2 Million Minutes

Today in class we watched the documentary Two Million Minutes. It is a documentary about six high school students from three different areas (two students from each). The areas include: India, China, and the United States. It basically describes how each students spends their 2 million minutes of high school and explores how each one spends it differently. India and China were indeed very different from the American high school setting.

In China you spend most of your time in school and studying. Studying is their number one priority. They don't want to waste their time with anything else, they just want to study and work their hardest on their studying materials. They strive to excel in the world of education. They spend twice as many hours studying compared to American students. However, they are interested in learning, therefore, they are eager to learn and they learn well.

In India only a select few are able to attend school. One of the students in the video attends a K-12 for profit school that only has 300 students in it. The video said that some students are fighting to eat and survive, therefore, they want to work harder in their education so that they can do better in their future. They have to graduate with a really good GPA in order to get into college and to succeed. By the age of 17 most kids already know what they want to do with their lives. They don't take any risks, such as, joining a band and hoping to make it big. School is what makes a person. They work hard and even attend school on Saturdays and spend most of it studying.

In the United States students only take required classes, they don't push themselves enough, especially in the math and science areas. They have a light syllabus compared to the other places in the film and don't spend as much of their time studying. They think of high school and college as a "have fun" experience instead of a "do their best learning experience". Extracurricular activities and sports are a big deal. They would rather play sports and do other fun things with friends than have to do homework. One student in the film thought that she was more "well-rounded" than the other students from India and China because she did other things than just study. She was more social and spent some of her time doing extracurricular activities. However, in the film is states that American students do work hard, they are just working hard in other areas (such as sports and having a part time job).


From this documentary I have realized that as an American student, I do in fact spend less time studying when compared to students from India and China. I feel as if I do have it easier than them. I don't worry about school as much as they do, however, I feel that I should. This video gave me a whole new perspective on the world of education. My future and the future of the American society depends on how hard the students of the United States work. I had a college math professor who told the whole class almost every day that it was our fault that the United States was going through another depression era. He said that it was our fault that the United States wasn't doing as good as other countries. He said it was our fault because we our lazy, not hard working, and spoiled individuals. Will students in this country ever study as hard and want to achieve as much as those from India and China?