My sister is apoplectic that kids can’t read cursive or read an analog clock. Who cares?
Which is why analog is better for taking tests or staying on schedule than digital: you can tell at a glance how much more time you have.
When I worked, briefly, at a clinical research center, I learned a small, crucial drug trial protocol. If you were testing, say, a new chemotherapy, you didn’t test it against a placebo control group. You tested it against a control group taking the current recommended therapy. You don’t just want to know if your intervention is better than nothing, you want to know if it’s the best possible intervention.
And that’s how I always think of education. The OP asks almost, but not quite, the right question. The right question is, “Is it important enough for kids to learn to read analog clocks that that’s the best use of their limited time in school?”
As one alternative: nowhere in the math standards either for my state or (I think) the common core math standards is there any requirement that students be able to read, analyze, or create a spreadsheet. Which is a better use of student’s time: learning to read an analog clock, or learning to read a spreadsheet?
Back in the nineteenth century when most of y’all were in school, sure: analog clock all the way. But today? I’d argue that being able to create simple formulae and build a variety of graphs is a much more useful skill than being able to read a sun dial – er, I mean, an analog clock.
FWIW, I have an analog clock in my classroom, and when students ask me the time, I point to it. I may not think it’s the best use of their time to learn how to read it, but given that they’ve spent the time, they may as well practice the skill.
as Kimstu pointed out, if you can’t read an analog clock, how will you understand what “clockwise/counterclockwise” means, a term used on instructions?
knowing the time is not an “important display of information”?
The very terms “clockwise” and “anti-/counter-clockwise” may need to be replaced. If we need new terms, I vote to rename “clockwise” to “positive rotation” & “anti-/counter-clockwise” to “negative rotation.” Not so hard.
Or, they will simply become words that mean what they mean and the etymology be damned. Earlier today I learned here that the origin of “embarrassed” meant something close to “tied up with rope.” Nobody beyond academics now knows or cares about the derivation. They know and care what the word means now. “Clockwise” may well be the word for that direction of rotation 500 years after the last analog clock ceases to exist and no one but academics knows what a “clock” ever was.
Kids don’t “dial” their phones either. They have a different word for it. OK.
There is that, plus the kids are always staring at the phone, which has the time readily displayed on it. Honestly they look at that phone so much that I’m not sure if they even take notice of the walls or floor.
But it’s not “they” though. Damn near every person in the civilized world is addicted to their phone.
I’m with you. I would buy it in a minute.
Personally, for me, sometimes I find it easier to work with a fraction and other times with a decimal. For example, when I’m cooking I think in fractions. When I’m doing the bills, I’m thinking in decimals.
Because it lets you know if you are typing the numbers into your calculator correctly. It may not be critical to be able to multiply 1,500 x 8, but knowing that the answer is somewhere between 8,000 and 16,000 lets you know that if the calculator says it’s 24,000 that you made some mistake. I know a few people (who shall remain unnamed) that will blindly trust the answer than a calculator, spreadsheet, or Google gives them even when it’s pretty obviously wrong.
I’m not going to settle the debate as to whether or not kids should learn to read an analog clock. I do think learning fractions is still an important skill, and learning to read an analog clock is one way to teach basic fractions along with a pizza, a pie, a candy bar, etc. I’m a teacher, I don’t teach math, but I strongly believe in using the tools available. As someone posted above a lot of classrooms, as does mine, still have analog clocks. Use them to help teach a skill.
Get one of these.
I thought that looked familiar; it’s at the airport in San Jose, California.
After the time change last fall my phone was an hour off for a few weeks, until it finally made the change.
That’s another excellent point. As with analog speedometers, spatial relationships are much more intuitive than numbers.
Eeeeeeewwwwwww 
, that would be setting kids up to fail hard if they ever try to take any math beyond basic algebra and geometry, or applied math subjects using those concepts. Standard angle metrology on the unit circle (in courses like trigonometry, calculus, etc.) measures negative angles rotating clockwise, and positive angles counterclockwise.
Sure, all math students are eventually going to run up against some systems of technical notation that seem contradictory or counterintuitive. There’s so much technical notation shaped by a hodgepodge of conventions and methods and historical circumstances, and consequently a lot of inconsistencies between different sets of conventions.
But I maintain that that’s all the more reason that people need to have some fundamental concepts embedded in their physical understanding literally from childhood. Just like you spend the time physically absorbing the fundamental difference between your left and your right, you need to have a basic physical understanding of which rotational direction is which. Not mentally fumbling to remember which way is supposed to be “positive” and which “negative” in the current context of angle sign convention (the way that so many digital-only kids now mentally fumble when they try to estimate at 3:17 how much time is left till 4:00).
As I keep saying, yeah, we don’t intrinsically need to instill this spatial knowledge of rotation and angle by means of analog clocks. We can call the rotational directions “anuloma” and “viloma” as the ancient Indians did, or whatever, and use some different physical device or movement to fix them in kids’ physical understanding.
But the analog clocks did a pretty good job not only of embedding that understanding of rotation orientation and angle, but familiarizing children with the spatial meaning of base-60 numeration (still standard for the measurement of time and angle, and that’s not likely to change any time soon) and giving them a visual rather than strictly numerical awareness of time measurement.
I’m not sure that those benefits are going to be adequately replaced by learning how to manipulate the buttons to create and populate a digital spreadsheet. (Mind you, of course I agree that children in any numerate society have always needed to learn to read and understand tabulated numerical data in general. And that can certainly be done—and I presume is nowadays already routinely being done?—using digital spreadsheets, just as back in my day it was done with printed tables on paper pages.)
I say we retain “clockwise” and “counter-clockwise” forever, and let the little bastards figure it out for themselves. I’m sure their $2000 cell phones must be capable of displaying an analog clock face.
To be fair, in that case we’ve also got to keep around the variant form “anti-clockwise” for the latter, since AFAICT that’s the standard term for most English speakers in Commonwealth countries.
It is? Hmmm – I’m in a Commonwealth country, and I always hear and use “counter-clockwise”. Of course here in Canada we’re constantly infiltrated by Americanisms.