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New York teachers stunned to learn some students can’t read time on old clocks after phone ban comes into play
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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It takes just a few minutes to learn how to read an analog clock. Once you've got the idea, you'll be slow deciphering the time at first, but once you start doing it, very quickly you'll be reading it immediately with just a glance.
I see analog clocks all over the place, especially waiting rooms and public buildings, and I have a very nice pretty one in my house. I think the people saying they're not being used anymore just aren't noticing them, they're just background scenery to them and don't enter their consciousness.
I learned how to read one over 20 years ago, when am I supposed to get to the point where it's just a glance? (And it's not like I rarely encountered analog clocks growing up, the only clock I could see during breakfast was an analog clock...)
I don't mind them but for me digital is much faster to read. Granted it's still like 2 seconds at most so not like it really matters, but I find it to be noticably more mental effort.
Every classroom I was in from kindergarten through university had analog clocks on the wall, so I was absolutely able to just glance. For years.
But since I haven't been in a classroom for so long, and I'm not surrounded by analog clocks anymore, I think I've mostly lost that ability and I've found that it takes me a couple of seconds nowadays to decode it.
It's definitely a skill that needs to be practiced to keep it up
It would just depend on how often you actually use them, it's just familiarity. If you had one in your house/classroom/office that you looked at whenever you wanted to know the time (as it used to be before digital), it would take only a quick glance. Your brain recognizes the shapes, just like it recognizes words in your native language immediately without figuring out the individual letters.
How do you not read it at a glance? After 20 years you think you would just notice the general shapes, its all basically the same, especially if you simply round everything, which is what a lot of people do as time on an analog clock is rarely used super precise.
1/4 or 1/2 after or before, and almost.
Then what hour is the small hand approaching?
Quarter to 3.
Half past 1.
Almost 4.
Seems pretty simple. Unless you are used to 24 hours, then you would have to ignore or add 12.
If I know the hour already it's usually at a glance since I just need to see the general area of the minute hand (unless it's one of those clocks where the minute and hour hand are barely different in length so i have to first figure out which is which, but that's just a design problem).
But otherwise, or if I need to know the time more precisely (which is kinda often tbh since nowadays I mainly see analog clocks in train stations) it takes me a second or two. Whatever it is that'd make me able to read them in an instant just never got wired in my brain i guess. Digital clocks I can read at a glance.
It might be digital clocks fault that I mostly think about time in minute precision and that then might have made it harder to ever build the pattern recognition for slightly rougher time reading from analog clocks
Probably too busy getting shrimp neck and not looking up, LOL.