Kids can’t even read a sundial nowadays, smh
No one knows how to read a sextant any more. The horror!!
Analog clocks are not really essential technology.
Ok but there are still many places with analog clocks, learning how they work shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.
I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.
Posted in r/Funnymemes
If only they still taught how to read a sundial, but those damn new fangled analog clocks…
When I look at a digital clock I always convert it to analogue in my head. Guess I’m that old.
Analog clocks are kind of annoying tbh. Sometimes you need that little extra energy you have to spend on wondering whether it is 11:37 or 11:38 already by carefully visually bisecting the circle section between 7 and 8.
Millimetres of white space keep you wondering about the nature of analogue vs digital and measurement uncertainty while you have better things to do but cannot just give up on OCDing whether it is exactly 11:37:30 already or maybe it is 11:37:35? And boom in these seconds you were wondering it is already pointless because the past moved to present and now it is time to wonder if it is 11:38:15 or 11:38:30Whereas for digital it is just: oh it is 11:11 on 11.11.11 how cool
seconds hand: am I a joke to you?
Most clocks have only two hands. Actually all school clocks I seen had only two
There’s a huge difference between “most clocks” and “most clocks I’ve seen” - especially if your clock experience is restricted to schools.
Do you see a lot of schools? Do you know whether the schools you’ve been to all use the same supplier? How broad is your school clock experience? How many clocks do you think you’ve seen, ever?
Most clocks I’ve seen recently (I can recall exactly 1) have seconds hands. Regardless though I’m not suggesting “most clocks” have seconds hands…I’m just making a quip about how traditional, analogue, clocks have seconds hands to deal with the exact problems noted.
And yet in schools they don’t have seconds. Never had
I still have ptsd thanks to that. Can you imagine? No seconds?
This is pure torture that should be forbidden by Geneva convention. So uncivilised
I cannot fathom such deep despair for I only live in a world of seconds.
God speed my simple friend. God speed.
I love having an analog clock. It makes it feel like you have more time compared to a digital clock, making me more relaxed. For example, if the time is 12:34 PM, my subconscious will think, “Ahh, shit, 26 more minutes before 1 PM.” But with an analog clock, I read it as around half an hour before 1 PM. The visual representation also helps, like seeing that there is a distance that the hands need to travel to reach a certain time.
All in all, I very much prefer having analog clocks vs digital when given the chance.
I read both kinds of clocks differently and have to sit and process to translate between them. A digital clock I read as “six twenty-five AM.” An analog clock I read as “almost half-past six.” I usually don’t bother reading an analog clock at greater resolutions than a quarter hour.
No.
The specific time isn’t as important as how long it is until things are going down. You know the part of the clock the minute hand will be pointing at when it’s time to do shit then you got a handy little progress arc to check in on and instantly know when it’s time to do the things.
So you say that your bowel movements are synchronised with your clock?
Kinda. Finishing my coffee is synchronized with the clock. I take a shit soon after that.
oh look yet another warmed over “DAE the kids r bad” talking point that i’ve been hearing literally since i learned language.
Shouldnt we blame the teachers for fsiling to teach kids how to read the clock?
Or the schools for removing the clocks, thus preventing anyone from practicing.
Brain rot is only a moral failing of the children. What more can the teachers and parents do?!
10:10:37
Fun fact, 10:10 is the default time most photographers take photos of a clock/watch to help display all the logos and things a watch face has to offer!
Fun fact number 2: because of this tradition, even digital clocks are sometimes shown as 10:10
Back to kindergarten then.
So many edgelords in the comments shit talking younger generations for learning different things.
Y’all sound like old farts crying about how schools stopped using slide rules and how modern music just isn’t as good.I think keeping analog tech along side the digital equivalent is probably a good idea, just in case. Plus learning varied systems makes for more adaptable and smarter people.
There is some truth to that, but this doesn’t seem like the thing to focus on, if that’s the goal. Surely there is a better subject to fulfill those needs.
Like… If we all forgot how to keep time, and we had to invent a new system of time keeping… Surely we could do better than what we have now.
You sound like someone who doesn’t know how to read an analoge clock.
I bet you could figure it out if you looked it up. And you would be better for it ❤️
You sound like one of those edgelords who acts like grumpy old men who cry at young people for doing things differently.
