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I've been hearing this since I was a kid, though back then they just blamed the use of digital clocks instead of phones.
"These newfangled analog clocks with hands are killing the ability of people to understand clock bells. Kids these days."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striking_clock
A striking clock is a clock that sounds the hours audibly on a bell, gong, or other audible device. In 12-hour striking, used most commonly in striking clocks today, the clock strikes once at 1:00 am, twice at 2:00 am, continuing in this way up to twelve times at 12:00 mid-day, then starts again, striking once at 1:00 pm, twice at 2:00 pm, and the pattern continues up to twelve times at 12:00 midnight.
The striking feature of clocks was originally more important than their clock faces; the earliest clocks struck the hours, but had no dials to enable the time to be read.[1] The development of mechanical clocks in 12th century Europe was motivated by the need to ring bells upon the canonical hours to call the community to prayer. The earliest known mechanical clocks were large striking clocks installed in towers in monasteries or public squares, so that their bells could be heard far away.
I used to think it was a meme too and I still think it is to a point. But several of my recent jobs were at universities and I have met several people younger than me now who cannot read an analog clock, use a mouse, copy a file to a flash drive, or make change. To say nothing of their ability to find information that can’t be googled (like the location of a classroom). I have really begun to feel that the general population has absolutely failed GenZ and I really hope we can break the pattern before GenAlpha gets much older.
Next they’ll be surprised to find that they don’t know long division, cursive writing or 6502 assembly language
Exactly. I’m wondering how many of those teachers could use a slide rule or even an abacus. We’re far enough along now that I bet the majority of teachers would also be lost when confronted with a log table or a topo map and a compass.
Astrolabe and sextant? They’d be totally lost.
I bet most teachers don’t know how to saddle a horse, card and spin wool and flax by hand, or even use a clutch on a manual transmission vehicle, either.
[edit] Ooh… thought of another one! I bet none of the children know how to use a rotary phone either. (In fact, since POTS has been fully DTMF for over 20 years, I doubt a dial phone would actually function today without a converter).
And yet, we still have analog clocks all around us. Seems to me we should know his to use them... Unlike a sextant.
Still, knowing what those things are and how they work just might be useful if something similar becomes important for some reason.
Those things should be known by at least enough of the population to bring them back and use them if everything goes apocalyptic.
If things start falling apart, I'm throwing in with the Amish.
Tbh I think teaching 6502 assembly would be a great idea. You can learn the basics of how computers work without having to deal with all the complexity of a computer from 2026.
It's better to use an AVR for that. 6502 was a ridiculous kludge for the sake of slightly improved code density.
i hate this shit, ofc they don't know, who was planning to teach them? certainly not the fucking schools imposing this shit.
“Numerous students”
Gotta love that completely nebulous and undefined number. It also sounds like a non-zero number simply have to be instructed to read the clock in order to understand it. Could be like 20 kids out of a school of 400. Oh noes the education system has completely failed!
They actually gave us a number but gave it to us on a abacus and now we can't comprehend it.
If only there was a place they could learn that.
Others have tried to evade the spirit of the ban, using other digital devices sich as older iPods, or bringing walkie-talkies to school.
I'm not an advocate of smartphone bans, but necessity is the mother of invention, and I suppose that if some kids start cobbling together packet radio solutions to talk with their friends and reach the Internet, it'll probably be an educational experience.
I'd be hilarious if they started using and contributing to the meshtastic network.
It's not that stunning, they didn't grow up with them and you don't really see them in public these days.
We explicitly learned analog clocks in 1st grade, had worksheets and everything. What the hell are schools doing these days?
People forget skills they don't use. I'm guessing you and I had plenty of practice reading analog clocks over the years until the skill became completely ingrained.
Judging by the stories my mom has after teaching for decades they no longer really teach anything. Nor are they allowed to. These days they have to follow a script for everything down to how you move your hands and when.
Disruptive student? Just keep teaching like nothings going on.
Student struggling with a subject? Don't stop to help or try a different method to help them learn. No child left behind so they'll still move up a grade even if they can't read or do simple addition.
Just make sure the students are in the classroom so the school gets money. Nothing else matters.
