"Can Young People Read a Clock?" (oh, my...)

[hlthe2b]

Somebody didn’t learn about the big hand and the little hand.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” took to the streets of Hollywood on Tuesday to see if young people could read an old-fashioned clock.

Is this widespread (i.e., younger adults and teens don't know how to read a standard clock)?
I've been alarmed at how many schools are not teaching cursive writing anymore. Imagine not being able to read one's parents, grandparents letters nor historical documents. Not even our constitution and declaration of independence. It makes me very sad.

[trev]

1. My 10-year-old grand nephew cannot.

[CrispyQ]

2. AM or PM?

That was great!

I read a fascinating article about how those of us who grew up with analog clocks have a better sense of the passage of time than the digital generation. They tested people by having them say when they thought 5 minutes had passed, & then 15, then 30 & then an hour. The more time passed, the less accurate the digital generation was.

A young woman asked me the time once & I told her it was a quarter to five. She said, "But what time is it?" At first I didn't understand why she didn't understand & then I remembered the article & said, "It's 4:45."

I totally believe there's an advantage to the visual segments of an analog clock.

[trev]

6. Analog clocks are more natural, IMO.

We're used to thinking of the seasons as a cycle, we accept the monthly orbit of the moon and the Earth's yearly transit around the sun.

As a side note, I personally also prefer analog music recordings to digital CDs. I'm very happy to see vinyl making a comeback.

[DBoon]

80. analog clock began with the sundial

they do mimic the natural progression of time

[trev]

81. True.

I used to have a sundial in my backyard, and have built some when I was hiking in the woods. Great way to keep time.

[customerserviceguy]

87. While I recognize the difference

between a quarter to five, and a quarter after five, I have to stop and think about "a quarter of five". I'd bet no one under forty knows what to make of that.

[Ohiogal]

3. Wow, that's just unbelievable!

Spoken as a dedicated clock watcher throughout my school career .....

[hlthe2b]

4. Hah! Me too...

Somehow watching a digital clock proves pretty meaningless.

[Doreen]

5. I am 51 and can not read a face clock well at all.

It has to do with the crosses of my ADHD, learning disability, and dyslexia. It is not something I am unable to do because no one taught me or I was to lazy to learn or just did not pay attention. Yes, I CAN read one but I have to look at it for awhile and adjust where the hands are in my mind to figure out what it says. It is kind of embarrassing but at this time when most clocks are digital no one notices. On the other hand I occasionally turn the numbers around on a digital clock also due to my dyslexia but not very often.

[hlthe2b]

7. Spatial recognition is affected by a number of neural patterns...

With these younger people, it isn't because of that; they apparently never learned.

[Doreen]

16. If I had children, despite my problem

reading an analog clock I would still teach them the how to read one. If you do not have my kind of issues then there is no excuse not to learn and no excuse not to teach a child to read one.

Even if a child has the same problem like mine they should still be taught. It might be harder for them but at least they can do it to an extent.


I have been places where there are no digital clocks and I have had to figure out what time it is. At least I can do it even if I have to look at the damn clock for 2 minutes. 😁

[gratuitous]

8. Forget it!

Isaac Asimov did a monthly essay for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, covering just about any topic that piqued his inquisitive imagination. One essay he did was titled "Forget it!" and was spurred by his trip to a used bookstore and coming across an old math textbook from the late 19th or early 20th century. There was a unit given over to weights and measures, and covered the stuff that schoolchildren in Nebraska or Kansas might expect to come across in the course of their lives.

In addition to the standard bafflement of ounces and cups, inches and feet and miles, there was also dry measures of cloth and crops. Not just yards of cloth, which at least could interrelate to yards of distance, but ells of cloth, Dutch ells, Flemish ells, and the correlation of the various measures: "If you have six ells of gingham for sale at $3 per ell, and your customer wants to buy two Flemish ells of gingham, what price should you charge, and how many ells of gingham will you have left, if any?"

Okay, your eyes should be crossed, too.

Asimov's point was that for all this folderol, meaningless for a more modern era when cloth wasn't routinely purchased except by hand-crafters and quilters, it wasted a great deal of class time drilling these concepts into young minds. Instead of learning how many yards there are in a league or how many chains make a rod, class time could be better spent on other things. Yes, legal descriptions of property still have lengths measured in links and rods, acres and sections, but those old measures are really a specialized province.

