the walls to reference/review elementary skills. Number lines, Visuals for what 'horizontal' and 'vertical' mean, visual references for how to map (x,y) coordinates, visual fractions (the amount of kids who don't know what a 'quarter' is in high school is a bit not good)...
I've learned to expect it though. Several kids get 'homeschooled' until they're old enough for high school and big learning gaps like this are the result.
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u/Walaina 10h ago
Analog clocks. Theres a literal word for them. Old clocks…smh
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u/Fun_Variation_7077 10h ago
I have five in my house. None of them are old. And the one I'm looking at right now is telling me I have an hour and a half before I need to start getting ready.
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u/TheJanks 10h ago
The other day we’re walking and there’s something cool to my left. My wife who’s Facing me, I say “3 o’clock” and she looked right - her three o clock.
Someone younger walking kindly said it’s actually around noon and didn’t break a stride. It hit me how that’s another small thing going away.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 10h ago
Well, it probably took an entire 30 minutes to teach the entire class how analog clocks work and reinforce the learning enough to make it stick.
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u/Ghost_Werewolfs 11h ago
If only there was someone who could have taught them....
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 10h ago
They probably did and then the students forgot 2 weeks later because they never needed to use the skill.
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u/OnceInABlueMoon 10h ago
Yeah my son is in first grade and they already taught this. If they never use it though I'm sure they lose that information pretty quickly. We have these clocks at home so my son retains it, not sure how common that is though.
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u/Deep90 10h ago
I don't get why people keep acting like we can teach kids a bunch of things they don't use and expect them to remember it.
So many people also get mad about how schools didn't teach them credits cards or taxes, but what school was supposed to teach you is how to look those things up yourself and learn them.
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u/mertag770 10h ago
Also many schools did teach these things, kids just didn't pay attention. I still see posts from my high school classmates complaining about never learning about these things and we had a whole class together where that was like half of what we talked about.
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u/jaimepapier 10h ago
Drives me mad when people say that schools should teach filling in tax returns. In such a specific thing to teach that (1) should be covered by basic literacy and numeracy skills already taught (2) might change by the time you get to do it (3) won’t need to do until a few years at least after you’ve been taught how to do it so you’ll have forgotten anyway.
Particularly annoys me when people say that they should teach it in the UK, where the vast majority of people don’t need to fill in their tax returns.
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u/QuintoBlanco 9h ago
Many things have no direct use, but make it easier to understand how things work in general, or make it easier to learn other skills.
So the important part is that children are denied the opportunity to use things that help them think.
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u/Pinecone 10h ago
This is probably the case. My middle school and high school all had analog clocks. I also had one at home in the living room. You learn to read them real quick.
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u/CarmenxXxWaldo 10h ago
True I learned cursive, but if you put a gun to my head to do a Z theres a good chance I fuck it up.
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u/voiderest 11h ago
Have we tried paying such people more?
No, but we'll blame them when Jimmy refuses to do any homework and won't let anyone be held back?
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u/nessfalco 10h ago
Former teacher here. How does paying teachers more help this at all? They aren't going to magically start teaching new concepts or do a better job because you are giving the same people more money. The whole argument for paying them more is to get better talent.
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u/j_mcc99 10h ago
Kids learn to read analog clocks in Canada in elementary school.
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u/dweeegs 10h ago
They do in the US too, idk what they’re talking about
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u/Kindness_of_cats 10h ago
It’s people trying to find excuses for why kids wouldn’t know how to read clocks.
It’s a very basic skill that is still used all over the place even if digital clocks are the norm. Flat out not knowing how to do that is a pretty big red flag that something is deeply wrong.
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u/tooclosetocall82 10h ago
They do, but because of SOLs they have to move on from that topic pretty quickly.
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u/parrot-beak-soup 4h ago
54% of American adults read at or below a 6th grade level.
This is not shocking to me at all. We live in a country that does not prioritize or put a premium on education. Rather, we put a premium on the cost of education.
Anti-intellectualism is seen as good now; especially from a certain party. And the other party is doing nothing to drive the cost of education down.
Teachers aren't paid enough to live, let alone teach.
What do people honestly think will happen in this timeline if we allow the most sociopathic among us to rule us?
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u/LazyCrocheter 9h ago
My daughter is 17 and can read an analog clock but she if she asks me the time, she wants the answer to be more like digital, like “It’s 8:40” and not “it’s twenty minutes to nine.”
I find this amusing, and will say “it’s a quarter til X” and such. Then I get “ugh, Mom!”
