When my son entered kindergarten, we were given a list of things they suggested he should know before he started school. Tying shoes was on the list. Apparently, many of the kids (including mine) didn’t quite master that skill because they actually practice tying their shoes in first grade. Telling time on an analog clock is part of his curriculum.
I had a student in HS recently act as if she couldn’t tell time on the analog clock, and even other kids were looking at her as if she were weird. Most schools have retained the analog clocks, and I think that it really is quicker to interpret, as it gives a visual distance to the target time. Digital clocks always demand a subtraction problem, and I always end up visualizing an analog clock anyway.
Despite the 80s, I think analog clocks look better, and are classier, and will probably never go away.
I wore velcro shoes when I was little (back in the late '80s.) It’s much easier (from what I understand) for parents to get velcro shoes on a kid who doesn’t yet have the knowledge and motor skills to tie shoelaces than it would be to get the kid to sit still long enough for a parent to tie the shoes.
As for analog clocks, I still see them all over the place and I definitely remember them being in all the class rooms when I was in school.
I carry a pocket watch. If you’re a caveman, what does that make me?
But analog clocks always require a multiplication problem and a subtraction problem: “It’s 4 digits til 8:00 time, so it’s 4x5=20 minutes til 8, so that’s 8:00-:20= 7:40”
If you said it’s easier for you, I’d agree. But when you convert digital to a mental face clock, and I convert every face clock to a mental digital clock, we’re never going to agree.
I still see analog clocks all over the place. Actually, I think the only digital clocks I see day to day are on my cell phone and the computer.
ETA: I may have missed a critical concept of time, but I have never had to add, multiply, or subtract to figure out what time it is.
I don’t multiply or add either. I just see what time the little hand is on, and where the big hand is and put those together to make the proper time.
I’m not going to try to tell you that it should be easy for you, or that you should prefer analog. But why go through all that rigmarole? All you need it 20 minutes to 8. And I suppose there’s a multiplication in there somewhere, but I think for most people anything up to 6 x 5 is pretty automatic. And that’s all you ever need. 20 after, 20 'til, it’s only because you’re used to digital that you worry about the exact minutes, or that you read the time as always after the hour. It’s just a different habit.
children (P1-2) are and should be taught to tell time on the analog clock.
it serves as a good introduction and a familiar platform for them to practise counting on a scale, addition, subtraction, the 5 times table, simple fractions etc. by the time they get to P3, they should already be familiar with the 5 times table and would see the hand on 8 and read 7:40 immediately.
as for shoes well, it’s not something you really need to learn until you need to right? though learning knots by itself is fun and useful.
Oh, no. To tell the time you just notice the angle between the hour and minute hands and do a subconscious calculation. You can also see at once how much time has elapsed since some event and how much time you have left to another event, something that you really have to calculate when using a digital clock. The only thing a digital clock is better at is to measure how long something takes.
I have read somewhere that digital clocks set time measuring back several hundred years to the time that some inventor managed to put both hands together on one singe clock face instead of having one face for each hand.
OK, I am a bit confused here, because it sure looks to me like most non-sports watches I see for sale at the mall are analog-faced. Similarly I see no dearth of lace-up oxfords, wingtips, moccasins, boots and sneakers at the shoe place. So in both cases it is quite useful.
That these skills are no longer “essential” because there are abundant alternatives in the matter of timekeeping and footwear is a different story. But heck, even some cell phones, when they are not in use, let you show the time onscreen in a simulated hour dial rather than digital (e.g. about half the users fo the Blackberry Flip I’ve encountered).
In any case if it’s up to me I’ll teach any children in my care to tell time on the dial very early. I find it refreshingly imbued with a concept of time beyond the mere instant – it shows cyclical time, the hours repeating themselves from am to pm and the minutes within each hour, the next hour drawing nearer as the hands move, noon or midnight at the top of the dial marking the middle of the day or night, etc. (also, I feel that having learned timethink in terms of wholes/halves/quarters of the hour helps me be more realistic as to what time I actually have available)
Regarding telling time, I have a funny story:
My husband and I are both 27 and are completely opposite in our clock preferences. He prefers digital (strongly) and I prefer analog (strongly). He knows how to tell time on an analog clock, but it’s not as intuitive as reading a digital clock is for him. On the other hand, I much prefer analog because I can see the space between the hands and the general position; this makes it much easier for me to tell the time than just reading numbers.