In the same way, learning cursive and reading a clock face is just mumbo-jumbo for a new generation. Keyboards and screens have replaced pencil and paper, digital readouts have superseded clock faces. Unless you're an historian or antiquarian, people today don't need these skills anymore. Yes, it's fun to point and laugh at people who don't keep up with stuff that I spent weeks if not months working on during my own time in the drafty classrooms of my youth, but it's a largely useless skill to write in cursive or exclusively use analog clocks. Boo hoo for me.

Asimov's solution for learning all these archaic weights and measures was to convert to the metric system. In the same way we teach young people (if we still do) how to count money in our decimal system of coinage, we can teach weights, measures, distances, and the rest in about a week using the metric system. For example, it's 50 miles from where I live to the state capital. But what does that mean, anyway? If you tell me that distance is 80 kilometers, that's really just a different number and even an old dog like me will catch on in a fairly short time. I may remember the old miles and pounds, but even that memory will fade with disuse as I get accustomed to meters and kilograms.

[hlthe2b]

11. It isn't simply a matter of new methods replacing the old.

It has been extensively shown that neural connections that influence learning, spatial understanding, hand-eye coordination, and general brain development occur with the act of cursive writing and learning to recognize patterns. Similar learning accompanies classic analog clocks. There is reason to be concerned when these skills are not taught/learned.

There is similarly a reason physicians screening the elderly for early dementia include the test of asking them to draw a clock at various times. Failure to be able to do so (among those who previously could) is extremely significant.

[gratuitous]

13. So spend time teaching music or art

Far more relevant to today's world, and integrates several disparate brain functions. Doctors will be able to come up with new tests as that population ages.

[hlthe2b]

37. That is helful too. It needn't be an either or. But I do think it criminal not to teach children

to reach historical documents.

[gratuitous]

48. Do children want to read historical documents?

I'm not trying to be contrarian, but young people in my experience aren't all that interested in reading historical documents. A lot of older people aren't interested, either. Historians and antiquarians are interested, but they're not a huge segment of the population. Learning to read all the various permutations of hand-writing is about as high a priority for most people as reading historical documents composed in hieroglyphs or cuneiform. Post-high school institutions can offer it as an elective. Someone who gets interested in antiquities after their high school years can learn the skills necessary to read old letters in their original form if she wants.

I'm not a strict practicalist (is that a word?) in education, and learning for its own sake doesn't always have to have a "You'll use this later in life" purpose. I think there are more useful areas of study besides learning cursive writing or reading an analog clock.

[hlthe2b]

52. If you took some time to research neurodevelopment, I don't think you'd be

so adamant. Yes, there certainly are other ways to build those links but cursive writing is among the good methods. Music training similarly (though how many schools still offer music classes?) and as I've agreed in other subthreads, even via the eye-hand coordination training that comes via video games. To ignore this is to put these kids at a developmental disadvantage, no matter what method is taught.

But yes, given we are a mere generation out from handwritten correspondence, I do find it sad that this generation will be totally lacking such skills.

[Codeine]

73. Our local schools have music programs, thankfully.

There seems to be a concerted effort to bring music classes back everywhere, and both my kids can read music, though only one has any real interest in playing. It’s a skill I wish I had learned as a kid, not for neurodevelopment but simply because I’d really love to able to properly play an instrument instead of workmanlike thumping along with my bass.

[X_Digger]

54. Yes, the lack of classical greek in schools is a real shame.

I mean, they're historical.

[hlthe2b]

55. Obviously you know if you read my previous posts that that is not what I'm saying at all, but

don't let that keep you from showing your....

[X_Digger]

58. Yes, you're focused on *your* little slice.

I mean, why not teach old english?

I mean, these kids, if they can't read Beowulf, they're just not learning history.

[hlthe2b]

59. There is a saying about

showing your....

You proved it.

[X_Digger]

62. Greek history is close to 3,000 years old. Cursive? Not so much.

But keep focusing on a myopic piece of 'history'.

[Codeine]

71. Only a specific subset of historical documents

are written in modern cursive. Reading a lot of old papers requires all sorts of deciphering, and the average person of any age has very little interest in that sort of thing.

