I have lingering bitterness for the irresponsible New Math experiment in my elementary education. I couldn't tell time on an analog clock until I was 12, thanks to the blithe dismissal of "rote" multiplication tasks.
edit: I just googled it and apparently New Math was during the 1950s-1970s. This confuses me even further since reading an analog clock seems even more important in those times?
(non-American here, I may be lacking context that makes it obvious)
The only skill required is remembering that the shorter hand is hours and the longer hand is minutes.
https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/f220d887-1a05-418...
Hour 6 is also minute 30. There’s some arithmetic for you! Six times five, if you like, or six times ten divided by two if you prefer.
Many don’t have numbers at all, so you’ll need to build a good intuition for fractions and converting those to hours and minutes if you want to read them fast. Most of us do it so automatically we don’t notice, but some of that’s plausibly fraction multiplication.