[Sweet_Sunflower29]

When I was a kid I knew how to amuse myself with a book, a bicycle or a piece of paper and a pencil. I've seen children whom Heaven help the parents if the electricity were to go out.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

We have a child's toy clock that has the hands on it and I'm teaching my kids to tell time on it. Although I can't for life of me think of a good reason other than it helps them understand fractions at an earlier age.

[Dimensio]

I think of time in terms of minutes past the hour, but I can garner it from an analogue clock -- even one with out numbers (I keep a cheap one that was a protional item from a video game by my computer desk for when I'm playing a game and don't want to check the system clock).

Looking at it, I can tell that it's about 22:25.

[AUsome Joy]

When I taught school, we had a couple of lessons on telling time in the fourth grade textbook. Some of the kids could get it but a lot couldn't. When I was a kid, our parents said we could get a watch when we could tell time on it, so we were eager to learn. Now the kids use digital.

[LibKill]

The analogue clock is going the way of the whale-oil lantern.

It will have one bad effect. Telling some recruit to 'watch his six', or 'look at two o'clock, enemy patrol' will only evoke confusion.

[Coeur de Lion]

I remember in kindergarten we the teacher had a simple clock made out cardboard and she actually taught us how to tell time. This was in the late fifties. Now, a lot of the kids already knew but their were some that didn't.

[Commander8]

Not only do children have problems with old clocks, they also struggle with Roman Numerals.
I have a 14 year old nephew who can't tell time on a grandfather clock because of this.

[Thinkin' Gal]

A year later they are meant to have a sense of hours, minutes and seconds, but more than one in four are still struggling. Nearly two thirds of this group cannot tell the time on a digital clock.

They'll be registering as Democrats soon enough.

[mikrofon]

It's funny this thread should come up .... Just this morning my 12 y/o daughter was proudly showing me her new analog watch, and after kidding her if she knew how to read it (to the typical "Dad!"), I remarked to her whether they even taught the young kids in school to tell time the old fashioned way any more. So this report is not really that surprising.

[Romulus]

Nearly one in three children aged between four and eight cannot tell the time on traditional clock faces.

Oh, the humanity!

Put me down as one who couldn't tell time till I was at least 6 years old. OTOH I have no memory of not being able to read.

[webboss]

I had one of these when I was a kid in diapers.

 

 

These were kool!

[Axenolith]

My moms father and my father-in-law are both major keepers of arcane knowledge. Moms dad was a Millwright and has a garage full of stuff and contraptions he's made and fabricated with all of the precision tools in standard units. We cruised the mountains during hunting season in a completely home made 4X4 running on a 1940's 4 cylinder, air cooled, Wisconsin haybaler engine (still runs like a top too!).

The in-law dad worked at a place that restores really old cars (they did work on Jay Leno's Stanley Steamer) and he machined\fabricated parts that didn't exist anymore from raw metal .

Its bizarre to see standard clocks heading into this realm...

[doc30]

You can put rotary phones in that category, too. Step-son saw one in an after-school day care. He was in middle school and it was a plastic Fisher-Price toy in the kindergarten/ 1st grade toys, but NONE of the kids could figure out how to dial on it! SOme couldn't even recognize it as a phone!

[tutstar]

My homeschoolers can!!!!

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

Torricelli can tell time.

[Undertow]

Does this really surprise anybody?

[Willie Green]

Sounds as though you folks are gonna have to upgrade Big Ben to digital.

[templar]

The day of the analog is passed. Digitals ae more accurate and easier to read. I'll bet there are virtually no engineering or science students anymore that can use a slide rule for mathematical computations.

[Jorge]

I prefer an anologue clock over digital any day..
Like pie chart it presents a visual representation of periods of time in a manner that are more easily compared than digital readouts.

For example when one has only so much time to do something before stopping to do something else, it's much easier to visualize exactly where you are at at any given moment and how much time is left before the dead line looking at an anologue watch.
Looking at a digital readout doesn't show a point in relation to other points in time..it just shows you a number.
I also do precision inspection work and find an analogue dial is better for calculating tolerances than a digital readout.

[fourdeuce82d]

When I was a kid I knew how to amuse myself with matches, water balloons, lizards, ants, magnifying glasses, ligther fluid, firecrakers, Oxy-acetylene inflated garbage bags, molotov cocktails, five foot tall truck tires walked up the tallest hill in town, soaked in ten gallons of gasoline, and rolled down the street, burning...

Sweet mother of god- if I ever have a son I pray for a totally immersive virtual reality gaming system. Otherwise he'll probably do the sorts of things I did.

[Rome2000]

Considering that 100% of the Brits send money to the Queen for no good particular reason, the children aren't doing to bad.