The important documents - the ones that impact their lives - are available in print.

[hlthe2b]

72. One's parents letters are technically historical documents.

It seems all here are ignoring the fact that many professions--including medicine, pharmacy, law, engineering require those paraprofessionals working in the field to be able to read notes, prescriptions, older noncomputerized medical records and charting notes. Even when 90% or more becomes readily computerized and voice-activated transcribing replaces a lot of hand-written notes, we are not there yet.

These kids couldn't even get an internship in many settings if they could not read a quickly jotted cursive note or record.

[Codeine]

74. It isn't like reading modern cursive is hard.

Reading it is easier than doing it, I think. I base this assumption on the fact that I really don’t write cursive well but I have no trouble reading it. Perhaps it’s more difficult for younger people who encounter it less frequently.

[hlthe2b]

76. Cursive writing is making a comeback in classrooms in several states -- and Texas is the latest

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/us/cursive-is-coming-back-trnd/index.html

[Codeine]

78. I don't think it ever really left in California.

That said, most kids seem to learn it and cast it off immediately, which is easy to do in a computerized world. Many decades ago I half-assed learned it and went back to printing as soon as I figured out the teachers didn’t care how I wrote as long as I was writing. They were probably just happy they didn’t have to look at my scrawl anymore.

[GulfCoast66]

14. So before written language and clocks humans lacked these skills?

There is more than one way to gain skills.

[hlthe2b]

38. I NEVER said there wasn't. But there is a gap in those not learning.

[MineralMan]

20. An ell's half a yard, innit?

Sort of. It's based on the distance from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. It's a variable measurement, really, but it did get standardized, sort of.

It's interesting to know, but useless, really, in today's world.

Gills, pecks and bushels. Gone as real words in real use.

How much is a dram? What is the weight of a grain? More obsolete measurements.

I think they're fun to know, but they're useless now, because nobody else knows what they mean.

[matt819]

9. The manager of a local car repair shop

told me about this problem with some of his employees last year. They literally could not read an analog clock. The manager had to teach him.

[MineralMan]

10. Of course not. Why would they?

Knowledge changes. Everywhere now, clocks are digital. While there are still analog clocks around, they're irrelevant to people who have a cell phone at hand. There's no real benefit to today's younger folks to learn to recognize the time instantly on an analog clock, so they don't bother.

Further, time is stated as Hour then Minutes. The old short hand time telling is finished. It's "ten till four" is meaningless to a digital clock person, because it's totally analog clock related. That's sad, because it's a much better way to say "it's almost four" than, "it's 3:50."

A "quarter to" or a "quarter past" no longer has meaning to a digital clock person. For an analog clock person, the hour is clearly divided into quarter and half-hours, geometrically. But, on an analog clock, that designation is meaningless.

There are still big analog clocks all over the place, but they're irrelevant to the digital clock person. They don't even see them as clocks. A clock has the hour numbers, a colon, and then the minute numbers. Almost none of the digital clocks display the seconds, so they've become irrelevant, too.

You just look at your cell phone. It will tell you the time. If you go into a new time zone, it will automatically change to that zone, as well.

I don't wear a watch, unless I'm traveling or have an appointment somewhere. I do have a cell phone, but I prefer looking at the watch on my wrist in such circumstances and leave the phone in my pocket. I flew from Minnesota to California last week. I wore my Timex analog watch. After the plane took off, I took off the watch and changed it to California time. The Gen Z person in the seat next to me looked at me oddly, as if wondering what I was doing.

'Tis funny, knowledge is. We learn what's useful and disregard the rest.

[zipplewrath]

27. A quarter hour is a quarter hour

A pound of feathers and a pound of lead weigh the same.
A quarter of an hour is 15 minutes, whether it is on an analog clock or a digital one.
The latest trend in teaching math (common core) spends alot of time focusing on quantities instead of numbers. It would seem understanding an analog clock would be one good way to re-enforce this concept.

[MineralMan]

32. On an analog clock, one can instantly see the circle

divided into quarters and halves. On a digital clock, a calculation is required.

That is why digital clock users never refer to quarter or half hours. That time statement will fall out of use, I guarantee.

