Schools Are Taking Down Analog Clocks Because Kids Can’t Tell Time Anymore

In this day and age, everything seems to be going digital. Gone are the days when we rely on our wall clocks for telling the time. Now, we have smartphones that tell us what time it is. The problem is, even kids these days rely on the modernization of things. Sadly, a lot of them do not know how to tell the time using analog clocks.

Teachers in the United Kingdom realized that students were distracted by the analog clocks. And this is the reason why schools in the United States are taking their analog walls clocks down and replace them with digital clocks instead. It has been proven that students get easily distracted by the analog clocks.

Students have the tendency to look at them and figure out how much time they have left until classes are over. Also, this is a distraction during exams as they are unable to concentrate, worrying that they do not have enough time left.

Back in the day, students would look at the clock and watch it tick away until the bell rings that signals that it’s time for recess, lunch, or when classes are over. They also use the analog clocks to tell if they still have time to complete a seatwork or a task. It was easier than when students know how to tell the time using the analog clocks.

But in this digital age, it is no longer that useful because digital clocks are becoming more popular. Kids are more exposed to digital clocks at home. And because of this, it became more difficult to teach them how to use the analog clocks. According to a survey, there is a large number of students that are in Grades Ten to Twelve who cannot tell the time using the analog clock.

This means that not only the younger ones have a problem with telling the time. Even the high schoolers also have a decreased ability to use traditional clocks over the years.

Monitoring the time is one of the concerns of using analog clocks. Teachers are receiving complaints from students that they have trouble keeping track of how much time they have left when taking the exam. Since they have difficulty telling the time using analog clocks, students are having trouble managing their time.

They would rush through their exams and would not be able to perform as well as if they were not worried about the time. And for some students, they would simply run out of time to answer the remaining questions as they do not know how much time is left.

But not all analog clocks in the school system are removed. But in order to help these students get better in their academics performance, the use of digital clocks are allowed. The goal of this change is to help make the students more relaxed during the exams and seat works.

This way, it will decrease their efforts of asking their teachers how much time remains before they need to hand over their answer sheets.

The educational system is still hopeful that they can continue teaching these students on how to use analog clocks and not solely rely on the digital ones. And soon, they can go back to using analog clocks at schools.