Schools are removing clocks from exam halls as teens 'cannot tell time' - Sensationalist Headlines

Five years old? I wasn't taught how to read a clock until 1st or 2nd grade.

Telling the time is part of the key stage 1 national curriculum in the UK, that's the first two years of school so it should be taught between age 5-7. I remember the kids doing basic clock reading when I worked in a pre-school with 3-4 year olds, but that isn't mandatory and it was just the hour hand and maybe every fifteen minutes.

Do you live in the boonies or something? Never have I ever met someone who couldn't read an analog clock

It's not laziness on their part, it's laziness on the part of the people that are supposed to be teaching this shit.

Do schools really need to spend even more time teaching relatively useless stuff (that you can pick up yourself if you seriously need to) ? If you forced kids to learn to drive a stick shift over a week in school, the overwhelming majority would completely forget it because they have no use for it at all and it doesn't even benefit them in a holistic "education" sort of way.

British people can't read clocks and German people can't read news articles. What will they think of next?

You honestly think that just because computers are commonplace we no longer need to be able to hold a pen? Boy do I have a surprise for you... Every job I've ever worked has had as much literal, physical paperwork involved as it has had digital paperwork involved. Including the current one. Repair Orders, part management, vehicle check-in, all that shit's done digitally....and then there's all the DVIR forms that get filled out, pre-sale forms, rental inspections, all manner of physical paperwork right alongside it. If I didn't know how to hold a pen properly, which you're saying shouldn't be a problem, I'd be unable to complete the basic requirements of my job. Every skill I listed is a skill that still needs to be known, still needs to be taught to the up-and-coming generation. No, they won't use penmanship as much as we did, and we didn't use it as much as our parents did. But that doesn't mean they don't need to know it. They do. We can drop cursive, but for fuck's sake they still need to know basic human literacy. Same goes for driving stick, most people will never touch a clutch pedal in their lives, but being able to know what to do if life forces you into a vehicle that has one(Say, you hire on with UPS doing deliveries and they assign you a straight shift box truck to do it with) you'll be damn happy you know what that extra pedal is used for. Life skills are important and it's goddamn lazy to not teach them to the next generation. If I ever have the necessary brain damage required to decide to have children, you can bet money they're gonna learn how to read analog clocks, how to drive stick, now to change their own tire, how to write with a pen and paper, all that shit. Whether or not the school teaches them those things is irrelevant, they will know it. God help me I never want kids, but if I do get 'em, they're learning these skills.

Analog clocks are pretty easy to understand even without being taught, 24 hours to a day, 12 numbers on the clock, goes around twice, the spaces in between the add up to the next number.

Dude, using a fucking keyboard requires fine motor skills. Eating requires fine motor skills. At what point do you drop "FUUUUTUUUREE" and realize we've fucked up somewhere.

He learned the song wrong so it didn't help him.

I probably sound stupid but I just like the look of them better. My phone has a digital clock and that's always on me anyway, but if it's for any reason being displayed for a decorative purpose I would prefer an analog clock. Reading them comes to me naturally, I guess, but I grew up seeing them. Even my car has an analog clock http://performancedrive.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013-Lexus-IS-250-Luxury-analogue-clock.jpg The biggest thing though is that if you can't read analog clocks you'll never be able to wear really nice mechanical watches without looking like a twat

This also reminds me of a time (when I was younger) about a norwegian kid my age, who couldn't read 12 hour time wasn't part of their education perhaps

are you sure? Little Davey and Steve will just speak into their hand and say "Alexa, wats the time darling?"

