Does anybody really know what time it is?

Idropped in on the Lau Welnew Tribal School on West Saanich Road the other day. A teacher was using an old-style analog clock — a round one with hour and minute hands — to show Grade Twos how to tell time in the SENCOTEN language.

She told them how to say seven o’clock. It sounded like “tsoqus teentun.”

“Tsoqus teentun,” the children echoed in reply.

Then came 7:15, which sounded (sort of) like “tsoqus ee opun eeuks lkachus.”

“Oh my God that’s a lot,” blurted out a boy — but he still got it.

“Seems like the language might survive after all,” I murmured to the guy next to me.

“Yeah,” he replied, “but I’m not sure about that clock.”

Point taken. How often do you see an analog clock anymore? Most gave way to digital devices decades ago.

Which was reinforced later in the day when the car radio reported that British schools are removing analog clocks from classroom walls because teenagers — and here I paraphrase — are too stupid to use them.

Well, no, that story was later modified — slightly — to say that some British teachers are replacing analog clocks because students, flummoxed by the whole big-hand little-hand thing, keep interrupting exams to ask how much time they have left.

“The current generation aren’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations,” a teachers’ union rep was quoted as saying.

This was, of course, thrilling news to those of us who like to think of young people as human versions of JPEG photos, declining in quality at every stage of reproduction.

“Kids today couldn’t pour beer from a boot with instructions on the heel,” we grumble, happily.

Never mind that we do this while waiting for the kid in the computer store to retrieve all the family photos that we somehow erased (again) while trying to pay the B.C. Hydro bill online.

We don’t let a little thing like our own befuddlement (“Can I use the Cloud on a sunny day?”) get in the way of our self-righteousness.

People love stories about other people’s ignorance. It lets us feel superior. That’s why we lap up headlines such as “Four in five Oklahoma City students can’t read clocks” (which somehow didn’t get as much play as its British cousin) and “Memorial University professor says students can’t find continents on a map.”

There is, in fact, a whole “can’t find [fill in the blank] on a map” trope in which students are belittled for their geographic confusion. In 2002, with U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, it was gleefully reported that only 17 per cent of young American adults could find that country on a map. Likewise, in 2006, with American troops stuck in a war in the Middle East, the CBS News headline was “Where’s Iraq? Young adults don’t know.”

Last year, when U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un were waving their missiles at each other, Jimmy Kimmel sent a camera to the streets and asked young Americans to find North Korea on a map. They couldn’t. Three pointed to Canada, which made us feel both smug and alarmed at the same time.

Canadians revel in U.S. ignorance. “Harvard University students can’t name Canada’s capital,” crowed CTV News in 2013. Over on the CBC, Rick Mercer used to have a recurring This Hour Has 22 Minutes segment called Talking to Americans that was based soley on their lack of knowledge of their Great White Neighbour.

Mercer suckered Ivy League students into condemning the Toronto polar bear hunt, and persuaded New Yorkers to praise our supposed achievements: “Congratulations, Canada, on 800 miles of paved road!” In 2001, a one-hour Talking to Americans show pulled 2.7 million viewers, a record for a CBC comedy special.

Not that we’re exactly a nation of Rhodes scholars ourselves. “More than half of Canadians don’t know how the prime minister is elected, and just 24 per cent can correctly name our head of state (it’s the Queen),” Marc and Craig Kielburger tut-tutted in a column last year. “Four in 10 Canadians cannot name our first prime minister or identify the year of Confederation,” chimed in the Globe and Mail, making six in 10 of us feel pretty awesome.

Maybe we should take the time (not necessarily on an analog clock) to consider why we need the failings of others to feel better about ourselves.

Jack Knox if a columnist, now in his 30th year with the Victoria Times Colonist.