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.
I learned how to read one over 20 years ago, when am I supposed to get to the point where it’s just a glance? (And it’s not like I rarely encountered analog clocks growing up, the only clock I could see during breakfast was an analog clock…)
I don’t mind them but for me digital is much faster to read. Granted it’s still like 2 seconds at most so not like it really matters, but I find it to be noticably more mental effort.
Every classroom I was in from kindergarten through university had analog clocks on the wall, so I was absolutely able to just glance. For years.
But since I haven’t been in a classroom for so long, and I’m not surrounded by analog clocks anymore, I think I’ve mostly lost that ability and I’ve found that it takes me a couple of seconds nowadays to decode it.
It’s definitely a skill that needs to be practiced to keep it up
It would just depend on how often you actually use them, it’s just familiarity. If you had one in your house/classroom/office that you looked at whenever you wanted to know the time (as it used to be before digital), it would take only a quick glance. Your brain recognizes the shapes, just like it recognizes words in your native language immediately without figuring out the individual letters.
How do you not read it at a glance? After 20 years you think you would just notice the general shapes, its all basically the same, especially if you simply round everything, which is what a lot of people do as time on an analog clock is rarely used super precise.
1/4 or 1/2 after or before, and almost.
Then what hour is the small hand approaching?
Quarter to 3.
Half past 1.
Almost 4.
Seems pretty simple. Unless you are used to 24 hours, then you would have to ignore or add 12.
If I know the hour already it’s usually at a glance since I just need to see the general area of the minute hand (unless it’s one of those clocks where the minute and hour hand are barely different in length so i have to first figure out which is which, but that’s just a design problem).
But otherwise, or if I need to know the time more precisely (which is kinda often tbh since nowadays I mainly see analog clocks in train stations) it takes me a second or two. Whatever it is that’d make me able to read them in an instant just never got wired in my brain i guess. Digital clocks I can read at a glance.
It might be digital clocks fault that I mostly think about time in minute precision and that then might have made it harder to ever build the pattern recognition for slightly rougher time reading from analog clocks