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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 advocacy Network for Public Education and former educator with more than 25 years 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 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 any time soon.

"There's a lot of very complex mathematical manipulations that are involved in being able to tell time with an analog clock," Burris said. "It takes some of the math skills students are learning and gives them an important real world context."
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

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Some students don't know how to read analog clocks. Is it the end of an era?

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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?

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Knowing how to tell time is an important skill. There is a lot of debate over whether children need to learn analog time, especially since mobile phones have taken the place of analog watches for many people. While there may be few instances in which children have to rely on being able to read an analog clock, analog clocks help children understand the passage of time because they have hands that are consistently moving. Analog clocks also show time in multiples of five, which is not as transparent with digital clocks. There are a number of fun games to help children learn how to read both analog and digital time. One of my favorites is Eeboo's Time Telling Game (www.eeboo.com). ThinkFun also has a time-telling version of Zingo that helps children learn to read the hour and minute hands on an analog clock and then make the transition to reading digital time (www.thinkfun.com).

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Is it really important for my child to learn analog time?

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Knowing how to tell time is an important skill. There is a lot of debate over whether children need to learn analog time, especially since mobile phones have taken the place of analog watches for many people.

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Anyone paying attention to changes in schools over the years will notice how evolving technology has altered the ways students learn. For example, iPads have replaced textbooks, digital whiteboards have replaced chalkboards, even the classroom itself has been replaced to a degree, with students able to take classes remotely over the internet. The question begs to be asked. Are analog clocks the next to go?

A Vanishing Skill?

Across the Atlantic, some British schools have taken note of that development, replacing analog clocks with the digital variety, according to the Washington Post, which notes that the same time-telling handicap applies to many American students, too. That's what an Oklahoma City survey concluded, finding that just one in five students ages 6-12 could read an analog clock.

An Unnecessary Stressor?

A Foundational Skill?

Those who want to hold on to the analog tradition say that learning to read the format is part of a basic level of education. In support of that argument, the Common Core curriculum that guides what is taught in American schools still includes analog time-telling as a standard lesson.

Use it or Lose it?

The argument for learning to read analog clocks might also be compared to the value of knowing long division or memorizing phone numbers. After all, the old saying persists today: "Use it or lose it."

Physical exercise could be seen as another valid analogy. Daily life doesn't require that we expend as much physical energy as it used to, but no one's arguing against the value of a good sweat once in a while. Perhaps, then, we need to intentionally engage in certain mental exercises - making computations that we don't actually need to do - for overall cognitive health.

Of course, at American Time, we value the skill of reading analog clocks and believe it will continue to be a necessary and important skill to know in the future. However, we do understand that digital clocks are simply better suited for some purposes. We're interested to see which direction this argument leads us here in the U.S.

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Is Teaching Students to Read Analog Clocks Still Relevant in Schools?

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Anyone paying attention to changes in schools over the years will notice how evolving technology has altered the ways students learn. For example, iPads have replaced textbooks, digital whiteboards have replaced chalkboards, even the classroom itself has been replaced to a degree, with students able to take classes remotely over the internet.

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Now, let's talk about acknowledging the misconceptions. Again, I referenced one of them which is the whole idea of the whole not being 100. So many times kids think of the whole being 100. When they're telling time, they want to think about it as flipping over to the next hour after one hundred minutes, but it's really at 60. Which then adjusts at what our quarter and our half is.

The other misconception is the whole idea of knowing what hour it is when we get past the halfway point because our clocks try to lie to us.

Here's a little picture that I took of my watch with Mickey lying to me.

So, on Mickey here, a lot of kids might know that it's 48 minutes. They'll get to where they can say, "Okay, I bet that that's about 48 minutes," even though the minute ticks aren't really in there. So, they're having to estimate a little bit. They might say, "It's 48 minutes." But the problem is, they'll get the hour wrong. They will say, "11:48" because the hour hand is closer to the 11 than it is to the 10. So, this is really a stumbling block for a lot of our students.

Really acknowledge that. Be sure that you are giving them analog times that reference that. If you don't have a great analog clock, that the hour hand moves in proportion to your minutes, you have to pay really close attention. If you've got worksheets or stuff, a lot of times, they won't move the hour hand to where it should be. So, it'll have the hour hand right at the 10 but the minute hand is where Mickey's minute hand is and that's not what it looks like in real life.

