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.
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.
“Old clocks”
Bet they can’t dial a rotary phone or hitch a horse to a wagon either.
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.
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.
You voted for this, New York! reeeEEE
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.
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
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Yeah they probably can’t read cursive either.
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 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.
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
I’m a millennial and I was taught how to read a clock in 2nd grade. Are they not teaching this basic skill anymore?
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
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.)
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.
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.
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Analogue clocks are *easier to read at a glance and maybe at a distance too.
God how fucking idiotic can people get. Jesus Christ.
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.
Sometimes people like you just need to know they’re stupid. I’m no longer in the habit of arguing with people who demonstrate such a stunning lack of brain power.
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
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.
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?
How is that even possible? The only clocks on display in my house are analog. Do people not have wall clocks? Do kids grow up never knowing what time it is? That’s a standard household furnishing.
Then again, it does say some students, so I probably should assume it’s a minority who never asked their parents what the fuck that thing on the wall was.
Microwave, stove, tv, computers… Digital by default or digital only. Who hangs a wall clock anymore?
Most people in ny country, but I guess not USA, huh? I thought analog watches are almost always more fashionable than digital, too, so I’m really surprised it’s seems to be not used enough that a couple of dudes here dedicated paragraphs to oppose its use.
Who wears watches for fashion?
I’m not in the USA. I do have an analog clock and watch though but they just sit in the closet.
Here’s the problem, I don’t have a lot of wall space and I already have clocks everywhere else. If the purpose is to know the time, then the purpose has been delivered like 5 times over. I don’t need to waste wall space on an analog clock.
Idk, I have an analog hanging up. Some guy on lemmy who can’t even read analogs at a glance isn’t the sole arbiter of timekeeping for everyone’s house in the country.
the only clocks I have on display in my house are analog
That’s a choice. You don’t have to have any analog clocks. I don’t currently have any. I dislike decorational clocks and strictly have digital clocks as informational devices where I want the time at a glance. Not to mention, I have 4 appliances in the kitchen with digital clocks (oven, microwave, drip coffee, keurig). Meanwhile, I absolutely hate audible ticking, so the only analogs I’ve bought are watches.
Also, as a former child, I can tell you children do not know what time it is. I also had digital clocks available the whole time, ranging from my dad’s “James Bond” Casio, to the VCR flashing 12:00 all the time. Mostly, the pale teal VFD type.
It doesn’t make sense to think of reading an analog clock as a necessary skill. It’s like driving a manual car. Can you? I do it daily. I can count on one hand the number of times being able to drive stick saved me in an emergency situation by being the only transmission available (it’s a closed fist). All the same, I have never been in an emergency situation that was dependent on my ability to read an analog clock
Tick Tock. Tick Tock.
That shit gets it’s battery removed or taken off the wall and shoved in the bathroom whenever I end up at a hotel/motel with one.
Drives me insane.
I don’t mind ticking (up to a certain point), but my Dad used to have in his garage an analog clock that not only ticked but also had extremely audible whirring sounds. They were associated (I assume) with the gearing. Again, it never really bothered me - I didn’t spend much time in the garage and I’m pretty sure that clock had been around longer than I had (which is probably why it was so noisy). I was accustomed to it.
However, I remember the day my dad got hearing aids. One of the first things he observed was how noisy the clock was, asking if it had always been that way.
My dad spent a lot of time in his garage. Pretty sure that clock didn’t last out the week.
Hearing aids are such a QoL improvement once people admit they need them. There’s so much noise in the world that gets lost with age/damage. My dad got less irritable because he could actually understand normal talking levels. He definitely noticed some “new” noises in his house like yours did.
But now I have a new issue. I can hear him breathing and chewing through his own hearing aids since they’re cranked to 11. Whatever, I’ll take it.
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.
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.
How is that surprising ? Why would kid learn a useless skill ? Yes it’s useless if you always have a digital clock on you and only read time that way. Should they learn to read cuneiform too? Now that the phone ban is in place, they will learn to read analog clock since it’s useful again.
Cuneiform is an ancient writing system that died 1900 years ago. An analog clock (many of which are still around today) has hands that point to the numbers on the circumference. I don’t think the two can be compared.
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