I bet you could stop talking and everyone would like you better ♥️
Probably not. I can read an analogue clock and I am no better or worse for it.
Jokes on you, because just that you learned to read analogue clocks, makes your brain more plastic. I am sure you know what that word means, but for anyone else, plastic means adaptable. The more things you learn the easier it is to learn more things.
What? Of course you are better off for it. You know how to read time more than one way.
In what way am I better off for being able to read time in more than one way?
Imagine life in the post-apocalyptic hellscape. All electronic devices have been rendered useless due to the EMPs from all the nuclear blasts. You, with your unfathomable ability to tell the time from an old wind-up clock, are viewed as a literal god among men (and women)
No publisher, no byline, no way to know what the source of the claim is coming from.
But they did include a bit of meme art, so it seems indisputable.
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Honestly, how often do you read analog clocks?
I mean, I learned it as a child, but it’s been probably months since I actually had the need to read an analog clock, and I’m just not used to it anymore. I have to think about it, 20 years ago it was just my spine doing the thinking and it felt effortless.
I actually agree with you. I can read an analog clock, but what worth is the skill? Most clocks are digital, and it gives me nothing more to read an analog one. People downvoting you is just silly. Some skills are allowed to die out if they add no value in modern life.
Yeah, same for me
Someone else made a comment and I think it’s great so imma plagiarize it-
If kids are taught to read an analog clock early, which isn’t very hard to learn, they are getting a leg up on fractions, percentages, and geometry.
I don’t actually believe this is true.
It rather, I imagine that they could get an even greater leg up if that time was spent teaching something else
I wonder how many people feel this way about writing when everyone just types/texts everything.
There are fewer and fewer applications for writing, but it’s still more important than reading an analog clock.
How so?
I genuinely don’t understand the clock-face-reading-is-a-useless-skill opinion so both seem equally important to me.
Fair enough. Most people don’t encounter analog clocks anymore. And many of us have smart watches or phones where we check the time. Since I have a non-analog watch, I don’t find I ever look at analog clocks anymore. If it’s in a room, I just don’t notice it. Growing up, it was important to know, but now I just never have a use for it. Learning is important, but there are so many more interesting and useful things to learn.
Yea that’s kind of what I was thinking when I said eventually handwriting will go the same way.
If people never encounter it and do all their writing on keyboards, it’ll eventually be a useless skill as well.
Every day? I use an analog watch face on my smartwatch, I have an analog clock in my car, I have another couple at home….
So what? I don’t.
I don’t have a smart watch and hardly anybody I know actually owns some analog clock?
Take a look around you. Where are any analog clocks? Church towers, train stations, old people. That’s pretty much it. Your smartwatch is a choice. You could just as well use a digital watch face. There is literally no benefit in that case - except your personal preference.
So since you don’t use something no one should learn it? Crap take.
You literally asked “Honestly, how often do you read analog clocks?” and I answered. And then you say “So what?” So why did you even ask if you were gonna turn around and belittle answers?
It’s called rhetorical question.
I’d argue that you are a very small minority. Most people under 50 probably barely have any analog clocks around.
Most people under 50 probably barely have any analog clocks around.
Every home/apt of every under 40 year old person I have ever been in has had at least one analog clock. And most have had several.
Also, grandfather clocks are a thing. And they’re gorgeous.
Extremely anti-social to act like digital clocks are better - similar to acting like social media and Facetime calls are in any way superior to irl face-to-face interaction - as our current loneliness epidemic demonstrates
I disagree, I am under 50 and wear an analog wristwatch every day, but if I want to know the time I just look on my phone.
It’s not just about telling time though. It’s about representing things in a different way. Correlating one thing to another, and making someone think until the representation automatically becomes the output. You are forced to see things in a different way, which is what learnding is all about.
Learning how a sundial works would teach them more than leaning how an analog clock works, in that regard.
Every day?
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Daily. There’s one in my kitchen and one at my office.
That is a good point, but analog clocks are IMHO in the realm of sundial clocks or audio casettes or floppy discs. Technology that was once usefull, but now it’s replaced by better alternatives. Time is after all just a number, and it does not matter how we choose to represent it.
Time isn’t just a number though. Especially not when it comes to clocks. And it’s also bound to Mass.