What is 60 divided by 4? Many people cannot instantly do that division problem.

[zipplewrath]

40. I sorta understand

But a quarter of an hour isn't exactly advance calculus. Surely people still speak of a "half hour". A quarter isn't exactly a stretch.

[MineralMan]

57. I don't know that they do.

The younger people I know aren't casual about time statements. I just don't hear "half an hour" from them. Digital clocks support a more precise time sense. People simply read the numbers.

Dividing 60 by 4 isn't as intuitive as it seems. The clock face doesn't help, either. It is divided into 12 segments. Half of 12 is six. Half of six, or a quarter of twelve is three. The actual minutes or seconds require multiplication by 5. On the clock face, halves and quarters of the face are directly observable. That's why we use those terms. In most cases, 15 minutes is precise enough, really.

Without the analog divided and numbered circle, we have no visual sense of halves and quarters of the hour. So it's not a natural way to describe time in the world of digital clocks. You and I are used to tho old language and easily transition back and forth. Those who do not understand the clock face don't make that transition without mentally calculating. It's not convenient to do so.

Halves and quarters of hours are a shortcut For analog clock users. For digital clock users, they are not a shortcut at all, but require calculations. We take the easy path.

[Persondem]

42. Learning analog time is a great way to develop numeracy - fluency with numbers.

Replacing analog clocks with digital is akin to handing kids calculators in first grade and giving them a pass on learning addition, subtraction etc. ... it just compounds the dumbing down of society.

[llmart]

45. Guess they don't need to learn reading either. There are now audio books.

Pretty soon, they won't have to learn how to do anything. It will all be done for them on their phones or whatever devices come out in the future.

In my opinion, it's the learning that's important because of the development of different brain cells in the learning process. Seniors have mostly been pretty accepting of learning how to use cell phones/computers, other digital devices, but sometimes younger people criticize their quickness or ability to do all the things a device can do. Young people might actually be curious enough about the world to learn how to do some of the things from the past. One could always listen to a recording of a cello playing, but still there are young people who want to learn how to play one.

Yes, knowledge changes, but knowledge and practical skills are two different things. I like knowing how to bake a cake from scratch even though it isn't necessary in today's world. I like knowing that I can make a dress from a pattern on my sewing machine, though I haven't done that in 50 years. I also know how to read and understand Latin, but I haven't done that in 50 years either. However, learning something like Latin has made so much other learning easier for me throughout my life.

Personally, I like learning anything. Our brains, especially when we're younger have the capacity to learn lots of stuff and the more the merrier!

[Codeine]

67. Most kids still like to learn things.

My son just out of nowhere decided he wanted to take band class and learn the clarinet. I envy how fast he’s picked it up. My daughter paints and is always looking up new techniques on Youtube, and she taught herself to sew because she wanted to make two-headed teddy bears (don’t ask.)

As long as you foster curiosity kids will be kids and always want to discover new things.

[llmart]

68. I agree.

My oldest was and still is one of those people (like me) who just likes to learn stuff - anything. Growing up he was very interested in trying things like learning how to carve an arrow with a pocket knife. Did he need to know how to carve an arrow with a pocket knife? No, but he liked knowing how to do it.

[lunatica]

12. I taught my son to read a clock way back in the 1970s

Teachers weren’t teaching this even back then.

I taught him even though it’s hardly necessary anymore.

When I was working before I retired a year and a half ago I saw that the students didn’t wear wrist watches. They would see what time it was on the iPhones. It’s just as easy as looking at your wrist.

[pstokely]

88. I learned how in the 90s

probably depends on the state curriculum

[GeorgeGist]

15. I am amazed at how many adults ...

can't read a sundial.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

18. Why can't millennials use an abacus? nt

[MineralMan]

25. Actually, probably more millennials can than boomers.

In some schools, the abacus is taught as a means of teaching different counting methods.

[MineralMan]

21. And even fewer who can properly orient one.

[Codeine]

75. I asked my son to thatch the roof.

He looked at me like I was crazy. Kids these days.

[essme]

82. Or better yet adults that drive but cannot read a map. When the phone stops they are toast.

But hey who cares, right? They can stop and ask another adult for directions (if of course the new adult can give them outside Google maps). But wait...North? South? East West? Fuck all, now we need to read a compass???

