Sundial Syndrome

I spent the afternoon with some 2nd graders who are struggling with some math concepts. We spent our time working with Judy clocks. Some of you may remember theses wooden geared clocks where the movement of the minute hand automatically shifts the movement of the hour hand and vice versa. Among the half a dozen students who are pulled out for special help in this area are ones who cannot concentrate, ones who are confused, children who struggle in this specific area of academia, students who struggle in all areas of learning, and ones who disrupt the larger class.

As I work  with the children and the clock I keep thinking of something that the teacher mentioned. None of them can practice this skill at home because there are no analog clocks in their homes. It makes sense, as I take stock of the clocks in our own home: 

• Three digital alarm clocks, 
• several digital watches,
•  various digital readouts on appliances, thermostats, and computers, 
• oh yes, a binary clock on display in the living room. 
• The only thing that comes close to an analog clock is an art piece I have in the basement shop. It is a clock,  but there are no hands, instead a large marked gear rotates under a pointer allowing time to be read. 

My house would not come close to helping these students read a classroom clock. Analog clocks are disappearing from our world slowly. There are still mantelpiece clocks, decorative wall clocks, grandfather clocks and such, but they are often more decorative than functional. Put a grown man, or woman in a room with an analog clock and there is a high probability that they will consult their digital wristwatch for the time. Put a child in their place and there is no hesitation.

I really do understand why analog time is still taught. Mathematically it strengthens concepts of time, skip counting, rounding (almost 7 o'clock), etc. And it will be many years until analog clocks go the way of the  sundial. I totally understand reasons to teach analog time. 

But I also find myself in a situation where I am questioning it. Many of the students I am sitting with are still struggling with basic addition. A few cannot count past 100. These students might benefit from dropping analog time for the moment and concentrating on skills where there aren't other options in later life. 

I fully realize that this is not the teacher's fault - they have little choice in what gets taught when and for how long. I also realize that many adults would fight against the removal of any skill that has become a traditional part of the grade-school curriculum. Many would fight even though they now use a calculator to figure out 6 x 7 and they never in their adult life have experienced a situation where they have to get 100 math facts correct in 60 seconds.

In a world where there is more and more knowledge to obtain and skills to acquire, there is a lot of pressure to stuff all of it into young minds. It is not uncommon to see terms like median and mean being introduced as early as 2nd and 3rd grade - terms that I didn't encounter until college statistics. I passed a kindergarten classroom singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" but instead it was "Head, Thorax, Abdomen". Apparently the standardized tests expect them to know those terms, even though the word "thorax" will likely only be used by those who head into the field of entymology. Let's remember kindergartners have a little while before they have to make those type of career path choices. 

Our world is changing. A recent survey of the youth in our church asked what children and teens wished their parents knew. The top two things:

• That I feel a lot of pressure
• That my life is scary/hard

I don't remember feeling that about my childhood. Maybe I am forgetting, but I don't remember the same pressure that I see in my own children's lives.

Doing what we've always done is not always the right thing. Doing what we've always done and adding to it with new areas is also not always the right thing to do. You can only add so much before one reaches the markers of pressure and stress. And as much as I don't want to acknowledge that, our children live there.

I think for many, analog time is a non-issue. Perhaps because it is outside their "struggle zone". Academics came easy for me and had you asked me in my 20's I would have a totally different answer than I have now that I have two dyslexic children. If something comes easy, it is easy to not ask if it is necessary. Only when it is a struggle do we seem to stop and ask if we really have to do it.

Yet maybe we should be asking it, even if there aren't struggling students. With so many feeling pressured maybe we need to look at what we can get by with not doing instead of charging ahead and adding to an already overstuffed curriculum.

Is analog time really that big of a deal?  Maybe the bigger deal is that we don't always stop to think about whether the things we grew up learning are still relevant to our children. Or maybe we don't stop to think about the stressful effect of the information revolution on our students. Whether or not to teach analog time is really not the big deal.

Unless math already is really hard for you

and you are in second grade

and you still don't know your addition basics

and the only place you'll ever see an analog clock is in school

and you have a Spiderman digital wristwatch that works just fine.