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.
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