I tried explaining it by giving an example of when I was in grade/high school. If I had a class from, say, 10:45 - 11:30, I knew I could glance at the clock and see where the minute hand was. Was it pointing kind of NNW? Aw man, that’s TONS of time left in class. 
If I glanced up and the minute hand was pointing at SSE? WOOHOO! Almost done! I really don’t think of time in numbers but in spatial relationships. Meanwhile, he thinks of time in numbers only.
If I don’t have my watch on and I ask him what time it is, he’ll show his (analog) watch.
Him: It’s—
Me: Got it, thanks.
Him: How do you DO that?
Heh.
If nothing else, if you didn’t know how to tell time on an analog clock you’d have a terrible time learning to say and understand times in foreign languages.
And who never needs to tie a bow? Even if you go barefoot every day, surely you’ll need to wrap a nice package with ribbon? Tie a bow around a teddy bear’s neck? Not to mention that it’s an introduction to tying knots in general - do you never tie any knots, ever? No clove hitches, no square knots? Really?
To be more specific, most old schools have old school clocks. I can’t recall seeing any digital clocks in school hallways, not in Real Life, not in the movies or TV.
I was recently retying a bow on my seven year old daughter’s My Little Pony (thing #4551 on Things You Never Thought You’d Do Until You Became A Parent) and asked her to help with her little fingers to tie the bow for me.
“But I can’t, I don’t know how to!”
I realized that she only has velcro and zippered shoes and doesn’t know.
Both my daughter and my son who turned 5 last month know how to tell analog time (roughly) - for example, their bedtime is 8:00, I’d point out at 7:50 that it’s almost time for bed and ask “what time is it?” They’d reply “7” because the little hand hasn’t reached 8 yet. I’d ask them at 10:30 (when they’re still awake refusing to go to bed :mad:) “what time is it?” “10?” "No … " “11?” "No … " They haven’t really grasped x-past yet.
Both my kids were taught to tell time on an analog clock in kindy - first grade and Eldest got digital clocks in third grade (they display 24 hour – what I think of as military time). Shoe tying they got at about the same time, but I also noticed that, on my 10 year old’s soccer team, there are only three who can really tie their game shoes tight enough that they will stay intact – so mosty their parents just do it. I think it’s because of the prevalence of other options – my own 10 year old can tie a bow knot but it’s usually sloppy. He did it better when he was 7.
I too carry a pocket watch. A cheap half-hunter. I’ve got a nicer one for posh occasions.
I doubt that the percentage of kids who can’t tell time and can’t tie their shoes has gone down. Where I teach, time is still taught. If a kid is taught how to tie shoes, it’s done as an extra bonus.
What I want to know is why so many of my students (9- and 10-year-olds) don’t know their addresses and phone numbers.
That’s how I do it too. I used to find digital clocks easier to read until I learned about the spatial intervals between minutes (for instance, the distance between two numbers = five minutes). I find this very useful: it means you can read just about any sort of clock, analog OR digital. I also feel like I had to learn about how to tell time before I could read even a digital clock. I’d ask what time it was, and my parents would say “it’s 2:30,” but I wouldn’t know what that really meant.
Also, I was never taught in school how to tie shoes. My mom did that. I was taught how to tell time, though, in first grade. I even remember the plot of the filmstrip* we had to watch on it! A couple kids were meeting a guy for a hot air balloon ride. He said he’d take them the next day, but they had to make sure to be there at 3:00 sharp. Of course, they don’t know what this means, so they consult a magical wizard dude for help. Wizard teaches them, they make it to the hot air balloon guy on time, all is well.
*Holy crap, talk about your obsolete technology. Do they use those in elementary schools anymore?
I have noticed this, too. I have sometimes asked one of my kids’ friends (who range in age from about 7 to about 10) their parent’s phone number when they were at our house playing – mostly when I didn’t want to be troubled to look it up, but at least twice at school when the parent failed to appear to pick the child up – and was astonished to discover that they do not know it.
It’s not like they have forgotten because it’s on the speed dial; none of these kids has a cell phone. They have never known their phone numbers. So apparently I am the one out of step.
Perhaps its because phone numbers have gotten longer these days. When I first had to remember my phone number for school, it was only 6 digits - now all landlines are 8 (round here) and mobiles are 10 … and for a lot of people it would be a hard choice to figure out which phone number to teach their kids … home phone (if there is one) / mum’s mobile / dad’s mobile / work …
I must confess I gave up on getting my 6-year-old to remember our phone number (also, we’re going to have to move again so … moot point). She does know where we live though!
Of course you need to teach your kid how to tie shoe laces and read an analog clock.