And quite a few are obviously illiterate as the word "STOP" on top of a sign at a road reads "slow down/yield" or nothing at all. Less that 20% of the drivers in my town actually stop. So it must be that they are moving on to the 22nd century English (and universally too) definition. Thank gods for progress.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

17. I don't think I can read a sundial.

So I can't call myself "clock-wise".

[TygrBright]

19. They can't use dial phones, either.

And they'd be utterly helpless trying to get broadcast reception with only a rabbitear antenna.

amusedly,
Bright

[MineralMan]

23. Not so much any longer. Since broadcast TV went digital,

the rabbit ears are back for those who have cut the cable cord. Of course, there are fancy indoor antennas for digital TVs, but an old pair of rabbit ears works just fine. We have a TV in our bedroom, where there's no cable connection. It's connected to an 1960s-style rabbit ears antenna, but with a modern cable connector and gets all the local digital broadcasts. For a couple of stations, I can get a better signal by turning them slightly, just like in the old days.

[Codeine]

79. This thread made me realize

that it’s been about thirty years since I last used a clicky dial to change channels on a television set. Thirty five years since I last “dialed” a phone. Maybe fifteen since I last had a land line in the house.

[KatyaR]

22. I had a boss whose kids didnt know how to use a key

to get into their house. The son lost his garage door opener on the bus, and his mom had to go let him in the house.

#handtoGod

[MineralMan]

24. Now, that's funny!

What are the doors even for on that house? At our house, nobody ever comes to the front door. The side door, or "kitchen door" is where people automatically go. The only time we use he front door is to get the mail after the carrier has come.

We don't have an attached garage, though, so we do have to go out in the rain to get into the car. How 1950s, eh?

[Codeine]

46. My kid didn't know until recently.

I had groceries so I gave him the key. He looked at me quizzically and I just said “Dude.” He figured it out.

[delisen]

26. Dn't think there is any benefit to knowing how to read a face clock.

as a means of measuring time.

It is useful in reading old novels.

[zipplewrath]

30. Until someone wants to give you a heading.

Watch your six.
It's at the 3 o'clock position.
Incoming at 2 o'clock.
Put one each at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions.

[delisen]

34. Interesting. If we had never had face clocks what would have been devised

for communicating that news?

[zipplewrath]

39. Probably moon/star/sun references

Maybe something about the north star.
Alternately we might have learned radians in a difference context such that people would tell you to look to pi, half pi, that kind of thing.

[delisen]

41. Thanks.

[Persondem]

43. Analog clocks are a great way to develop numeracy - fluency with numbers.

Just because we can use newer technology doesn't mean we should.

[sinkingfeeling]

28. My 13 year old granddaughter can't.

[cynatnite]

29. Does anyone know how many people correctly answered that didn't make the cut?

That's what they do here. They use this to make it look like everyone under the age of 25 is stupid and don't know how to tell time.

Why anyone falls for this shit is beyond me.

[zipplewrath]

31. Or their 15 seconds of fame

I'm often suspicious that people know their best way to get on TV is to give the absolute dumbest answer, or at least funniest.

[cynatnite]

33. That wouldn't surprise me, especially if they know what show they represent. n/t

[Midnightwalk]

35. A quarter to 5 still makes sense

I agree some skills are obsolete like reading an analog clock. I wonder if it still makes sense to learn roman numerals because that was the most common context people saw them.

Phrases like 10 to 5 or a quarter to 5 still make sense in a digital world. I get that the visual reference helps but it’s just arithmetic. 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour not just a quarter of the clock.

I think i learned to read cursive before it was covered in school by guessing what the words were and working back to letters. I never was good at writing. I thought the goal of penmanship lessons was to write those lines as fast as possible and go back to day dreaming.

[happybird]

83. We learned Roman Numerals one year in grade school.

It was 1984: MCMLXXXIV. Good thing it was a long one, because at the end of movies they give the year the movie came out in Roman numerals. DH always asks me to translate and I can usually work it out using my '1984' as a guide, lol! It's funny which random things from childhood stick in your brain.

