"These newfangled analog clocks with hands are killing the ability of people to understand clock bells. Kids these days."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striking_clock

A striking clock is a clock that sounds the hours audibly on a bell, gong, or other audible device. In 12-hour striking, used most commonly in striking clocks today, the clock strikes once at 1:00 am, twice at 2:00 am, continuing in this way up to twelve times at 12:00 mid-day, then starts again, striking once at 1:00 pm, twice at 2:00 pm, and the pattern continues up to twelve times at 12:00 midnight.

The striking feature of clocks was originally more important than their clock faces; the earliest clocks struck the hours, but had no dials to enable the time to be read.[1] The development of mechanical clocks in 12th century Europe was motivated by the need to ring bells upon the canonical hours to call the community to prayer. The earliest known mechanical clocks were large striking clocks installed in towers in monasteries or public squares, so that their bells could be heard far away.

Elder millennial here, I also struggle reading analogue clocks to this day. I can, but it just takes me a long time to do so. And I've been like this since I was a little kid.

I used to think it was a meme too and I still think it is to a point. But several of my recent jobs were at universities and I have met several people younger than me now who cannot read an analog clock, use a mouse, copy a file to a flash drive, or make change. To say nothing of their ability to find information that can’t be googled (like the location of a classroom). I have really begun to feel that the general population has absolutely failed GenZ and I really hope we can break the pattern before GenAlpha gets much older.

You make it sound like you’re old 😂

We explicitly learned analog clocks in 1st grade, had worksheets and everything. What the hell are schools doing these days?

I work in schools. We have them in every hallway and classroom. But the kids do not know how to read them, and they don't even seem interested to learn even though it would take all of two minutes to wrap their head around. Seen it in the middle and high schools.

The little (shorter) hand points to the hour, the big (longer) hand points to the minutes. That's pretty much it. And of course the hands move clockwise.

edit: I should also note that for reading the hour, the number the hour hand points to is the number of the hour, but for reading the minutes, each number counts as 5 minutes. There are usually dots between the numbers--each dot is 1 minute. So between the 12 and the 1 is 5 minutes, 1 to 2 is 5 more minutes, so the minute hand pointing to the 2 means 10 minutes after the hour.

I'd be hilarious if they started using and contributing to the meshtastic network.

Experienced software devs and tradesmen know this pain all too well. Frameworks and widgets make it easy to do stuff quickly, but no one knows how it works under the hood any more.

Exactly. I’m wondering how many of those teachers could use a slide rule or even an abacus. We’re far enough along now that I bet the majority of teachers would also be lost when confronted with a log table or a topo map and a compass.

Astrolabe and sextant? They’d be totally lost.

I bet most teachers don’t know how to saddle a horse, card and spin wool and flax by hand, or even use a clutch on a manual transmission vehicle, either.

[edit] Ooh… thought of another one! I bet none of the children know how to use a rotary phone either. (In fact, since POTS has been fully DTMF for over 20 years, I doubt a dial phone would actually function today without a converter).

Youth of today are a failure. They neither show the initiative to adopt new and improved practices the way we broke from those of our parents' generation, nor the wisdom to recognize that our generation's ways are the correct ones and should be followed to the letter.

Students in the city’s school system are meant to learn basic time-telling skills in the first and second grade, according to officials, though it appears children have fallen out of practice doing so in an increasingly digital world.

They're supposed to, but if they never use it because they don't have to, they'll just forget how.

All these kids are gonna fail their dementia tests in 60 years. 😝

(Yes that's how it long it takes psychologists to update stuff, they still give out psych testers from the 1940s for stuff like custody evaluations)

We don't really use sundials still. We still use analog clocks though because they're efficient and if it ain't broke, why fix it?

There's concern that young people have very poorly developed analog knowledge. Humans usually learn better by combining sensory inputs, such as learning better by writing things down or tying things to memories. Smells famously tie into memories very well. By only typing, and having very little connections to the real world in the context of learning, there is the fear that they will learn less and also not be able to learn, since they are lacking those sensory connections. They also have horrible handwriting, probably spelling as well due to autocorrect. This is practically not a problem, but if the next generations grow up not knowing "how to language", that is probably not ideal.