USA TODAY International Edition
Skills for analog timekeepers weaken in a digital landscape
Despite smartphones and other technological advances, one object has withstood the test of time: the analog clock.
Many of us remember learning about them in schools, between the “big hand, little hand” and converting those numbers to multiples of 5.
But is the analog clock’s life in schools slowly ticking away?
According to London’s Telegraph, some schools in the U.K. are ditching analog clocks for digital ones because students are struggling to read them.
“The current generation aren’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations,” said Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary at the Association of School and College Leaders.
Telling time is a key part of elementary school curriculum in the U.S., as many kids read the hands on a clock and write out the correct time.
In 2014, a teacher in Arizona discussed whether it was time to retire the analog clock in an age of smartphones and smartwatches where everything is digital, citing a colleague who wanted to teach his seventh-grade class because they couldn’t read the analog clock on the wall.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former educator with more than 25 years of experience, said teaching analog time still holds value.
“The skills that you need to read an analog clock are skills that kids when they’re young begin to learn,” she said, citing concepts such as counting by fives and fractions.
Meanwhile, schools using Common Core standards for math require educators to teach kids traditional time-telling skills in earlier grades such as first or second.
While schools in the U.K. have chosen to pull analog clocks, it appears the devices’ time in U.S. schools won’t expire anytime soon.
“There’s a lot of very complex mathematical manipulations that are involved in being able to tell time with an analog clock,” said Burris of the Network for Public Education. “It takes some of the math skills students are learning and gives them an important real-world context.”