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.
People forget skills they don’t use. I’m guessing you and I had plenty of practice reading analog clocks over the years until the skill became completely ingrained.
Yeah, it reminds me of languages. I learned French to a pretty high level in high school (I was a try hard whose brain clicked well with languages), but over the last decade, I have rarely used those skills and I was recently shocked to realise how much my knowledge had atrophied. It’s easy to become complacent once you feel you have learned something, but you use it or you lose it.
Yup. I learned cursive in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Probably the last time I used it as well. If I needed to write something in cursive, I would be pretty screwed. I remember some of the easier stuff, like the vowels. But if I needed to write a “q” or “k” I don’t think I could remember it.
With that said, learning how to read an analog clock is way easier. It’s a formula/method, and the numbers are right there. It’s not memorization. This should be something easy to teach.
The problem is that analog clocks are not in the curriculum for middle school and high school. It’s hard to find time to teach middle schoolers how to read clocks when you are struggling through “To Kill a Mockingbird” with a bunch of students on a 4th grade reading level.
Teenagers in inner city schools not knowing how to read analog clocks is a much more complicated issue than it seems on the surface. The solution is not “well they should have just had the childhood that I had and it wouldn’t be a problem”