cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41056130
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 went back to school last year and only a couple of my classmates under 30 could read clocks. kind of amazing.
I taught my gen-z kid to read an analog clock because I knew no one else would. I know he learned it.
He’s 27 now, and living back at home. Recently, we were in the kitchen and the cat was asking to be fed. He said, “I don’t think it’s time yet…” and then went to his room to check the time on his phone. The same analog clock he learned to read is on the wall in the kitchen, where it’s been his entire life. Apparently, he didn’t practice at all after I taught him and tested him on it, and now can’t read it? I dunno, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to make a whole thing out of it.
Like a foreign language, use it or lose it.
You’re a teacher? Teach!
which new york teacher was stunned because i have questions
Right, find me one. Teachers everywhere said kids can’t read analog clocks long before cellphone bans.
Pains me that the article calls them “old” clocks and not “analog” clocks.
I heard a story about a kid telling an adult that they couldn’t read “circle time.” That any better?
Only slightly! 😂
Behold, your analog clock.
🎵Then put your little hand in mine!🎵
Wow, arguably my favorite movie, but it took me way too long…
Because they are fucking old. Old clocks. Useless clocks. Not a skill worth teaching, except as an anachronism when explaining why Big Ben and similar building clocks work the way they do.
it appears children have fallen out of practice doing so in an increasingly digital world.
Increasingly? Brother, we’re already there. It’s all digital. Have you seen the internet yet?
Schools haven’t adapted solely out of spite, to propagate this self-fulfilling cycle of teaching how they work, so that their own students can read school clocks. As soon as they leave the school zone, that knowledge is practically useless to them.
Not sure what kind of sequestered live you lead but schools are definitely not the only place you encounter them. Analog wall clocks and watch faces are still reasonably common.
Nope, not really. You occasionally find them in some old government building, but only because it’s always existed that way, and they just don’t want to bother replacing it with a modern digital clock.
This line of thinking is the same as saying cursive writing is worth teaching.
They are very rare in public spaces over here. Pretty much only elderly have them in their homes
I didn’t know 12 year olds were on lemmy
/c/summerlemmy
Bet they can’t dial a rotary phone or hitch a horse to a wagon either.
You should see them with a kerosene lamp.
This is dishonest, because unlike horses and kerosene lamps, analog clocks are in every (european) town, on the churches, matkets, train stations etc…
I learned to read an analog clock in elementary school. If schools aren’t teaching it anymore idk why they’re shocked that kids don’t know how.
“Old clocks”
Maybe someone should teach them…
One of the greatest dangers to a society is people assuming anything is innate or the next generation will magically know shit.
Nobody taught these kids how to read a clock. So they don’t know how to read a clock.
This is a very minor thing, but it’s an easier concept to grasp than the abstract concept of empathy we also stopped teaching kids.
I’m a millennial and I was taught how to read a clock in 2nd grade. Are they not teaching this basic skill anymore?
I’m a millenial, too. Even I use my phone or computer to tell time more often than anything. Before smart phones we had some solid years relying on wall clocks and watches. It was a skill we kept using after we learned it, unlike a lot of kids who haven’t needed to flex that muscle since they were taught.
What decade were you in second grade?
The mid 90s, LONG after digital clocks were already ubiquitous.
You didn’t even have to read the article, just the excerpt from OP. “students are taught to read analog clocks in first and second grade in city public schools” l
you ought to change your pedantry to instructed because some of them did not learn
You didn’t even have to read the article, just the excerpt from OP. “students are taught to read analog clocks in first and second grade in city public schools”.
Obviously they are not. You can say it’s on the ciriculim, but they were obviously not taught
Obviously, it was a skill learned in early grade school and subsequently forgotten through lack of practice. You know, as stated in the article and multiple comments here.
While I agree with that, it’s not exactly rocket surgery. If you once heard how it works, how hard can it be to figure out it again?
or maybe they should invest in digital clocks rather than continuing to use an archaic, obsolete technology.
Yes. You read that right.
Analog clocks are obsolete.
Same with the fountain pen and dip pens and calligraphy (and the cursive writing styles that relied on them,) carrier pigeons and the telegraph. not to mention all sorts of other technologies that are of only passing interest.
You probably don’t know how to read a sundial, or to locate yourself on a map using a magnetic compass.
While there’s some esoteric value in such skills, the skills themselves are obsolete and useless to modern life. We’re not preparing them for the past. we’re preparing them for the future.
Guaranteed the teachers aren’t using the analog clocks if they don’t have to either.
(edit, I can’t find the full article, everything points back to that atlantic article. The gyst that they cropped out so crudely is two fold: the point of cursive was to minimize blotting caused by lifting and setting the pen across each letter when using a pen with a nib. It required a relatively light hand when writing, so as to glide over the page and not dig itn. Ball point pens, on the other hand, transfer ink differently- you’re rolling a ball over the surface- and they require significantly more pressure. the fluid motions of cursive writing cramp the hand sooner compared to print, if you’re writing with a ball point.)
This is incorrect. I’m a teacher and CONSTANTLY use the analog clock for multiple reasons.
- It’s the clock of record. Doesn’t matter what YOUR particular clock says, the clock on the WALL is the time we all go on.
- Reaching into your pocket to pull out a phone and look, no matter how much you want to pretend it’s trivial, still takes SIGNIFICANTLY more effort and time than glancing at the wall. Those seconds add up.
- Momentum. Are you PERSONALLY going to provide the billions of dollars in funding to replace every analog clock in a public space with digital ones?
This is not like learning to write cursive - reading an analog clock is a trivial skill that should not take longer than a day for anyone to master.
