<p>Agree with all the points in your first paragraph, GGD. That would be good for all people’s understanding about how the, you know, actual world works.</p>
<p>Obviously we need to teach students how to read [binary</a> clocks](<a href=“How To Read a Binary Clock - YouTube”>How To Read a Binary Clock - YouTube). Side benefits include better understanding of exponents, multiplication, addition, and non-base 10 number systems. It also offers the advantage over most analogue clocks in that you can easily differentiate between AM and PM without having to see the sun.</p>
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Most knowledge is a good thing but very few people know those older methods of determining the time - including most posters here no doubt.</p>
<p>Really, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t want to learn it just so they ‘would’ know it whether they ‘needed’ to know it or not - especially since they see all these round things on walls all the time. I’m not sure it’s to the level of needing to teach it in school. I actually find it hard to imagine that a second or third grader doesn’t already know how to tell the time via a rotational clock. Don’t parents teach their kids anything?</p>
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But what do you do when someone in England says the time is “half six”?</p>
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They’re not really ‘needed’. They exist ubiquitously but they can be replaced easily by digital clocks in most cases but that’d make a traditional grandfather clock not look too cool. They’re so common still though that it’s surprising someone can’t read one reasonably well.
btw - My watch, which I rarely wear because I’m surrounded by digital clocks on my phone, laptop, microwave, stove, car, etc. is digital. It’s very cheap (maybe $10) but handles multiple timezones, has alarms, stopwatch functions, etc. and can keep time better than a very expensive Rolex. I wouldn’t consider replacing it with an analog one that has substantially less functionality for likely more expense (but I don’t wear jewelry either).</p>
<p><em>writes newfound knowledge on resume</em></p>
<p>Well, guys, I am now proficient in telling the time of binary clocks.</p>
<p>GGD, you’re surprised second and third graders don’t miraculously know how to read a analog clock?</p>
<p>We started telling time in 2nd grade. I got it in 5 minutes. We were <em>still</em> spending inordinate amounts of time on it in 6-7th grade math. Grrrr. It drove me nuts.</p>
<p>We have all analog clocks in my house and lots of them. I most definitely think of time in little slices of the clock. If I read a digital clock, I have to convert it to analog in my brain, sort of like learning Spanish when English is the first language.</p>
<p>S2 can barely read an analog clock and it takes him a long time. He does have some dyslexia/LDs. I used to worry a lot about this lack of reading a clock, but he’s 22 and doing just fine. I can’t find one circumstance where it’s held him back. D has significant language LD, but she can read an analog clock just fine.</p>
<p>I do worry about the cursive stuff because I’m an avid genealogist and I don’t want this skill lost.</p>
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Yes and no but I didn’t use the word ‘miraculously’ because there’s no miracle needed. Yes because it’s something they should have been taught at a younger age at home by parents. No because I know a lot of parents don’t teach their kids a lot of things like this.</p>
<p>But they must be taught, nonetheless. I thought you were getting at that analog clock reading is acquired by the child through the exposure of analog clocks on their environment. As if they’d just pick it up. That’s why I used “miraculously”. A miracle would be needed.</p>
<p>Get the kids a watch. Most are analog.</p>
<p>I am sure when the analog clock is replaced by the digital clock several colleges that have gothic and classic buildings and clock towers will have their rank dropped down on USNWR. The followings are included but not limited to: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, Duke, Stanford, UNC, UC Berkerley,…</p>
<p>Be sure with your wish.</p>
<p>I bought a nice little alarm clock for S1 to take to college. He told me he didn’t need it. I told him he did. I unpacked it unopened four years later!</p>
<p>^^^^^lol. :D</p>
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You’re right - I did imply that when I mentioned the clock watching in class watching the second hand slowly sweep and the minute hand move even more slowly towards the 12 when they’re sprung free.</p>
<p>I think with very little instruction, this ‘practice’ of watching the clock in class should reinforce their knowledge. For this reason all classrooms should place the clock where it can be readily seen by the students. Being able to read this type of clock really isn’t that difficult and is something I would have thought most students knew from their parents teaching them.</p>
<p>I thought you were getting at that analog clock reading is acquired by the child through the exposure of analog clocks on their environment.…without prior teaching. </p>
<p>Which you are not implying.</p>
<p>Roadmap reading is probably also on the way out, due to GPS on smartphones and in cars.</p>
<p>Our whole family uses the clock for directions. " Deer at one o"clock, cool tree at 4 o’clock, etc. You can’t do that with digital.</p>
<p>^yup. We do that too. “Dolphins at 11 o’clock.”</p>
<p>GPS’s also are affecting spatial/global awareness. Movement in space has become a line, with no awareness of the shape of the line or what’s outside it.</p>
<p>Whether you care or not is one question, but that these things change perception is pretty much hard to argue against.</p>
<p>We were discussing something in class that had to do with a highway trip, and in clarifying, I drew a quick map of NJ on the board and the basic path of the two main highways. My (college) students were almost incredulous…how could I possibly know how to do that?</p>
<p>I am so bad at map reading I don’t mind that change. I am holding onto analog watches tho. I also have a rotary phone. Toy cell phones are not not as much fun as a toy rotary phone. We used to have an old toy cash register, too, the kind that we pull the lever and changes come out with a ding. I am more nostalgic about changes in toys than in real life.</p>
<p>I find value and use a gps but I love maps. The problem with a gps is that without seeing the larger picture (the map), you drive by things that are interesting without even knowing it. That isn’t a problem when all you want to do is get there but when you are not in a hurry, you miss out. And Garland, you are right. I have talked to people who have no knowledge of local geography because they never look at maps. They don’t know what is in the surrounding area.</p>
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There are 12 hours on the dial, so one hour is 1/12 of the circle, or 360/12 = 30 degrees.</p>
<p>3 degrees/30 degrees is 1/10, therefore the time is 1/10 of an hour past 1, or 1:06.</p>
<p>What do I win? :D</p>
<p>DS has a binary watch, but then he is a nerd. Most people don’t have a clue.</p>
<p>Once you learn your 5s times table, for most people it takes maybe 5 minutes to learn how to read an analog clock, especially if the hour numbers are written on the dial.</p>
<p>I’d be shocked if there are large numbers of kids who can’t read an analog clock… then again, I am always shocked at how many people can’t figure out what change to give back. I’ll give a cashier $21.30 to pay for a $6.29 item, and they look at me like I’m crazy until they punch it in and the register tells them $15.01 in change. Then they sort of get it…</p>
<p>NRE, a gold star? See how much goes into that? In stead of base 10, you got base 60(?), circles, fractions, hierachy of units, minutes, hours. I was talking about this with a physics prof at an Ivy. He commented that he was quite sure many of his students won’t get it. The problem I gave to him was a bit more twisted than the above example.</p>
<p>Reading time is not that simple until you have time passing concept solid. I remember teaching it to my kid in the first grade. Super smart kid. She first had to associate passing time with a moving hand. Once that concept was in, it was a breeze. She got all the tricky ones until her teachers began to teach it by dividing the hour in quarters. She didn’t see the time sliced into 4 pieces. Time was a moving/flowing thing while dividing it by four made it stationary.</p>