Simple. An analog clock isn't a ~ye olde fashioned~ way to display time. An analog clock is the description of our timesystem itself. Let me explain. Note: I am skimming a lot here. I'm sure that people with knowledge in history and/or math can explain things more thoroughly. Timekeeping is something that goes all the way back to the beginning of mankind. The Sumerians and Egyptians already experimented with timekeeping around 5000-3000 BC. They discovered that is was possible to track time by observing celestial bodies like stars and the Moon. A year contains about 12 lunar cycles (new moon -> full moon -> new moon) and this number was used to divide the daytime and nighttime into 12 parts. Water clocks and sundials have been found that have been inscribed with 12 markings. This is also the reason that we have 24 hours today. Regarding the number 12. You might have noticed that 12 has a special role in human history. For example: There are 12 months in a year. There are 12 astrological signs. There are 12 Chinese Zodiac animals. There are 12 days of Christmas. There are 12 inches in a foot. An old UK currency: 12 pence equals 1 shilling 12 units of something has a special name: a dozen There are 12 Olympians in Greek mythology. Jesus had 12 Apostles. The 12 Tribes of Israel The 12 Nidānas in Buddhism The reason for this, besides the connection with lunar cycles, is that 12 is considered perfection in many religions. This most likely has several reasons, but one key reason can be found in mathematics. 12 is a number that is very easy to work with. 12 can be divided 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12. In more math-y terms, these numbers are the factors of 12. This in contrast to our contemporary base number 10 whose factors are only 1, 2, 5 and 10. The Babylonians, whom existed around 1500 BC were very fond of mathematics and astronomy. One very interesting fact is that they used a Sexagesimal (base60) system for their calculations, in contrast to the Decimal (base10) system that we use today. 60 also has a lot of factors which again allows it to be a very easy number to work with. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60 are all factors of 60. The Greeks later adapted the Sexagesimal system around 200 BC to create the first latitude and longitude system. They divided the globe into 360 degrees, divided every degree into 60 parts known as partes minutae primae and these parts were again divided into 60 parts known as partes minutae secundae. Trigonometry, circle calculations and GPS all exist thanks to this. Minutes and seconds in the context of timekeeping only took off with the invention of the mechanical clock in the 16th century. Before that, there just was no need to track time on that precise scale. Funfact: The words 'minute' and 'second' come from the Greek terms mentioned above. Minutae and Secundae. Speaking of circles and degrees and the number 12; Let's divide a circle into 12 equal pieces: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/58120/5be7338b-d481-4e74-9d2a-ec69a84b115f/image.png Looks familiar? The whole base of our time system is the number 12. And an analog clock is the perfect visualization of the mechanics of time. I see many people comparing analog clocks with things like pencils and other older tech. But I think that comparison is wrong. "We should scrap analog clocks because they are hard to use and because we have digital clocks anyway." is in my opinion pretty much the same as saying "We should scrap rulers because because they are hard to use and because we have sonar and laser rangefinders anyway." It certainly is possible to exist and go about your daily life without knowing how rulers and analog clocks works, but then they will never truly understand what time is. Why are there 24 hours? Why is there a 12:59 but no 12:60? Why 60 seconds? Not teaching people how time works is denying them the understanding one of the greatest inventions in human history. Is this system perfect? Of course not. One of the downsides of a system that has been created on Earth, is that it only really works on Earth. If (or when) we start exploring and colonizing the Solar System, we will need a better way to track time. Maybe Stardates... But for now, this system has been working for a long time and will keep working for the forseeable future. To summarise: It doesn't matter whether you are white, black, green, purple, asian, rich, poor, use imperial, use metric, use Windows, use Linux, instalock Hanzo, only can use Mercy, are leftwing or rightwing, play W+M1 Pyro, put pineapple on pizza, or prefer to have the toilet paper facing backwards, you are most likely using clocks. If you ever stop what you are doing and look at the clock (digital or analog), just remember that you are using one of the greatest uniting achievements in the history of mankind that has been created and perfected by our ancestors over a period of more than 6000 years. And to me, that is fucking amazing.

but im just trying to tell time if im interested in how time measurement is discovered I'll look up this post

Oh, don't get me wrong. Digital clocks are great. I wouldn't want an analog cramped in the status bar on my phone. But if schools are removing analog clocks because they don't know how they work, then someone has dropped the ball on teaching them how time works. If you understand what time is, reading an analog clock is child's play.

You shouldn't have clocks in school at all period, all it does it make you go oh hey there's a few minutes left time to turn off my brain and not care!.

If you want Germans to read, put it in the form of a forklift operation user manual

Growing up as a kid with bad eyesight, analog clocks were terrible. I sat in the front of the class usually and the clocks were near the back walls, and even with my glasses I couldn't see the minute hand or numbers clearly. Also fuck those analog clocks that didn't have any numbers written out, I couldn't see the tally marks at all, it was a white blob with a grey scraggly border for me. Other classrooms that had big bulky black digital clocks with bright red numbers I could easily read, but teachers had to specifically put those iun their classroom as that was not the default. I definitely think knowing how to read an analog clock is a vital skill as it can be extrapolated to various other skills as well as assist with learning certain concepts and vernacular, but digital clocks are a good alternative and I don't see why you can't have both. That would even help people learning how to read a clock because they could compare what time they think they read to the digital clock's exact number.