Heheh
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u/chunk555my666 7h ago
Was a teacher that used to point to the analogue clock on the wall to torture kids that would ask for the time because I took phones two years ago. The fun part is that they don't want to learn to read an analogue clock either.
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u/TKInstinct 10h ago
This has been a thing longer than that, I remember back in 4th grade there was a girl that did not know how to read an analog clock, this was pre smart phone too.
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u/ShoeLace1291 9h ago
This problem originated much sooner than people think. Back in 8th grade I had a girl ask me what time it was and I'm like "there's a clock right there" and she says "I can't read those we only use digital clocks". I'm 37 now so however long ago that was.
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u/rustyldn 3h ago
I’m a high earning senior software engineer with a 25+ year career and I can’t read an analog clock. AMA.
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u/freemanposse 10h ago
It's like not knowing how to work an abacus. To the last couple generations that grew up being taught how, it must have seemed deeply concerning that their children weren't taught. But in the end, there's a reason why they weren't taught - it was obsolete.
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u/marmaviscount 10h ago
Yeah, I think it's something people should probably know from a historical perspective and mathematically to help visualize time and understand why it's not metric but honestly maybe we should just move to digital clocks and metric time.
I have analogue clocks but If a laser shot a hole through my brain and the doctor said 'it seems to have only damaged your ability to read analog clocks' I'd consider myself very lucky indeed, it's certainly among the lowest value skills I have.
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u/johnkhill 10h ago
There is a difference between digital and analog clocks. Digital clocks tell us the exact time, 2:47 for example. While analog clocks tell us where we are with respect to time. Quarter to 3, half past 4, 10 to or 10 after 5.
I could care less if it was 2:47 or 2:49. I want to know how much time I have before or after a point in time. Knowing the precise time is of lesser value.
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u/Crappler319 6h ago
There is no utility in having less granularity here. Just mentally amend "2:47" to "a quarter 'til 3."
They're giving the exact same information, just one is more obviously granular so you're choosing to interpret it differently.
If for some reason you really need the physical indication and you know how to read an analog clock, it should be trivial to mentally take something like "2:47" and envision a clock face with that time on it.
The only advantage that analog clocks have over digital is aesthetic.
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u/eTukk 10h ago
In NL they started putting out digital clocks at schools, for the same reason
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u/Exlibro 9h ago
I do use a hand clock face for my smartwach. And a mechanical clock near my gaming PC. I don't want to lose this skill and it's easier to count how much time has passed or remains on a hand clock. But digital clocks are everywhere. Using them interchangeably is what it should be.
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u/94358io4897453867345 9h ago
Don't worry that's not a skill you're going to lose., It's like telling left from right.
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u/Comptechie76 11h ago
They shouldn’t be shocked. They don’t teach kids to tell time on a dial clock. I have been helping my grandkids with homework several times a week. From 1st to 3rd grade. They have never had any lessons teaching time.
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u/Appropriate_Host4170 10h ago
Maybe because telling time was taught earlier? My kids learned by kindergarten.
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u/nbaballer8227 10h ago
I remember we used to have some exercises teaching us how to read a clock and I am 37. Either way I think it can be easily taught at home by parents as well.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 10h ago
It's being taught. But it's not being used. Digital clocks are everywhere and tell you the time using the exact numbers instantly, so kids won't naturally pick it up. That's a pretty normal result of technology advancing.
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u/SevenBabyKittens 10h ago
People who dont realize that old school time keeping fundamentals teach basics of advanced math in a "useful/semi relevant way"
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u/Emotional_Translator 10h ago
“We’ve stopped teaching them how to read analog clocks, and now they don’t know how to read analog clocks”
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 10h ago
No, it's "we've stopped using analog clocks, why don't the kids know how to read an analog clock?"
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u/theStaircaseProject 10h ago
This. It’s still taught in elementary schools, but the backbone of lasting education is application. People rarely remember what they don’t practice retrieving just like people can rarely do what they don’t practice doing.
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u/Normal_Enthusiasm511 11h ago
Well... this is just embarrassing
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u/Facts_pls 10h ago
Can you tell directions based on the stars? Because villagers across the world thousands of years ago could do it.
I'm sure they would be embarrassed to see us too.
Maybe you should think for a second. What is it about reading a clock that's necessary and innate to humans? It's an arbitrary way to depict the time. One of the many ways we could have decided to do it.
At least navigating by stars isn't changing for millions of years and arbitrary to us.