[SammyWinstonJack]

36. That can not possibly be real.

[Codeine]

44. They probably can't milk a cow

or run a plow behind an ox. The world changes, and skillsets change with it. My kids can use a face clock, but that’s just because that’s what we have in the living room. To be fair the youngest takes a moment to worth through it, but he gets there.

[hlthe2b]

47. that isn't the point at all. It is the neural development that comes from such spatial learning

that, if not replaced by something that affords similar development, is lost. It is for that reason that a lot of teachers of those with developmental delays (in particular) WANT to teach cursive writing, for example.

[cynatnite]

49. Kids who don't know Roman numerals, write cursive doesn't make them less smart...

Kids are learning computer and other skills that can give the kind of development you're talking about. Have you been in a classroom lately?

They don't have roman numerals or cursive on the chalkboards. They have power point. They are learning far more things than I ever did and at a younger age. My nine year old grandson learned some Spanish this last year.

[hlthe2b]

50. Whoah. I NEVER said anything of the kind. It is a tool that helps teach spatial development and

aids in neural development. Just as playing musical instruments and many other leaned skills can do.

I never said anything even remotely like or to suggest these kids are less intelligent. I said nothing of the kind and though I want to think you sincerely misunderstood, to accuse me of that is just beyond unfair and quite frankly horrific. You and I are long term DUers. You know me far better than that, cynatnite.

Computer-based learning is great. It is a different skill set and they will learn skills we were not taught. That does not mean they do not need to develop neurologic connections that spatial learning teaches--whatever the form that might take. And yes, before the gamer fans enter the discussion, that is a means to develop eye-hand coordination and spatial skills as well.

[cynatnite]

51. Horrific???

Really, you want to go with that?

I'll grant you that I might have misunderstood, but it sure as hell didn't warrant "horrific". LOL

My point was is that classrooms have changed as have what's being taught. People act ridiculous when kids aren't being taught what they were taught. Classrooms are much more advanced than they used to be. I hope they keep advancing.

Anyway, lighten up a little. I'm really trying to today.

[Codeine]

60. But they gain those skills elsewhere.

I get what you’re saying, but attributing all that sort of development to specific, and fairly modern, activities seems a bit facile.

[hlthe2b]

61. Do they though?. There are studies showing not all kids are.

[Codeine]

64. Of course some aren't.

That’s almost certainly less to do with cursive or clocks and more to do with staring mindlessly at phones all day instead of playing with toys or running around with other kids.

If it could be shown that one cohort of children taught cursive had superior neural development than a similar cohort of children who weren’t taught cursive then I would be convinced, all things being equal.

I learned cursive but never really mastered it, and simply didn’t use it. I don’t feel like my own development suffered beyond having crappy penmanship. I learned analog clock skills because digital clocks were unusual before everyone started getting VCRs and we discovered the magic of the perpetually flashing 12:00.

Your argument isn’t wrong, it just seems like a repeat of every generation complaining about the next and how doomed they are. Most kids seem like they’ll be fine, and the ones that won’t probably would have been just as screwed thirty years ago, or three hundred years ago.

[hlthe2b]

66. There have been studies showing the impact

of cursive writing on that specific set of neuro linkages. Whether it is superior to other training that affords similar stimulation to those areas of the brain may remain an open question.

[AJT]

53. My grandson can't write or read cursive.

I wonder how he'll sign his name.

[Codeine]

56. He'll develop a signature.

It may be cursive, fancy print, or a combination thereof. Most signatures are little more than a stylized scribble anyway. For a while my job had me signing fifty to sixty documents a day — you can be sure that after a while my formerly decent signature devolved into a sort-of “J” followed by a wiggle.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

63. Lazy comedy and, to me, not a big concern. Including the cursive thing -- people have been

deciphering handwriting for hundreds of years, and whether or not they learn cursive in third grade generally does not play a role in such things.

[hunter]

65. I was among the last to use slide rules, log, and trig tables in math and science classes.

When I was in college students were still using a few specialized tables in engineering classes, but only for calculations that were not conveniently done on the scientific calculators of the day. (I have nothing nice to say about today's "approved" calculators which are a rip-off, just like textbooks.)

I have a small collection of slide rules that I've found in thrift stores and that people have given me as gifts. But I'm not so nimble with a slide rule as I used to be, and I've probably forgotten at least half the little tricks and shortcuts "everybody" was expected to know.

