Do young people today have difficulty telling the time on analogue clocks?

[Draconis]

I've heard this from a couple of people now and wondered how much truth there is in it

My DD2 18 really struggles with an analogue clock because she is dyslexic-dyspraxic.
We have analogue clocks all over the house. We had an ELC clock for years too. She used to wear an analogue watch. She still struggles with 'to' and 'past', and left and right.
It's heartbreaking.

Fucking hell. How have we got to this stage, where kids are getting more stupid and losing skills?!

Hardly more stupid. I bet my 10 year old (who I don't actually know if she can now read an analogue clock, must ask when she gets up) could show many clock readers a thing or 2 about creating a sway presentation, a power point, how to effectively navigate Microsoft teams. How to crate albums and files etc As for learning clockwise and anti clockwise- it's hardly difficult even if not relating it to an actual clock. Providing you can learn left and right you can do that (and if you can't then it's probably problematic anyway without a clock being right in front of you at the time (and still no need ti actually be able to read the time on it to get that bit)

Fucking hell. How have we got to this stage, where kids are getting more stupid and losing skills?!

They can't count in schillings either or set a fire.

What a STUPID comment.

Two minutes. Right. All these children must be idiots. 🙄

It takes about a week of maths lessons to learn, actually, for most children. I mean, to learn it securely. After a week, most (not all!) can read an analogue clock to the minute, identify clockwise and anticlockwise, find a quarter past and quarter to and half past, recognise the space between each number is 5 minutes, etc. They will still need to think hard about language like "10 to 2".

They will then forget this information if they do not regularly use it.

My dc can read analogue clocks and calculate turns betweens points on a compass, but we had to practice that with them so that it would embed.

It must be they’re not taught, because it’s easy to learn. I’ve seen very young kids have what I consider very hard homework for their ages yet they cope fine with it, so it has to be that analogue isn’t taught then? Wonder why that is?

As it happens it took me years to learn the time. I'm born last century. I'm not good at left or right either.

I can remember being 13 in a French lesson panicked because although my French was good I couldn't even do the basic time in English.

My sister on the other hand , good at Maths, did learn in a about 10 mins. Different sort of brain and like you very judgmental.

I'm not going to argue this point any further but I am afraid that you were misinformed by your exam board. There is (and has been for a long time) an explicit ban by JCQ on countdown and count-up clocks, which by their nature are digital, and I think this gave rise to a widespread misconception about digital clocks in general. I think some overzealous exams officers also took the ban on 'digital equipment', i.e. digital reading pens etc, to include the clock on the wall but this was never the case. JCQ started explicitly stating in their guidance in around 2015 that the clock could be analogue or digital in order to dispel the misunderstanding.

I line-managed our exams officer for many years from 2010 and was involved in several various JCQ inspection visits during exam season. We used the sports hall as our main exam space which had a huge digital clock and scoreboard intended for basketball games. As long as we weren't using the countdown function the JCQ inspector was absolutely happy with the digital clock.

We do have an analogue clock in the house in the kitchen and I'm always saying

"c'mon it's 5 to 8, shouldn't you be leaving"
blah blah and that sort of thing...

I'm off to ask my 16 year old. I do notice he doesn't like coins....

This has been a thing forever. As a child, I remember my dad saying I had to learn how to tell the time on clocks because "everyone just uses their digital watch these days". This was the late 90s. It's not new!

Definitely and how many young people do you even see wearing a watch, rely on their phones that they are superglued to.

Analogue doesn't always (these days very rarely) mean mechanical. Electric or electronic analogue clocks can be as silent as digital ones if they have continuous-sweep hands. And the mechanism of action for an analogue clock on a screen I(like the one in my brand new electric car - analogue isnt jilust for church towere) is identical to that of a digital one on a screen.

I pass 3 analogue clocks on the 10 minute walk into the town centre. If I'm worried I may be late for a train it's faster to glance at one of those than fish a phone out of my pocket.

My kids (both under 10) can read the time ok on analogue, I’ve never thought of it as an obsolete skill. We have at least a couple of analogue clocks on walls in the house, I almost always wear a mechanical watch, my kids both sometimes wear analogue watches.

I think their natural curiosity would have made them want to understand what these things meant - not understanding things can be frustrating!

I got given a Casio watch for Christmas in the 80s in primary school. I also struggled with analog clocks for years. So not a new thing.

This thread has just made think about what my mum does if I ask an innocent question like “What time is the bus?”
My mum : “There’s one at quarter past the hour, well actually it’s 17 past but it’s easier to think quarter past. If you miss that there’s one at 5 to the hour, well really 3 minutes to but it’s always late so more like 5 past”
I always find myself thinking “so 10.17 and 10.57 then”
😂😂

It's just practise. If you have lots of analogue clocks about and talk about the time often, using "analogue language " it becomes a matter of course. Ten to three, not fourteen fifty, that kind of thing. But often, lack of exposure means things are forgotten. My daughters are 21 and 22, and can manipulate the figures readily. My nieces are 15 and 17 and cannot.

Adding 4hr 35 minutes to 9.47pm is a lot easier using an analogue clock depiction than looking at the numbers for me, for instance.

Why are watches banned?!

@YukoandHiro a lot of modern watches are essentially a mini phone. Perfect for cheating.

All children are taught, it's on the primary curriculum.

Just like all children are taught roman numerals.

But if you learn something when you are 7, and then never look at an analogue clock (or roman numeral!) again, you're not going to remember the skill at 14. And have no reason to learn it, as it's not a skill you need.

Because smart watches, which are communication devices, are ubiquitous and don't always look like smart watches. For a few years, candidates were permitted a non-smart watch as long as they removed it and put it on the desk for invigilators to check. However as technology has moved on and smart watches which look like traditional watches have started to appear it has become impossible to police this and make it fair. There were also a number of complaints from watches being knocked off desks and breaking. So now the rule is no watches at all.

I'm really surprised. Honestly, SEN aside, we have an analogue kitchen clock, always have, and my DD's, their boyfriend's, us, all have analogue watches. In their group it's actually a thing to have the oldest, most beautiful, interesting, analogue watch! They are early twenties though.

I think it is really sad to lose these basic skills.

My dyslexic kids struggle with analogue, non-dyslexic have no issues, this is interesting for me because I always assumed it was a dyslexia thing.

I also can't sleep if there's a clock ticking. DPs randomly put one up in my bedroom when I was at college and only home for weekends. It got Frisbee'd down the stairs at about 3am...

DGM has a cuckoo clock, that sounds the quarter hour, which she leaves on all through the night. Apparently it's 'comforting'. Not the word I'd choose!

Although I used to live next to a church clock that chimed the hour at night, and bizarrely that was ok 🤷‍♂️

Oh! Sincere apologies if I came across as smug. Please rest assured that was not the intention, I was just thinking about how vastly different childhood is now from that of 60 years ago. It was like a different planet.

Anyone else imagining the confusion in, say, an action movie when one actor says to the other something like "2 shooters at 9 o'clock" and the other checks his phone for the time? 😂

😂

@80sMum it would be strange if childhood wasn't different seeing every single other part of life has evolved and is different also compared to 60 years ago