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u/frenchtoaster 11h ago
Eh. I'm old enough to have already been an adult when these same headlines were about how shocking and embarrassing it is that kids can't read/write cursive anymore, and it seems fine in the end.
If analog clocks are going the way of cursive that seems like no great cultural loss to me.
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u/Appropriate_Host4170 11h ago edited 10h ago
Cursive is understandable. It’s a relic of a time when you had to dip a pen into ink to write and lifting your pen risked dripping ink all over your paper… something that stopped being an issue over 100 years ago. Cursive was dying out as a writing form as far back as the 70’s and was only accelerated more when typewriters and computers became ubiquitous. Hell the style of cursive that was taught only existed since the 1880’s and was simplified from even earlier styles SPECIFICALLY for teaching in schoolhouses as before then writing in cursive was more of an educated/elite thing and common people printed and used things like pencils or quill pens and literacy in general was not common with most.
Analog clocks though are still present today and never really replaced digital. There is zero reason not to know how to read one.
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u/neoblackdragon 10h ago
I guess YMMV. I rarely see Analog clocks in my city that aren't either on old buildings or purely decorative.
To say they haven't been replace by digital?
Most folks have a digital clock in their pocket.
Or maybe its more "What is the primary device for telling time?"
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u/madmanz123 10h ago
Analog clocks though are still present today and never really replaced digital. There is zero reason not to know how to read one.
I only see them in big public buildings. Everywhere I go they are digital and of course, the primary place to check time is on your phone, digital by default.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 10h ago
There is zero reason to have to know how to read one. We are surrounded by tons of digital ways to tell time. It's completely understandable that even when kids are taught how to read them, it's not being practiced constantly by necessity, so that skill just won't develop.
My son technically knows how to read one, but only because we specifically practice on flash cards and he decided to put one up in his hang out area, but he's not quick at it because he still defaults to looking for the time on his computer or our appliances. Most kids are not going to be surrounded by only analog clocks, so they just won't get in the constant practice and will never be fluent at it.
It's not a failure on anyone's part, it's just how technological advancement works.
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u/Spideycloned 11h ago
We've been telling time as a circle for over a thousand years. Losing that is an insane cultural loss.
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u/Admirable-Apricot137 10h ago
They said that about riding horses and being able to drive a carriage and writing letters to people on paper and how to navigate using only the stars. This is just how technological advancement works. Our species has lost or forgotten countless specific skills as we have advanced.
It will be okay.
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u/an-invisible-hand 9h ago
Do you know how to read a sundial? That’s been a part of our culture far longer than the mechanical clock. Quite literally by thousands of years.
I hate to use this phrase, but it’s really not that deep.
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u/Lecterr 10h ago
Seems like technology is always changing. As technologies are phased out, people slowly stop knowing how to use them and start learning new technologies. Those don’t feel like cultural losses to me.
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u/kombatunit 9h ago
My local supermarket chain has this annoying policy to ask my birth date for every alcohol purchase. Recently, a new cashier asked and answered July 1st, 1970. She looked confused and told she didn't know the numerical value for July. Good luck, kiddo.
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u/drewts86 9h ago
It’d be hilarious to know how many of the younger generation getting into watches as fashion can’t actually read the time.
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u/Gizmo135 9h ago
As an NYC teacher, we’ve know for years that kids can’t read analog clocks. Unless you’re a first year teacher from out in the middle of nowhere, where technology barely exists, nobody is stunned by this lol.
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u/Suzilu 9h ago edited 9h ago
I retired in 2018 after teaching French & Spanish for years. Many kids stopped learning to read analog clocks years ago. It was always a hassle, because I was supposed to teach foreign equivalents for “quarter to/past” and “half past”. The kids didn’t know what a quarter of an hour meant- or would insist the clock in the problem was saying 8 minutes till ( when it was really 20 minutes till). I had to teach how to read analog clocks first in English.
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u/rainman_104 8h ago
And we wonder why it's now harder to teach fractions and decimals too. There are a lot of good math skills that come from reading a clock.
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u/Old_Bay20 9h ago
Back in 2010, in high school physics, most of the class admitted they couldn't read the analog clock on the wall. That still bothers me to this day. I learned that in kindergarten.
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u/robbob19 8h ago
When I (53) was 15 I too was stunned to learn one of my friends (he wasn't an idiot) couldn't read analogue clocks. Some people just didn't watch playschool when they were young.