My eyes are on my phone constantly, so no time is lost.
Please don’t teach kids to insert all-caps words into their sentences. If you need to emphasize a word on the Internet, you can italicize.
This is incorrect. I’m a teacher and CONSTANTLY use the analog clock for multiple reasons.
It’s the clock of record. Doesn’t matter what YOUR particular clock says, the clock on the WALL is the time we all go on.Irrelevant. This function would be served regardless of what type of clock is on the wall. A digital wall clock would serve just as well, and likely be less expensive to maintain than the electromechanical clocks you presumably use. (something about obsolete technologies becoming increasingly more expensive to maintain.)
Reaching into your pocket to pull out a phone and look, no matter how much you want to pretend it’s trivial, still takes SIGNIFICANTLY more effort and time than glancing at the wall. Those seconds add up.See the above reply.
Momentum. Are you PERSONALLY going to provide the billions of dollars in funding to replace every analog clock in a public space with digital ones?an irrelevant red herring with a false dichotomy. Clocks in public places are mostly installed by the people who maintain those public places. We all pay taxes to keep those places up. I don’t need to personally fund such a project and you know it.
This is not like learning to write cursive - reading an analog clock is a trivial skill that should not take longer than a day for anyone to master.
It may be trivial, and there may be some benefit besides learning to read said clock. But like cursive, it’s an irrelevant skill that generally won’t be used outside of class. That’s how it’s like cursive. Or, if you prefer, using a slide rule. as a teacher, I am, however, sure you understand that you only have so many hours of instruction available. A day spent on this, is a day not spent on something else. You might have arguments for why this is more important than that something else, but its still an obsolete technology that, like the slide rule and fountain pens, is going away. Nostalgia is not a good enough reason to keep it around.
btw, my middle school had all digital wall clocks back in the mid 90’s, and probably had them for quite some time before i was there.
We could start by replacing broken ones with digital clocks using the money that would’ve gone towards fixing such machinery.
non-cursive is infuriatingly slow to write.
I have no idea people hate on cursive (beyond the normal anti-intellectual reasons of hating the idea of teaching people things that aren’t immediately applicable to industry).
Cursive didn’t come out of nowhere, it fills a legitimate need, and it’s a skill that expresses your individual creative self in an activity you might do everyday (maybe more!) It does wonders for your self-confidence and happiness in life to write on paper well. Paper and pen has been humanity’s companion for centuries if not millennia, and one doesn’t do themselves any favors by intentionally shunning their own handwriting ability. And you dont have to pick between using a keyboard and learning cursive: just do both.
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Analogue clocks are *easier to read at a glance and maybe at a distance too.
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Says the guy who apparently can only sting together an insult.
Stuff changes. Each generation does things differently. Stone Age people probably said the same thing when they stopped teaching their children to flintknap after everyone started using bronze tools.
We abandon old technology when it becomes obsolete, and eventually the skills associated with them. And that’s normal.
We don’t have enough hours in a lifetime to learn all the stuff we’ve abandoned, and analog clock faces are going that way. It’s okay. This is normal.
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This is not surprising at all. Even when taking about time relative to the analog clock, it gets difficult, a lady asked me for the time at Walmart, and she could not understand “half past six”. When I clarified that’s 6:30, she finally got it.
“Ten to eleven” would get a blank stare, too, probably.
They seem bad at computers a lot of the time too. I know right wingers like to make public schools lives hell by slashing budgets constantly but like damn.
Nobody is “good with computers” until they can install their own operating system and manage files and backups.
My 2 cents.
Yeah they probably can’t read cursive either.
My 12-yo was never taught cursive, and it turns out her general reading of print is lagging, but she read handwritten cursive last night well enough.
I hope so. Cursive is worthless and needs to die.
well i know hell and damn and the b-word
I’m starting to struggle with this lately too
Maybe it wasn’t such a major skill after all 😄
Also, I’m old and remember waking up after partying hard and looking at an analog clock, not knowing whether it’s AM or PM. Those clocks suck. 24h or nothing. Also radio-controlled clocks are a blessing ngl.
Looking at the sky will often help with distinguishing AM vs PM
Kind of funny reading this at a time when it’s pitch black outside except for an hour or two around noon.
5 in my winter is about the same.
Yeah, if the sky isn’t totally overcast, then you see where the sun is
That requires me to get out of bed tho
below the horizon in both cases
Fine but which side of the sky is tinted orange
You’re of course right. I was being a little facetious. I think it’s really just naps that have woken me to absolutely zero idea what time it is. My teenage bedroom had a window in shade with the blinds closed.
The direction and quality of light makes it clear as well. OTOH, I’ve found people who can’t tell which side of their house the sun rises and sets on.
Having a proper time format helps more
I know by radio-controlled clock you probably meant the ones that automatically set the time, but I’m now imagining a kid with an RC car controller making the clock spin really fast
Why stop there? Why not the date and year too?
I remember when I was in 5th grade, back in the early '80s, a kid didn’t know how to tell time on a clock. The adults then blamed the popularity of digital wristwatches. On one hand it doesn’t really matter, on the other it’s a great introduction to visualizing alternate numbering systems.
We are the same age and I had my first analog wristwatch in 1st grade. When my niece was 4 in '86 or so I taught her to read a clock. Weird world, guess it’s not all about age.
I was in 5th grade back in 00’s and if you don"t knoe how to tell time on a clock, you get made fun of. It offers a different, a more intuitive, perception of progressing time. It’s more like a progress bar than just counting numbers
Same shit, different Gen. The sundialists hated mechanical clocks, too.
