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.
If only there was a place they could learn that.
“Old clocks”?
Those are just clocks
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 just want to say, as someone who lives near such a bell, I’m grateful that they appear to observe “quiet hours” between 8pm and 8am. When I first moved in, I was worried it’d be dinging all night. Thank goodness that’s not the case.
I just have car alarms going off for no reason at 4am to worry about.
I thought these were still common? Any time I’m near a church they do their thing every 15 minutes, banging one bell 1-4 times and then if it’s 4 they bang another 1-12 times, signaling the time.
Well, not entirely, they’re usually quiet during the night, but you get my point.
Didn’t know people can’t understand those anymore.
The one near me plays the 4 bar “Westminster Quarters”. It plays one bar for each quarter hour. The full song on the hour, and bangs out the hour.
I used to live in a city with many striking clocks, which meant that no matter where you were in the city, you could probably hear a bell ring out on the hour.
I’m realising now how much I miss it. I remember times like drinking with friends into the wee hours of the morning, when we would hear a bell and then all fall silent as we counted how many chimes there were. If it was only 2, we would laugh and continue, but for four or more, we would wince and contemplate the future consequences of our choices.
Or while doing an all-nighter to get an assignment in before a morning deadline, how my handwriting speed would become a touch more frantic with each passing chime
Elder millennial here, I also struggle reading analogue clocks to this day. I can, but it just takes me a long time to do so. And I’ve been like this since I was a little kid.
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.
I met someone the other year who didn’t know the difference between cut and paste, and copy and paste
Edit: I agree with the last part of your comment especially. So often, I see people blaming GenZ for their lack of knowledge, but that feels unfair to me. From my perspective as a younger Millennial, it looked like society seemed to assume “oh, GenZ are digital natives, so they’re naturally a whizz at all this computer stuff” and often assumed that it wasn’t necessary to do much work to teach them how to use computers. Now that I’ve had more chance to meet GenZ folk in the workplace, I’ve heard this complaint from them a lot.
It’s made me grateful for growing up as a Millennial. I was too young to experience the early days of computing, but at least I got to experience computers and the internet before they became the closed, walled-off gardens that GenZ grew up with
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.As someone who is in a relevant field (higher ed), the teachers are doing what they can.
This past year I’ve had college students ask about the time during an exam because they can’t read the analog clock projected on the wall. If you can make it to 20 years old without realizing you’re missing a critical skill and learning it yourself, that’s also on you.
We’re also seeing a lack of critical thinking skills and ability to retain information. People don’t remember things that were taught 1-2 semesters ago. Not that they need “a refresher”, but completely forget core concepts (such as forgetting what CPU caches are in an advanced architecture course). Then there’s tons of people who can recite every definition on an exam, but not take a step further to come to a conclusion on a problem. (Git revert reverts checked files, so if I run the command after committing a test file the file is gone and no test is executed).
There is something wrong with students today. And I’m saying that as someone who just finished my undergrad during COVID. But the institutions are adapting by teaching things with less depth, which then dumbs down further education because they now have to re-cover everything from scratch…
If you can make it to 20 years old without realizing you’re missing a critical skill and learning it yourself, that’s also on you.
I think the difficulty here is judging what is and isn’t critical. How would they know, if they never have to use it otherwise, that reading analog clocks is critical?
We’re also seeing a lack of critical thinking skills and ability to retain information.
But the institutions are adapting by teaching things with less depth, which then dumbs down further education because they now have to re-cover everything from scratch.
I think this issue would have to be tackled early on, but I’m not sure how. At some age, you probably could explain to the students why it’s important, but I tend to overestimate the comprehension of younger students in particular, and just understanding the value doesn’t make for a good training in doing so either.
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.
Ok zoomer
pfff bet you were one of those poors with a bucket with a hole in it
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.
Learning to read analogue clocks also helps provide some foundational learning for circular geometry - being able to quickly identify relevant segments of a circle and their respective fractions (5 minutes = 1/12 = 30° = π/6 rad etc.) helps build towards being able to compute circular geometric problems more easily in later years.
Its good to know how to grow a turnip as a fallback skill.
And raise a barn
Turnips more or less grow themselves, but raising a barn without modern cordless tools and truss plates requires a lot of the skills we should be lamenting the loss of. Hand saws, hand planes, handmade nails (that are expensive), hand sharpening and sanding… there’s more to building a barn than growing a field of turnips is all I’m sayin.
Indeed, and even the turnips require soil that helps them grow. The Amish are experts at land management without chemicals. We take such poor care of our land that most nonprofessional farming will take years of land work just to get a useful yield.
I remember we were taught a segment on how to use an abacus and how they worked, because it demonstrated certain mathematical principles. Of course I don’t remember now how to use one, but I’m sure that visual demonstration of the mathematical concepts helped us as we were learning math. In the same way, learning about analog clocks at a young age would probably help with learning about geometry/trigonometry, angles and degrees, arcs, etc.
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.
What is AVR?
8 bit MCU series popularized by the Arduino a decade or two ago. Kind of obsolete now but still has some uses and attractions.
Is there a such thing as an intentionally simplified assembly language, perhaps one that targets a VM, for ease of development and learning purposes? Like the assembly equivalent of Lua, I guess.
There is TIS-100 by Zachtronics but I don’t think that counts.
