“Two Million Minutes” well meaning, misleading
Friday, February 15, 2008Written by: Captain Haddock
The usual suspects were on hand Wednesday evening for a private screening of "Two Million Minutes, "a new documentary by entrepreneur Bob Compton. After the screening, a panel of Colorado educratic types, including the lieutenant governor and education Commissioner Dwight Jones, were on hand to respond.
The film is a sort of video version of Thomas Friedman’s "The World is Flat" - schools in other countries train their kids to do what we do better and cheaper, and there are lots of ‘em. The film, which while not ready to enter this year’s Oscar race, is a heartfelt and often insightful study of the educational experiences of top-tier high school kids in the United States, India, and China.
But, in its desire to strike fear into the hearts of complacent upper-middle class Americans who take for granted our status as Greatest Country in the World, it fails to consider a set of key points. The first point –made forcefully by Commissioner Jones in the discussion following the movie – is that Chinese and Indian schools are dealing with a wholly more homogenous population than ours. Our school systems are charged with educating all children, and with this diversity comes challenge and opportunity. But the Indian children we see – in a private school in high-tech Bangalore — represent a select group of a select group; we do not see the hundreds of millions who cannot afford to attend school of any kind.
Though the movie implies that the Chinese and Indian systems convey more appropriate values than our system, even this hour-long glimpse into the lives of these children would make most of us shudder: an insistence on “global competitiveness” at any cost, seven days a week of wall-to-wall studying; hypercompetitive parents.
"Two Million Minutes" is worth a viewing, but don’t go shipping your ninth-grader overseas any time soon.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I agree, Cap’n. And was I the only one who was a bit creeped out by executive producer Bob Compton’s opening remarks? After a trip to India and China, Compton said, he came home so alarmed by the competitive edge kids in those countries have over our coddled and slothful darlings that he forced his kids to quit competitive sports and instead undergo forced tutoring on weekends. My reaction to that was not “how enlightened,” but rather ‘thank God he’s not my dad.”
We will not “beat” China and India by competing with them to automatize our children, or by forcing them into an over-scheduled nightmare of a life. I prefer the Marc Tucker version of the future, which has the U.S. maintaining (or perhaps reestablishing would be more accurate) its economic edge by fostering not only technical and technological proficiency, but creativity as well.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Creativity can only work with knowledgeable people. Empty heads cannot start designing next generation space shuttles. While America manages to inspire a few every year, we can only hope that the trend continues. The schools are hardly able to provide the necessary education to provide the base for creativity. People often think creativity and education are opposite ends of the spectrum. In fact it is the American education that oversimplifies Math and Science so that everyone can churn up an answer and not try to understand or appreciate it. It seems as though fewer and fewer inspired Americans are taking care of more and more less inspired as time goes by.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Actually, Commissioner Jones’ comments about U.S. diversity, the social role of the schools, etc., missed the point of the movie, which compared elite schools, not entire educational systems.
I suspect rural India and inland China have schools that make Washington, D.C.,
elementaries look like Boston Latin.
And speaking of diversity, India reportedly has more than 400 languages, 122 of which have more than 10 million native speakers.
The movie is food for thought, whether we like it or not.
July 4th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I appreciate your taking the time to view my film Two Million Minutes and to offer a thoughtful critique. There are a few points of clarification I’d like to offer:
1- Fear mongering was not my intent. My director, editors and I tried to make the film a balanced portrayal of how high school students in the US. India and China allocate their time during four years of high school - their Two Million Minutes.
2- Less about school, more about society. The film ultimately is more about how kids, their families and communities value academic, athletic and intellectual achievement. American kids have a much wider choice of activities and allocate less of their 2 million minutes to academic achievement. In the 21st century Cognitive Age - when technologies and economies will change faster than any era in history - more time and emphasis on cognitive skill development and intellectual achievement may be important. That is my belief, but I may be wrong.
3- I didn’t mean to “creep out” Alan Gottlieb - my comment that my “daughters wished I hadn’t gone to India in 2005″, was going for the laugh; I was being facetious. Yes it is true since I returned from India, my girls no longer spend 24 hours a week, year round, in the swimming pool and they do spend more time on academic work, but they are hardly “undergoing forced tutoring.”
What we have discovered is the more deeply one understands math, physics, chemistry and biology the more interesting and enjoyable those subjects become.
Both daughters have taken their 24 hours a week in the water and reallocated to activities like musical theater, volunteering at St Jude’s Children’s Hospital and interning with a pediatric surgeon — and they spend about 30 minutes a day more on math and 30 minutes on science.
My older daughter, Lizzy, has really blossomed as a singer, poet and actress (who can also balance an ionic equation). Here is a YouTube video of her performing By My Side from Godspell - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFy50LSmViY
And my younger daughter, Meredith, has not only started theater, but taken up “in season” golf, in addition to playing in season softball. Recently, she finished a week at science camp at Clemson University. When I picked her up, she gave me a 2-hour animated tour of the campus and said “this was the BEST camp I have ever been to. Can I come back next year for Chemistry?”
And we are going to China this summer - for the Olympics as well as to travel in a country I believe will be an important one for my girls to understand in their lifetimes. India is next summer, another important country for the 21st century.
Allen - I don’t feel they are on an academic Bataan death march, at least I hope not.
