At least 31 states and the District of Columbia restrict cell phones in schools
New York City teachers say the state’s recently implemented cell phone ban in schools has showed that numerous students no longer know how to tell time on an old-fashioned clock.
“That’s a major skill that they’re not used to at all,” Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardozo High School in Queens, told Gothamist of what she’s noticed after the ban, which went into effect in September.
Students in the city’s school system are meant to learn basic time-telling skills in the first and second grade, according to officials, though it appears children have fallen out of practice doing so in an increasingly digital world.
Some might call this a "teachable moment ", no?
Exactly my thought. Not only are you getting the opportunity to teach a skill that had not previously been taught, but you are also able to help kids better understand the concept of time and why we use certain words to define time. Win win.
It’s wild to think that, “It’s a quarter to 8,” must be a mental exercise for some people. That is, instead of having an immediate understanding from being able to glance at an analog clock and think, “That’s clearly 1/4 of an hour,” it instead relies on a cognitive exercise that requires a knowledge of division and subtraction (60 divided by 4, then subtract the result from 60.)
Though I tend to think of time spatially, in part due to being raised with analog clocks. They’re much easier for me to read and understand at a glance without having to process much. Reading a digital clock requires converting it to analog in my mind, because the spatial appearance of the hands is what my brain makes sense of. I sometimes hear from people who can’t do that though, who instead have to convert the analog to digital in their minds. Which is fine, it just sounds much more “mathy” to me and like it takes more work than making sense of shapes. But to each their own.