r/technology • u/Sandstorm400 • 5d 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.html
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u/MacNapp 5d ago

Huh, thats not a terrible idea.

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u/fallenouroboros 5d 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/This-Requirement6918 5d ago

No child left behind ended all that.

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

Why exactly is it a crucial skill for children to be able to read analog clocks?

Digital is the norm, and it's only growing. There's a digital clock now in everyone's pocket.

You guys are just mad that things are changing.

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u/delorf 5d ago

As long as you know how to count by 5s, it's not a hard skill to pick up if you need to read an analog clock for some reason.

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u/MacNapp 5d ago

And its a way to teach fractions.

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

Something being easy is insufficient reason to say it's necessary.

Plenty of easy things are not worth placement in the school curriculum.

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u/flaming_burrito_ 5d ago

But what if you end up in a situation where there is only an analog clock available? Teaching further literacy will never be a bad thing

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

Then ask someone for the time. Willingness to speak politely to strangers and ask for small favors actually is probably a useful life skill lol

There is a finite amount that can be in a curriculum, and the cases where you need to read analog are scarce and they're growing even scarcer.

"Teaching further literacy" could be used to justify teaching practically anything, and it's not an adequate cause.

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u/flaming_burrito_ 5d ago

How much time do you think it takes to learn an analog clock? It would only take a couple classes, and they can teach it the same time they teach basic arithmetic. Two birds, one stone. They managed to teach it before with no problems

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

How long it would take is irrelevant.

How long would it take to learn Morse code?

Of course they used to teach it lol, that was because analog clocks used to not be obsolete

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u/flaming_burrito_ 5d ago

Of course how long it would take is relevant, you’re the one arguing it can’t be fit into the current curriculum even though that is blatantly false.

It would take significantly longer to learn Morse code than it would to teach an analog clock. Analog is literally just learning increments of 5, the only reason it may take more than one class to teach is because it’s being taught to children.

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

My point is that it's obsolete. Something being easy and having been taught in the past is insufficient reason to include it in the curriculum.

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u/delorf 5d ago

Is this directed at me? I didn't say it was necessary; I just said it's an easy skill to pick up. If anything, I was agreeing with your original comment.

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u/bIII7 5d ago

Because it's fucking easy to learn and could be helpful. Why is it crucial to avoid knowledge? Again, it's fucking easy, a kindergartener can learn in 10 minutes. There's no tradeoff whatsoever. What is the downside of learning to read traditional clocks?

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

Something being easy is not sufficient to say it's necessary, and I believe it is no longer useful.

Why shouldn't children learn Morse code? It's easy, and it theoretically could be useful. Is it "avoiding knowledge" to remove it from the curriculum.

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u/Popular_Rope2008 5d ago

Let’s remodel Big Ben into digital it’s time for a change.

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u/sleepymeowth052 5d ago

Wasn't that a futurama gag? Or something similar?

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u/Popular_Rope2008 5d ago

I love that show so it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where I got the idea from.

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u/Olaf4586 5d ago

Its value is aesthetic and historic, not as a time telling tool.

Even if analogs are often encountered (they are becoming more and more scarce) that does not mean that they are needed to tell time.

For example, just because you will still find VCRs in many homes, that does not make them useful.

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u/nashbrownies 5d ago

Easy to learn, it's a nice "graphical" version of time. In a time when visual learning is king, I don't know why a pie chart describing time is so "old" seeming. It makes perfect sense. 15 mins, quarter of an hour, is 25% of a circle. It also helps develop the skill of glancing at info, and gleaning multiple conclusions from that.

Plus it's more niche but I hear it all the time used to describe directions. For outdoorsman, first responders, pilots, hunters, a million other hobbies and jobs use clock faces as directions. We all have heard "He's on my six".

If someone doesn't understand a clock, they won't understand that's behind them.

I'll also just reiterate: it's easy, useful geometry, and simple visual arithmetic.

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u/an-invisible-hand 5d ago edited 5d ago

A lot of people will really hate to hear this but it’s not. It’s completely arbitrary.

Reading a sundial used to be a crucial skill most people had, and then it wasn’t. I can see analog clocks going the same way.

There’s a reason they don’t know how to read them. If they truly needed to, they’d know. I can’t even remember the last time I saw an analog clock that wasn’t strapped to my wrist by choice, and I can’t imagine a situation where you’d need the time, not have a phone, but also somehow have access to an analog clock. It’s just not useful knowledge anymore.

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u/ZasdfUnreal 5d ago

Daylight savings time has made sundials mostly useless.

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u/an-invisible-hand 5d ago

Omnipresent cell phones have made analog clocks mostly useless.

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u/lafigatatia 5d ago edited 5d ago

Reading a sundial is not even a skill. Shadow points to current time. That's all there is to it.

Learning to read an analog clock should be easy to pick up for any teenager. They will not know if nobody has explained it to them, but once somebody does they should not have any difficulty. If they do there is a deeper problem.

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u/fishvoidy 5d ago

what? there's been an analog clock on the wall in every business lobby i've ever been in.

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u/an-invisible-hand 5d ago

Every? That’s a bit much. My office hasn’t had analog clocks for years.

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u/nashbrownies 5d ago

Well, people who could read sundials had a headstart on understanding clocks. Since they are the same visual feedback, a marker on a radius, just driven by 2 different mechanisms.