As someone who struggled with analog clocks into my twenties, being able to see the hands move gives me a better sense of time passing and I remember reading stuff that supported that. I have a better sense how much time I have left for something looking at analog vs digital basically and it’s a fairly common experience apparently
It’s not better, it’s just different, your comparison is flawed.
Personally, I prefer analog watches for most cases, because it’s much easier for me to do calculations visually. To add 6 to 7/19 on a digital clock I need to turn on my math brain (19+6=25, 25>24 => 25-24=1), but on an analog watch I can just visually read the number opposite of 7.And that’s just one example, there are other cases, besides just being easier to read at a glance. I’ve used both digital and analog watches since birth, but analog watches are marginally better for daily use, where to the second precision isn’t necessary.
I need reading glass (sigh I got old) With an analogue watch face I can work out the time, blurred lines can be seen. Cant read blurred numbers.
Absolutely not comparable to floppy disks. The hands are a representation, not a technology. Technology-wise, most modern “analog” wristwatches are quartz, and therefore digital, not actually analog. Yet we choose to make them with hands because that provides a better representation of the passing of time.
Technology-wise, most modern “analog” wristwatches are quartz, and therefore digital, not actually analog.
Wat… that’s not how that works. Quartz watches can be digital or analog but what matters is whether it has a digital display or analog hands.
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The reason is better is because a number on its own doesn’t provide any representation whatsoever of the passing of time. It represents the current observed time, but it does nothing to represent graphically how much of the day is left.
The arguably best representation of the passing of time is a 24h analogue watch/clock, even if that has its own set of issues which make it a terrible way of displaying the current time.
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It goes beyond just showing what part of day you are in. Everything is reduced to angles. You don’t have to do any math with numbers, just look how much the pointer has to move to see how much time is left until an event you are interested in, and you get to visually compare that angle with the entire half of a day to get an even better perception of the passage of time.
Knowing a clock is more than just telling time.
When you’re walking with your homies you gotta be able to call out “gyat 3 o’clock” , so your fellow bros know where to look.
Ok you know what. I was ready to conclude that learning to read analog clocks isn’t that useful but you’ve actually convinced me otherwise.
100% it is antiquated technology.
Digital isn’t better it’s just different. Also a tonne of wristwatches are still analogue.
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I used to have one, but now I set my phone clock to be displayed as an analogue clock so that kind of made it obsolete, since it now has all the benefits of an analogue display with the additional advantage of automatically syncing time and adjusting for time zones and daylight saving time.
I wear a watch for the time. I like it more than using my phone.
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Wristwatches are just jewelry at this point tbh. They’ve been rendered completely redundant by cell phones. The only people under 60 who wear them are doing so as a fashion statement.
I’m sure a lot of wristwatch stans will downvote me but I don’t care I’m still right
Ever since college I’ve always worn a cheap watch on my wrist least for the same reason my grandpa stopped keeping a pocket watch: its more convenient to check on your wrist for the time than your pocket.
Granted we’re getting way off topic here since except for a few years its ways been a digital watch. Asserting analog watches are more numerous in models when digital watches are more numerous in sales, therefore reading an analog clock is a useful skill is odd to me. When I was wearing an analog watch for my allergies it was a flieger because the mental tax of making the hands turn into a singular time was a frustration.
I learned, though, from this that how you present time changes how you perceive time. Kids who grow up with digital representations of time consider “the current moment” in a much narrower and instantaneous scope than people who grew up thinking of time as being a spectrum on a dial
Wristwatches don’t have the negative psychologically addictive and anxiety-producing effects of smartphones
Watches are just more convenient. You don’t need to carry a phone everywhere and with texts and calls showing on the watch you don’t need to find your phone to check.
I use my watch with alarms/ timers to know when I need to clock out or in from lunch etc while I mostly leave my phone at my desk while at work so if I’m walking around the building I still get my alerts through my watch
Watches that can get alerts can show digital time. So, chalk another point up for not learning analog time.
For office attire or going out, sure.
If you’re doing repair work, running lines, etc, a watch is the choice. Your hands are busy, so a watch is what you need (Except for specific trades where you don’t want to risk it getting caught in machinery).
I can say with 100% certainty that I know large swaths of folks in their 20’s and 30’s who regularly wear watches. Some smart, some digital, some analog.
I use my wristwatch all the time to take dogs’ pulses.