'Old clocks'? You mean... analog clocks? The ones in practically every household outside of America?
When I grew up we looked at the height of the pile in the hourglass and we liked it! The rich kids all had sundial wristwatches though.
I am 20 and I still remember newspapers and TV talking about "teenagers these days can't read clocks" since I can remember. it seems nobody has ever known
It’s almost like you gotta teach people how to do things, that people aren’t just inherently born with all the knowledge to survive. Crazy I know.
There's an interesting technology connections video on how analog clocks can be easier to parse how "far" through the hour/day you are with just a quick glance. Hand almost at the top means the hours almost up, for instance.
This is so silly. Kids can't read an analog clock? Teach them. This isn't personal finance or cursive writing, you can teach them to read a clock in an afternoon.
Kids today are too stupid to intuit things their parents had to be shown. Shocking.
They still teach analog clocks in kindergarten or 1st grade. All my kids learned.
Possibly the case here as well. I learned roman numerals in school enough to pass whatever was on tests, but everything past 18 is a mystery to me now; probably because there isn't a final fantasy 20 or whatever yet.
Unless it's deeply internalized, knowledge atrophies from disuse.
I used to get this as a kid, this would have been about 1990 when I was 6 and at no point did anybody realise IT WAS BECAUSE NO-ONE TAUGHT ME, after that my mom spent an evening explaining it to me and after that I was fine. This is why I hate those videos where they give kids retro tech and laugh at them for not knowing how to use them, despite never being shown them before.
Gen-Xer here - do they not teach kids this in kindergarten or 1st grade or w/e anymore?
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.
They're supposed to, but if they never use it because they don't have to, they'll just forget how.
"Old clocks"?
Those are just clocks
Why are you stunned? Most kids today are raising themselves. If it’s not a skill you teach in school, it’s not like they are learning it somewhere else.
Good thing they are in that place where all the professional teacher are.
Lol and whose fault is that?
I’m more surprised they didn’t already know that
It takes just a few minutes to learn how to read an analog clock. Once you've got the idea, you'll be slow deciphering the time at first, but once you start doing it, very quickly you'll be reading it immediately with just a glance.
I see analog clocks all over the place, especially waiting rooms and public buildings, and I have a very nice pretty one in my house. I think the people saying they're not being used anymore just aren't noticing them, they're just background scenery to them and don't enter their consciousness.
It's a bit scary that anything children were once expected to learn has now become "the calculator". When calculators first came out the cry was 'why do we need to learn to do math any more when this device can do it for us?' Computers continued that trend. Smart phones even more so. It is a part of history that is hard to understand, how did a former, reasonably advanced civilization lose its advanced skills? We might be watching in real time how it happens. Except this time it is us, not an ancient civ.
Experienced software devs and tradesmen know this pain all too well. Frameworks and widgets make it easy to do stuff quickly, but no one knows how it works under the hood any more.
"analog" <> "old-fashioned". Analog clocks are very common out in the world. Analog watches even more so, they're the norm not the exception among people with an interest in watches. My take-away from this story is that 1) these schools are not teaching kids to read analog clocks, and 2) these schools have installed digital clocks rather than analog.
Both of these things are easy to remedy.
It's a skill that increasingly is becoming less and less relevant. What even is the reason to still have analogue clocks?
I met my first kid who couldn't tell time almost 10 years ago.
Teachers are just figuring this out now?
Heh, I'm early Gen X bordering on boomer and as a kid I found it a lot harder to read the time on an analog clock as opposed to the Casio digital wristwatch I had.
Of course I could "decode" the clock, but it was not intuitive.
I remember a time when I couldn't tell time with an analogue clock.
I walked to school by myself from age 7. When my parents left for work they said I should get going when the big hand is pointing straight down.
The morons here are the teachers.
People don't know what they dont know and haven't been taught. We have been relying on this idea that each next generation just has what the previous generation knows. It isn't a practice thing it is a we haven't prepared the new for what the world has to offer.
We do this everywhere and blame the uneducated and point and laugh. Fuck that.
I can't wait for the students to learn and be proud when they do.