You really can’t glean the information just by looking at it if you’ve literally never seen one before in your life. It’s hard to Envision if you’re just used to it, like I said I was a little slow to read it but I still know how I’m just not used to it so it’s no longer instant . But I also can understand that if you’ve literally never seen one in your life and never had it mentioned to you you would really have no way to know what the difference between the big or the small hand was.

Now if you did sit and stare at it for long enough you could eventually figure it out as the hands moved but most people aren’t going to sit there and stare at a clock for 10min to try and figure it out.

At the end of the day even mundane things can be a skill, and I do agree that there is a substantial lack of critical thinking as the generations go on it was a problem already in my generation much less these latest ones. All That No Child Left Behind and standardized testing crap really destroyed schools hard it went from critical thinking to just memorize the answer or skip the question if you don’t know, asking questions became bad and unfortunately that’s going to follow you into adulthood

There is many reasons it happened but not being able to read analog clocks was not one of them. I’m sorry that it upsets you so much that I don’t agree but I feel like there’s a better way to express it than what you chose.

I genuinely don’t know where I would even find an analog clock anymore outside of school and I haven’t been in school for more than 20 years. genuinely do not remember the last time I’ve seen an analog clock, and I work in a lot of public government offices who are usually pretty far behind the times but even they use digital clocks. to the point that I just went to look had a picture of one and it actually takes me a second to read now.

I don’t understand why people are so obsessed on holding on to knowledge that is not relevant to your daily life, digital clocks are objectively better at the task of telling the time and it’s what exists everywhere in life now I don’t really fault anyone for not being able to read an analog.

If I had to Hazard a guess I guess it’s probably just a lack of empathy? Or maybe that’s not quite the correct word but inability to put yourself in another’s place. They can’t Envision someone not having knowledge that they have unless that person is stupid.