Bob Compton
Executive Producer
Two Million Minutes
August 12th, 2008 at 11:35 am
It’s instructive to see the naysayers of our challenges continue to assume their stance of political and social acceptability, ie. status quo. The acknowlegement that our only goal in education is to provide all who reside here with a semblance of learning, without regard to substance or validity, is to deny the inevitable penalties those learners will incur as they venture into the real world.
Regardless of our personal, political, social or industrial preferences, we are fully engaged in a world environment that offers the USA an opportunity to excel, if we can only muster the leadership. With few exceptions it appears that, to date, few have accepted that challenge. It can only be hoped that that lack of involvement is timidity rather then incompetence.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I am a Brit living in Canada and can totally relate to Bobs findings and assertions. North American values with sports and athletics seem to obscure the need to excel in academics. As an international business trainer and coach for thirty two years, I constantly have stressed to educational establishments that they must prepare students for a highly competitive, global economy.There needs to be greater interaction between educationalists and members of industry in order create an education system in North America that will prepare students for the demands of the 21st century.
I sincerely hope that students, teachers,members of industry and the government take a very close look at what this documentary reveals.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
The film does indeed compare apples and oranges. While the high school profiled in Indiana is obviously not a struggling one from the inner city or a rural area, neither is it in the same class as the elite schools profiled in China and India. It is a public school, open to all students. It cannot reject students as the private schools overseas do and cherry pick only the most academically able.
Moreover, if you have seen the film, I find it ludicrous that the filmmakers imply the young man from Indiana is some kind of slacker. Is he always challenged by all his classes? Clearly no. But he is also president of his class, volunteers in the community, plays sports and has a healthy, typical teenager social life. What a loser, I guess, because he didn’t get into Harvard and instead had to go to Indiana University (I went to an even less prestigious school - maybe I should crawl into a hole in the ground). Moreover, the young man from India strikes me as wistful and sad that he can’t play music or soccer with his friends, not even a little. I want my daughters to have a secure economic future, too, but not at the cost of being fully human.
This film is not strictly corporate propaganda, but don’t fool yourselves about the agenda of the Wall Street “entrepreneur” who made it. If your kids are slaves to school and college, they’ll make good, compliant workers who put the company first, too.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Several reponses (rejoinders?) to the points made by some correspondents:
1. India is as diverse as one can get with hundreds of social mores, languages, food habits, customs and practices. What stark ignorance to say that India lacks diversity.
2. When I started school, I sat on jute gunny bags on the floor, with books on the floor and a little desk to write on. My school building had thatched roof, and later we celebrated when it became corrugated tin roof. The teacher was the only one with a chair and a small desk. We practised writing and math on slates and wiped them off for the next exercise - no paper to waste. It was no elite school by any stretch of imagination. However, my father always knew what I was learning and where I was having problems. I did go on to one of the best technological institutions in the world, acquire several masters degrees, and receive top professional honors in this country. This is true of many of my class friends. It is time you guys woke up from delusion.
3. When I came for my MBA here, many of my class fellows didn’t know where India was. They knew about Iran (couldn’t pronounce it correctly) because of the hostage crisis. I wrote better and more grammatically correct english than most did, and it is not my mother tongue. So much for well rounded education.
4. I know more about the Bible than most people in the USA know about the Quoran or Hindu religious scriptures.
5. I volunteered as an adult basic education tutor for a few years, and was apalled by the graduates of the high school system here. Many didn’t have the writing or math skills that I had when I was 10. There is no social promotion in India. You don’t study, you fail the grade and repeat. There is no dream of basket ball career to fall back upon.
6. I have met many people from many countries. The social skills of people everywhere are the same. You have the good and the bad everywhere. However, you do need some exposure to understand that social expressions and interactions differ from one another in different countries. You do need some enlightenment to understand that when you meet a person new to this society, he is naturally inhibited in his expressions and interactions.
In summary, young age is the time to learn and build character by acquiring knowledge and through hard work. They can’t be done on the street, in the clubs, or in front of the tv. They can’t be done without adult involvement or adult supervision.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:12 am
I’ve BEEN to these countries,as well as Mexico, each time visiting the schools, and even having lived in Japan where I taught English for two years. I saw a greater respect for education and teachers, harder working children. I love America, but most of my students here (at least in the Indianapolis inner city where I teach now) are lazy, don’t respect teachers or value education, and only have very short sighted or impulsive thinking. I do have some kids who understand that education is important, but they are mostly Mexican immigrant children, asian kids, or a few others who actually have both parents raising them and are involved in their children’s lives.
I watched 2 Million Minutes, and really believe that Bob Compton never intended to mislead anyone, only bring to our attention that we are really in trouble if we keep this course and other countries continue to make advancements. True there are many children in China or India who can not afford to go to school, but most do, and they have more children in school who take it seriously than we have children AND adults in our own country. I believe his message is generally true for both upper tier and poor schools in those countries and our own, and his message should be taken seriously.
If you doubt… just plan your next trip to visit one of these countries and spend a day in any one of their random schools when you do. You might be surprised how poorly we compare as far as attitude and importance placed on education. This is even more shocking when you realized how much more money our wealthy nation is able to spend on education… yet we are still spinning our wheels.