Having a cell phone next to a grumpy dog is asking for a broken cell phone. I’m sure people in other fields need wristwatches as well.
Just because you don’t use them don’t mean they’re not useful.
It absolutely is tho. Usually more precise, 1:1 translatable into written text, can use the superior 24h system and uses the same reading system that is already taught in school anyways.
There’s nothing stopping an analog clock face from representing 24h time:
🤢 what an utter abomination
This is why puppies die
I was ready to hate it but after a good look, it doesn’t look that bad. Doesn’t work for small wristwatches but could look nice for a big wall clock.
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Right! Just to prove a point, I am going to make an NTP enabled rolex, and sync it to my microsecond accurate local NTP server! :P
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Yeah, but you need to factor in the distance to the transmitter. Going to add at least a few microseconds to your time accuracy!
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Are they going anywhere, tho? They start cheap and are very energy-efficient, so I think they’d stay. If there is a probability to face them IRL it won’t be bad to learn how to read them.
Yes.
But they don’t need to know it. So they stopped teaching it.
its not in their standardized tests and that’s the only thing that determines funding. Its a nightmare …
Apparently it’s literally in the standardised tests… that’s what’s causing the problems! 😉
My first thought was to be appalled at the lack of education on display… But is there any real reason to keep analog clocks… other than habit and nostalgia?
Other than the things already mentioned, you can read analog clocks easily from great distances, as long as the handles and the face have appropriate contrast (e.g. black on white). Even with impaired vision and large distance, being able to discern the rough position of black smudges on white background is enough to tell the time. This is not possible with a digital clock, because you can’t distinguish between the digits as easily. Therefore, I’d certainly argue their much better for legibility in the back of a classroom or a lecture hall.
Or on big-ass clock towers that are supposed to be visible from a large part of the surrounding area.
You can certainly make an argument for young kids, i.e. teaching fractions and literally how to count (counting seconds).
Teenagers? No, not really. They’ll all have phones or something to tell the time by a certain age and hopefully they know their fractions / how to count. It might as well just be digital at that point.
My first thought was “yes”, my second thought was “actually, maybe not?” and my third thought was reading the word clockwise in another comment which would need to be replaced with another word to indicate direction around an axis and its opposite
It’s a cheap and easy way to teach children to visualize.
This might be just me but I feel like they help me think about time more clearly, and manage my time better. Maybe I’m a visual learner.
The swiss will never get rid of their iconic railway clocks
Well you can use the clock for giving headings. “that tree at 10”. Then you have historical and ornamental clocks which might be nice to read. Like you can not design a digital clock to look as good as an analog one.
But yeah. Probably not many reasons really
Accessibility.
We will never get rid of the analogue clocks from our school, we’re an adult education and alternative model highschool qualifications centre.
We primarily teach adults with no to low English, adults and teens with disabilities, and adults and teens refered via corrections services.
There is a significant level of illiteracy within numeracy, and for some of our students, it’s not a failing of the education system, it’s just a fact of life given their specific circumstances (eg, acquired brain injuries are common among our students)
Some students can learn to tell time on an analogue clock even if they didn’t know before.
But even my students who will never in their life be able to fully and independently remember and recall their numbers can tell the time with an analogue clock.
I tell my students “we will take lunch at 12pm, so if you look at the clock and the arms look like this /imitates a clock/ we will go to lunch”
And now I avoid 40 questions of “when’s lunch?” because you don’t need to tell time to see time with an analogue clock, they can physically watch the hands move, getting closer to the shape they recognise as lunch time.
And my other students can just read the time, from the clock, and not feel infantalised by having a disability friendly task clock like they’ve done at other centres I work at - they’ve had a digital clock for students who can tell time, and a task clock as the accessible clock. But a well designed face on an analogue clock can do both.
I myself have time blindness due to a neurological/CRD issue, so analogue clocks, and analogue timers are an accessibility tool for me as well, as the teacher.
Clocks were invented before electricity. If an EMP took out all the electronics, a mechanical clock is still the best way to measure longitude at sea
If an emp took out all the electronics, the need to measure longitude at sea would not make my top ten concerns.
But I bet it would be in someone’s top ten concerns
While true, most clocks are quarts oscillators These days so would die also. That said, love me a mechanical clock and have a skeleton watch I daily drive.
I assume replacing them with digital? It’s just an upgrade in technology.