Yeah anything not too complex will work. We had to implement a PIC simulator in university, I thought that was a great exercise too.
Although 6502 actually was my first assembly language.
6502 assembly language
Z80 would be good too. The kids should be able to implement the instruction set on a breadboard by intuition alone. There’s something wrong with the teachers and Big School if the kids don’t have it running CP/M by the end of the school year, preferably with a working port of Hack.
These schools don’t even teach kids base-8 math. Disgusting.
Youth of today are a failure. They neither show the initiative to adopt new and improved practices the way we broke from those of our parents’ generation, nor the wisdom to recognize that our generation’s ways are the correct ones and should be followed to the letter.
Youth of today are some of the most forward thinking empathetic no nonsense people around.
I love the younger generations, their compassion and humanity is leagues ahead of their predecessors.
Anyone who shits on them is a failure.
Yeah, I share your view. I wish that the youth of today could have grown up in a better world than I did, but unfortunately for most, that’s not the case. Sure, there are some things that are better, but by and large, young people are facing so much hard stuff. In spite of that (and perhaps even because of that), I have seen so many of them who are deeply caring and engaged in politics.
I worry about some things but I do like the activism I’m seeing
You have to be paying attention to this one. An /s would have been a good idea.
Don’t mind the people who can’t get a joke, I thought this was funny.
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.
do we need a video essay to know that a clock display that is basically just progress bars is a good way to tell progress in that progress bar?
Maybe not but technology connections is great.
no doubt it’s a great channel.
I have trouble with numbers (they didn’t have dyscalculia when I was a kid) and this was a chief complaint of mine, moving from elementary school to high school, where the clock were all digital. I had to “convert” it in my head to the clock face so my image-oriented brain could properly grasp it. Took me a few years to normalize it.
This isn’t interesting
‘Old clocks’? You mean… analog clocks? The ones in practically every household outside of America?
And in! Lots of homes have analog clocks here in the US. Historically, the US has had some really beautiful designs, too.
My mom has a thing for clocks. There are some places in her house where you can see 5 clocks, not counting watches or smartphones. No, I don’t need a clock in the bathroom, yet there it is. Granted, some of those are digital clocks, but some are also analog with Roman numerals.
where can I get one of those Anal OG clocks?
Outside of america ,explain more
in practically every household outside of America?
Is this actually the case anymore?
“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.
i hate this shit, ofc they don’t know, who was planning to teach them? certainly not the fucking schools imposing this shit.
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
You make it sound like you’re old 😂
Yeah I graduated high school in 2019 and some of my classmates had a hard time reading analog clocks, in private schools lmao. It’s definitely has increased with Covid and smart phones but kids who don’t want to learn never do.
And most kids, (and adults), never do want to learn.
Source: I’ve stood in front of a classroom trying to make math fun
I’m 59 and all the teenagers I knew could read clocks (both kinds) just fine, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Only in murica 🕠
You didn’t understand what I meant. I meant that those articles complaining about the youth have always existed
To give another data point for comparison, I am about as young a Millennials as one can be (I’m 29), and I don’t recall there being any issues in reading analog clocks in my cohort.
This is weirdly both surprising and not surprising to me. Not surprising because like I say, I am one of the last of the Millennials, and it does seem intuitive that this would be an issue that started with Gen Z. It’s surprising though, because 9 years seems like quite a small time window for such a change to have happened
LOL, why are they stunned to learn this?
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.
Yeah, it reminds me of languages. I learned French to a pretty high level in high school (I was a try hard whose brain clicked well with languages), but over the last decade, I have rarely used those skills and I was recently shocked to realise how much my knowledge had atrophied. It’s easy to become complacent once you feel you have learned something, but you use it or you lose it.
Yup. I learned cursive in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Probably the last time I used it as well. If I needed to write something in cursive, I would be pretty screwed. I remember some of the easier stuff, like the vowels. But if I needed to write a “q” or “k” I don’t think I could remember it.
With that said, learning how to read an analog clock is way easier. It’s a formula/method, and the numbers are right there. It’s not memorization. This should be something easy to teach.
The problem is that analog clocks are not in the curriculum for middle school and high school. It’s hard to find time to teach middle schoolers how to read clocks when you are struggling through “To Kill a Mockingbird” with a bunch of students on a 4th grade reading level.
Teenagers in inner city schools not knowing how to read analog clocks is a much more complicated issue than it seems on the surface. The solution is not “well they should have just had the childhood that I had and it wouldn’t be a problem”
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.
Still not teaching about taxes… or anything useful, clearly.
… Not doing that anymore? Because they’re very rare and you can easily get by without it most of the time
I work in schools. We have them in every hallway and classroom. But the kids do not know how to read them, and they don’t even seem interested to learn even though it would take all of two minutes to wrap their head around. Seen it in the middle and high schools.
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.
Please. Turn every school into a node in the network
Yeah, especially with schools being somewhat evenly distributed around cities - this could really help with coverage. I’ve only read about Meshtastic but I recall it’s extremely low bandwidth so that would be a problem for the little dissidents.
Of course we could just have schools that don’t blow so hard you want to tune it out and am electronics club but since we apparently hate kids they gotta invent their way around censorship
Yeah I bet they’re going to figure out mandatory education that’s more interesting and fun than chatting with your friends and playing games. Lol
