Can Youngsters Tell the Time from an Analog Watch?

[HectorLooi]

My sister-in-law, who is a teacher, teaches English to adult Chinese and secondary school students here in Singapore. 

She recently made a shocking discovery. Some of her students can't tell the time from an analog clockface!

All their lives, the students only used their smart phones or smart watches to tell the time, so they never learnt how to read an analog clock.

I'm going to test our Sunday school kids tomorrow to see how many can't read an analog clock.

How are the young kids in your country? Can they read a clock?

[rehajm]

1 minute ago, HectorLooi said:

My sister-in-law, who is a teacher, teaches English to adult Chinese and secondary school students here in Singapore. 

She recently made a shocking discovery. Some of her students can't tell the time from an analog clockface!

All their lives, the students only used their smart phones or smart watches to tell the time, so they never learnt how to read an analog clock.

I'm going to test our Sunday school kids tomorrow to see how many can't read an analog clock.

How are the young kids in your country? Can they read a clock?

…In the 1970s as a child of six or seven I could read the hours on a dial. My father worked for General Electric Co and brought home many prototypes of clocks with digital readouts- early led, card flip, rotating digit wheels, etc. It probably hindered my development a bit as I would run into a room with a digital clock for the time instead of learning to read the dial on our Waterbury kitchen clock …

[oldhippy]

Tell the time. I find most cannot speak English all you get is some sort of grunt. 

[mikepilk]

We have a generation who have never had an analog or mechanical watch.

When I sell a watch on ebay, I add a note with clear instructions on how to wind it, set the time/date etc. I had someone complain a manual wind watch I'd sent them was not working. Turns out that they didn't know which way to turn the crown to wind it.

[RichardHarris123]

Many here can't or find it difficult.  Another thing that throws them is, 9.40 or twenty to ten is the same. 

[oldhippy]

Never try the 24 hour clock on them God knows what you will get. 

[RichardHarris123]

They would be useless as fighter pilots, "there's a bogy on your six" , " where the hell is six?"

[mpe7383]

I have 3 children, all growing up too quick, but the youngest is still in primary school for one last year. I can confirm that here in the UK, learning to read an analogue clock is still on the curriculum, if memory serves me correct, they all did this around the age of 5 to 6.

[mbwatch]

USA: Two kids though elementary/primary school in the last ten years and they were taught how to read clocks in the earliest years. Though not drilled on paper as extensively as I was in the early 1980's (blank clock faces and asked to draw in the specified times), it was part of software and web-based math (that's what we call "maths" for you UK folks) curriculum they did before and during covid schooling.

But save the hand wringing and "kids these days..." worries in this country. There are still analog clocks in every classroom and those are not going away soon. So even if a 5 year old isn't taught as thoroughly, they still pick it up eventually.

Back to the 1980's... Plenty of my friends were not great at reading the analog clock back then either, and they wore digital Casios to school -- we envied them for their Casios.

[mpe7383]

I was very envious of those casios, that is the very reason I am where I am with these hundreds of watches that surround me. I couldn't have one then but I never forgot, then ebay was born...

Yes, analogue clocks in all the classrooms here too, soon learnt how to read them too, 30 seconds till lunch, 2 minutes till home time, then in secondary school youv'e got one hour to complete all the questions, time starts now!!

[GuyMontag]

 

 

 

[HectorLooi]

I found this article written last year.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/15/one-in-six-people-cant-tell-the-time-on-a-normal-clock-18445913/

So.... what's the future for mechanical watches and clocks? Should we start making jump hour watches again? Or those "rolodex" type clocks? 

[mbwatch]

7 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

Should we start making jump hour watches again? Or those "rolodex" type clocks? 

Starwheel & wandering hour complications! And as a child I would sit and stare at my father's "rolodex" alarm clock to try to catch it flipping; and I would blink & miss it every time.

For whatever it's worth, this afternoon I did ask my 14 year old kid if he felt like he could reliably read the time from a clock, and he said yes absolutely though he might be 1-2 minutes off. Nothing egregious like mixing up the hours & minutes though.