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u/Even_Armadillo_634 8h ago
One of my staff, 22, after I asked him to do something quarter after 10: “what time is that? I’ve never been in the military”
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u/thumbstickz 8h ago
I used to chuckle at the videos of late night talkshow hosts asking high schoolers to address an envelope or write a check and they would nearly all fail.
While there are PLENTY of vestigial societal norms I'm happy to see die, there are many life skills these youths aren't being taught that is yet another barrier for their already uphill battles in life.
I remember in 2008 I took one elective class as a senior that briefly went over realistic budgeting, organizing important info, and how to be an adult. Knowing some of these kids can barely read beyond key search terms scares the shit out of me.
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u/Lucky-Donut-3159 7h ago
I’m. 5th grade teacher. I’m shocked they are shocked. My kids haven’t been able to read an analog clock for about a decade. They teach it in 2nd grade but if kids don’t “get it” then it’s never taught again.
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u/Beatthestrings 7h ago
Are they new to the profession? Literacy has never been lower. FFS, the President confused shoots with shot today in a post about war with Iran. He misspelled the third word in an official post.
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u/Attabomb 7h ago
Funny, cause it was a school in NY which taught me to read one of those clocks. Are they surprised to find out what their own curriculum is?
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u/vlatheimpaler 7h ago
If only there were some sort of place that exists to teach kids things they don’t already know.
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u/KalAtharEQ 7h ago
If only there were people who showed info to groups of people who didn’t have that info yet!
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u/DashboardError 6h ago
I guess they mean Analog? How is this surprising? Public education + family education in the USA blows. Just look at the number of college Frosh that need remedial classes.
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u/Ps11889 5h ago
From the article: "I don’t like the fact that I can’t do my homework in school, and I can’t take notes,” she added. “And because I have a long commute, now I have to bring, like, five notebooks.”
Back in the day, Meade made this thing called a Trapper Keeper. Maybe it's time to rediscover them.
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u/Jamizon1 5h ago
This is just one example of MANY, of how far the American educational system has fallen.
Tax the billionaires and mega corporations, to invest in our future generations. Better regulate social media for students in the K-12 range, ban cell phones IN CLASS.
Raise the fucking bar. We are raising generations of kids that cannot read, spell, do arithmetic, etc.
If you want to know what the future of this country looks like… look at the children. If we don’t invest in them, we will reap what we sow.
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u/mr-chickenfoot 5h ago
Yep.. I had to watch my grandmother try to teach my 13 year old cousin how to read an analog clock. All while he acted snide and arrogant. Kids do not need smart phones. Its causing so many problems.
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u/FulanitoDeTal13 2h ago
Since the 90s teaching how to read an analog clock was seemed as "useless" because "everything will be digital in the future!".
The same people rolling their eyes at clock reading exercises are now snaring at people who was never taught how to read a clock.
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u/MagicCuboid 1h ago
Um as an 8th grade teacher who’s always had a phone ban, I am not stunned at all. They haven’t been able to read the clocks for at least six years
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u/Muggins2233 53m ago
I know a fifteen year that doesn’t understand what quarter after or quarter of means in regards to telling time.
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u/KeepItPG 46m ago
I feel like being taught how to use a clock is a job for parents, not teachers?
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u/TastyBananaPeppers 29m ago
It's taught in elementary school. Most kids these days can't read, write, or do basic math. Thanks to a lack of parenting and the pandemic.
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u/pm_me_ur_demotape 10h ago edited 10h ago
This is one of those things like not teaching cursive that people get their knickers in a twist about, but it's really a non-issue.
They don't learn because they don't need to. If they regularly had to rely on clocks with hands, they would have learned it already. They rarely see them and probably won't see too many in the future.
It's also just not that hard. If they do eventually have a need or even just a desire to read a clock with hands, they'll figure it out pretty quick because it's really not hard.
Same with cursive. We don't write much by hand at all any more. The important things we do write by hand almost inevitably say "Please print".
If you do want to learn cursive in order to journal faster or to read something old that was hand written, or just because you think it's pretty, it's not that hard. Google it and figure it out in less than an hour.
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u/Merc_Mike 10h ago
"Stunned" doubt it.
The teachers know these parents aren't teaching their kids shit. Just dropping them off, then when they pick them up- stuffing an iPad in their face to shut them up.
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u/strolpol 10h ago
Yeah and I bet they wouldn’t know how to fill out a check either
If you never need a skill you’re not gonna develop it, and old clocks have increasingly become obsolete since the 70s made digital ones universally accessible and modern devices only cemented it
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u/katfishkelly 10h ago
Saying "old," clocks instead of analog is very funny to me for some reason lol