NYC phone ban reveals some students can’t read clocks

https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-phone-ban-reveals-some-students-cant-read-clocks

33 Comments

  1. Wompatuckrule on

    The one that I find more amusing is that they have a hard time understanding time when it’s spoken using analog terms. If you say something like “half past one” “quarter of two” or “ten to three” you are very likely to create confusion with them since they grew up just reading the numbers on digital clocks.

  2. There’s a bunch of people here with a snarky tone implying this is not big deal – I bet you’d turn around and rail against Trump’s anti-intellectualism, too.

    It’s doesn’t matter if clocks are outdated. Analog clocks are still around and it’s a basic spatial skill that people should know.

    And yes, teachers already knew this before the ban.

  3. Where’s the “No shit” button for this one?

    I retired in June after teaching 8th grade civics for 20 years and I used to have to have my students complete third grade worksheets to try to teach them how to read an analog clock and fully one quarter of them still had no idea how to understand it.

  4. unusual_flats on

    People comparing being able to read a clock to some useless outdated skill is just so embarrassing.

    It’s a fucking clock. You should be able to tell the time without a phone in the same way that you should be able to do basic arithmetic without a calculator.

  5. PatchyWhiskers on

    My kid’s Brooklyn elementary school was pretty intense on teaching clock reading

  6. Natural-Bus-174 on

    No shit… finally someone noticed. Teachers have been saying it for more than 15years.

  7. Can’t blame children for not knowing something. It’s a failure on their parents, school administration, and state curriculum (not blaming the teachers because they’re obligated to teach what’s set by the school district and state)

  8. At least 75% of my (general education) middle schoolers can’t tell time using an analog clock. Fun fact: About 99% can’t read cursive.

  9. I recognize that needing to read an analog clock is not really a necessary skill nowadays, but I put an analog clock on my son’s wall when he was little because I could see that if I didn’t make a deliberate attempt to teach it, he’d never learn it. As his parent, it’s ultimately my responsibility.

  10. AvailableDirt9837 on

    I think most of the commenters don’t have kids so they wouldn’t understand. My daughter is a top student, very bright kid. They covered analog clocks in elementary school, she passed all the sections. After that they never see an analog clock in real life again, or if they do, a digital one is right there and closer. I would be shocked if she remembers, I’ll ask her later and check though lol.

  11. gorillafightsurvivor on

    I’m friends with a few teachers and I’ve been hearing similar stories for a while now. Unable to read clocks, can’t do very basic mental math, illiteracy, you name it.

    Sometimes it’s tragic, but sometimes I’m just baffled.

  12. It took me a long time to figure out clocks. And to figure out math… a long time. Eventually it worked out.

  13. artistontheprairie on

    I distinctly remember a unit in grade school in the 80s where I learned how to read a clock and make change. Priorities must have changed.

  14. Breaking news study finds failure of the previous generation to raise the next leads to generations that can’t do things.

  15. Wait till they find out most high school kids don’t know how loans work but can borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US.

  16. Thats not phones fault, 100% schools and teachers fault. The erosion of education has been planned for decades now.

  17. I’m gonna be honest, I couldn’t read a clock well, until I was about 11. Even today it takes me a second to go “the hour hands point to… minute hand…” especially if i’m looking at it from a distance, or something small like a watch. Its something I have to consciously think about because I only see an analogue clock maybe a couple times a week, and quite a lot of the time they’re basically just decorative (like the ones on top of a Tescos) and don’t tell the time.

    Digital clocks have just been straight up better for the past 50 years or so. Analogue clocks don’t have any inherent advantages that mean they need to stick around. Their design is a consequence of the mechanisms they operate on, rather than a result of user testing, studies etc.

    Stop comparing it to learning how to count or being anti-intellectual. No one is citing any research papers as to why people need to learn how to read analogue clocks. I really wouldn’t give a shit if the next generation could only count in hexadecimal.

  18. Did we teach them or did they just get a worksheet that time and call it a day?

    We stopped widely teaching and using cursive and suddenly kids can’t use cursive. Analog clocks are the same. If no one uses them often (the adults) and the teachers aren’t engraining the knowledge in some manner, we’re just expecting kids to take it upon themselves to be interested in clocks?

    It’s only common sense to those that were taught what clocks were and I don’t think we should just be assuming it’s being taught well universally across the states. It’s not a fault of the phone, but a fault of the adults that stopped teaching kids how to read time.

  19. I remember when math worksheets had analog clocks on them to teach us how to read a clock

  20. Modernthought on

    Analogue clocks are a physical representation of time. (15 min is 1/4 of an hour for example)

    If these kids don’t have a concept of time, they don’t have a concept on reality.