'Two Million Minutes' suggests it's time to improve U.S. education

[flashl]

A Memphis entrepreneur's documentary compares high-achieving students from India, China and America. It has drawn mixed reactions from academics.

It was over dinner in Bangalore that Bob Compton began to suspect something was deeply amiss in the way America educates its young.

Compton, a successful venture capitalist, was meeting with some of the Indian software engineers he employed. He soon found himself engaged in "the most interesting conversations I've ever had."

...

That conversation launched Compton, 52, of Memphis, Tenn., on a mission. As both an entrepreneur and the father of 14- and 16-year-old girls, he wanted to know what schools in other countries were doing that American schools weren't, and why the United States performed so miserably on international student comparisons.

The result was "Two Million Minutes," a one-hour documentary comparing the educational experiences of six students: two Americans, two Indians and two Chinese.

The movie, in (very) limited release, begins with the premise that the high school years span roughly 2 million minutes.

LA Times

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Our cultures are not at all similar

That's why our schools are different.

Why is this so hard for people to understand???

[Reader Rabbit]

3. Exactly. This is what no one seems willing to accept.

America, as a society, does not value education or hard work. In Asian cultures, it's exactly the opposite. No amount of top-down "fixes" is going to change anything until/unless our society changes what it values.

[goddess40]

2. That's a very right leaning docu-drama

The countries they compare us to don't educate all their children nor do they educate them to all the same standards. The children they show are from very high pressure situations and their suicide rates are unacceptably high (There is no rate that is acceptable but the rates in these countries for the children in these programs are much higher then ours)

[geek_sabre]

4. Has anyone actually see it?

I'm about half-way through it now; it emphasizes the differences in cultures between the 3 countries. It doesn't say that we should copy what China and India are doing, but that, if our goal is to be competitive in math and science, requires a cultural change of sorts. While India and China are driven to succeed by economic uncertainty, Americans need some other motivation.

[goddess40]

5. I saw it a while ago

and recognized it for what it was right away. While I don't believe we value education enough in this country we do try to educate everyone not just the select few. Except, the republicans would like to change our country to the same method, hence this movie. With the NCLB and the big push to privatize our schools (and everything else) we are moving toward the types of education that the other countries have. It used to be enough just to give poor and to some extent middle class kids a sub par education by messing with the funding but now they just want to cut them out all together.