Do they not teach reading clocks in school anymore? I remember like a quarter of first grade math being nothing but learning to read an analog clock. Surely if you're a school and discover a bunch of your students are lacking in a basic skill, that's a failure on your part as educators, not somehow a fault that your students don't have clocks at home. You said the 90s though, which was when I was in elementary, so maybe I just got lucky to have a school that assumed they had to teach us everything.

I remember really struggling with it as a kid and I still have the same “ok, think through it, what time is it likely to be? Etc.” as you, to an extent. But much much less these days vs how I was, but it was always a focused effort for a long time for me.