A significant number of lower secondary students (grades 7-9) at the Albert Edelfeltin school in Porvoo are unable to read an analogue clock, even at the level expected of second graders.
This was reported by Helsingin Sanomat, which wrote that many teenagers were unable to complete clock-reading exercises designed for second graders. The newspaper interviewed Ripsa Heiskanen, a math, physics and chemistry teacher at the school.
Heiskanen became suspicious when she noticed her pupils kept asking how long it was until the next break, even though every classroom in the school is equipped with an analogue wall clock.
She decided to check her students' time-reading skills.
Heiskanen gave her eighth grade students a pop quiz asking them to tell the time by looking at the hands on an analogue clock face. They were also asked to draw the positions of the hands to show different times.
The results showed that in each quizzed group, around five teens could only tell time when the hands pointed to whole hours.
There is no single reason why lower secondary students struggle to tell time.
According to Ripsa Heiskanen, even some pupils without learning difficulties were unable to read an analogue clock.
She told HS that the growing influence of English among young people may be confusing their understanding of how time is expressed in Finnish and Swedish.