Knowing how to use a slide rule, or knowing how to use log and trig tables, are not likely to be useful skills again.

I don't think my own kids were interested in analog clocks until fancy watches became retro-fashionable.

[VOX]

69. Digital time destroys the visual perception of "impending" time.

Last edited Wed May 29, 2019, 07:09 PM - Edit history (1)

That is, one might look at a digital timepiece and see 3:40, plenty of time for a 4:00 appointment.

In contrast, one looks at an analog timepiece and sees that minute-hand sweeping toward the 12:00 marker, making those twenty minutes to 4:00 a *visual* reality, or “Holy shit, I’ve gotta get going if I’m gonna make it by 4:00!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

70. I did not learn to tell time until I was in 4th grade.

That was in 1957. My fourth grade teacher knew that at least half of the kids got that far without learning how to read a clock, and she spent time the first week of school teaching us.

So maybe all of you here who came of age before digital clocks learned to tell time/read an analog clock at a much younger age, but I bet many of you learned later than you remember.

However, everyone should be taught to read a standard clock.

Oh, and a lot of schools are going back to teaching cursive.

[hlthe2b]

77. Yup. "Cursive writing is making a comeback in classrooms in several states -- and Texas is latest"

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/us/cursive-is-coming-back-trnd/index.html

[hunter]

85. I was tortured to learn cursive, fifth grade through a few middle school teachers.

Encouraged by my mother, I learned to type. Keyboards made sense to me. Printed type made sense to me.

In college I would take three big blue books to exams to hold my kindergarten scrawl.

It's my sixth decade here on earth and my handwriting will never be anything more than chicken scratches. There's no fixing me. I still struggle through reading or writing it.

[DeminPennswoods]

84. In current dementia tests, one of the tasks is to draw

an analog clock face. Not being able to do it is considered a significant sign of loss of mental acuity. When these younger folks are much older, there's going to have to be a different way to assess mental acuity.

[petronius]

86. My undergrads must be exceptional then, 'cause given how often they all look back at the

clock every lecture, I'm pretty sure they've got that thing down to the second hand!

(Although it doesn't help that about 1/3 of the clocks on my campus seem to be wrong at any given moment.)

[elfin]

89. if you are in the Medicare Wellness Exams - you are probably asked

to repeat a word sequence during the exam and to draw in the analog hands for a stated time on a circle.

I remarked to the doc that that test may need to disappear with coming generations who never learned to tell time that way. His response? "That's too bad because that test is much more important than the word test in revealing early signs of dementia or Alzheimers."

Wonder what they will ask to reveal those possible spatial and memory weaknesses.

[MineralMan]

90. There are at least a dozen analog clocks in our house.

No two show exactly the same time. A couple are still on daylight savings time. The one next to my favorite chair is part of a weather and temperature device for which I lost the manual. It has six buttons on the back, all unlabeled. It shows a time that is exactly 13 minutes later than the correct time. I automatically do the math when I look at it.

At least three of the analog clocks no longer work at all, but remain on their wall because they have some significance beyond their clockness.

Of course, the correct time, with a high degree of precision, is displayed on the cable tv box and on various cellular devices nearby, so no matter, really. The variations are diverting...

[Codeine]

91. My wife sets the clocks ahead 10-12 minutes

because she thinks this will prevent her chronic tardiness. The fact that she automatically adjusts the time in her head to compensate for the setting doesn’t seem to matter.

On the plus side, having to make the adjustments probably helped the kids gain some clock skills.

[MineralMan]

93. Yup. "I still have ten minutes, so no hurry."

Our house is full of silliness. We enjoy it. I also collect old telephones. From an oak wall phone next to the kitchen door to a candlestick phone from the 1930s, wherever you sit down in our house, there is a working telephone from the past. I've disconnected the ringers on most of them, to limit the load on our POTS line.

All of my old phones are connected, so I can take a call from pretty much everywhere in the house. It's interesting to see what younger folks make of a phone with a separate earpiece and microphone. It's not intuitive, and they often can't figure out how one would talk on such a device.

On the other hand, I use cordless phones almost exclusively to make calls. And don't even ask how many cellular devices there are here.

[Blue Owl]

92. Correct answer: Impeachment Time

n/t