You've got to make sure any manipulatives, any visuals that you are using really does acknowledge the fact that on real clocks, as you're getting closer to that next hour, the hour hand is moving proportionately closer to that next hour. And the clock will try to lie to us.

That's kind of the way I talk about it with the kids. Like, "It's lying to us right now. Can we figure out the lie that the clock is telling us?"

I really hope that this has given you some ideas of ways to make telling time on an analog clock more concrete, more visual, more conceptual for your students so that we can help build their math minds when it comes to telling time.

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Teaching Kids to Tell Time Using An Analog Clock

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Now, let's talk about acknowledging the misconceptions. Again, I referenced one of them which is the whole idea of the whole not being 100. So many times kids think of the whole being 100. When they're telling time, they want to think about it as flipping over to the next hour after one hundred minutes, but it's really at 60.

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It looks like the analog clock's days may be numbered. According to a recent article in the Telegraph, some U.K. schools are removing them from exam halls after discovering teenagers have a hard time reading traditional clock faces. Apparently the move is an attempt to reduce testing anxiety in a generation raised on digital devices. "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, in an interview with the newspaper. "They are used to seeing a digital representation of time on their phone, on their computer. Nearly everything they've got is digital so youngsters are just exposed to time being given digitally everywhere."

The news was met with as much hand wringing as I'm sure met the phasing out of such necessary skills as reading a sun dial or spooling a type writer. "I would be the teacher who would say tough - but apparently that's not how kids are raised," wrote one Twitter denizen. He went on to lament that these same kids probably couldn't read Roman numerals-where exactly those two things connect, I'm still not sure. Another American analog acolyte who didn't apparently read that the clock phase out was taking place in the U.K. asked, "Are we getting out [sic] money's worth from government education? We know students cannot write in script. Or are they just being taught anti-social behavior, multi-gender personalities and anti-American hatred for our Founding?" A significant number of commentators responded to the news with something along the lines of, "Teach them to read it then?" To which I would answer, "Why?"

The fact that analog clocks have managed to stand the test of time in an increasingly digitized world is a bit of a wonder. While there may be nothing quite as charming as the quiet tick of a watch, the fact that teachers are adapting to the fact that a fair number of teenagers can't read an analog clock isn't another sign of corruption in The Youth. It means, as Nobel Prize Winner Bob Dylan once wrote, that times are a-changing. It doesn't make sense for a teacher to waste precious class time to teach teenagers how to read an analog clock just so they can tell time during an exam. And if students can't read traditional clock faces with relative ease by the time they're sitting for exams, it means one of two things: Somewhere down the line their teacher prioritized other knowledge over doing countless worksheets on telling time, or they've just forgotten something they learned in elementary school once they tested out of that grade.

Kids in America who learn under Common Core standards are required to be taught how to read an analog clock in first or second grade; if kids in the U.K. are taught around the same time than it wouldn't be entirely surprising to learn that they forgot how to do so by the time they're teenagers. With the sheer amount of stuff kids are expected to know once state exams roll around, it's understandable that they'd get a bit rusty on something they're not using every day.

Plenty of naysayers will crow about the practical use of knowing how to read an analog clock once the electricity goes out, but since when is school about teaching practical skills? I don't remember learning how to file an insurance claim or write a check or pay taxes in school, all skills that are objectively more practical in the long run than reading an analog clock. That's not to say that the skill needs to go the way of cursive: Telling time on a traditional clock face is a real world application of complex mathematical skills and teachers seem to agree that it gives children a different relation to time than reading a digital clock does. "Analog clocks are great for teaching time management [and] concepts including the passage of time," answered one Arizonan teacher when asked why she still felt the skill was important to teach. "Even our little kids who don't yet have the concept of numerals can understand that when the big hand is on this red line it's time to line up."

By all means, I'm sure small children will continue to be taught multiples of five through the use of an analog clock. But it's entirely fair for that skill to fade by the time those kids reach puberty and for teachers to adapt to the fact that the days of analog ubiquity are slowly ticking away.

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Some U.K. Schools Are Phasing Out the Analog Clock. It's About Time.

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It looks like the analog clock's days may be numbered. According to a recent article in the Telegraph, some U.K. schools are removing them from exam halls after discovering teenagers have a hard time reading traditional clock faces. Apparently the move is an attempt to reduce testing anxiety in a generation raised on digital devices.

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Elementary Education : How to Help Kids Learn to Tell Time

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Children of the digital age struggling to read analog clocks