2 Million Minutes

Today in class we watched a documentary called 2 Million Minutes.  It followed six student’s lives, two from the United States, two from India, and two from China.  This movie was a great eye opener for me.  I didn’t really know much about the education systems in either China or India.  The name 2 Million Minutes is the name because the average student spends 2 million minutes at high school.  Americans aren’t globally aware about what is going on around in other educational systems.  They don’t have nearly as much homework as China or India students.  It seemed to me that American students don’t really know what they want to go to college for unlike the other two countries.  There were many interesting statistics that this documentary had.  For example, China’s school year is a month longer then America, and the student there spend twice the amount of studying then American students during their time at high school.  China and India spend most of the spotlight on the sciences and mathematics; where as the United States’ focuses on other things such as the arts and sports.   There are also other differences as well; the parents of Chinese students invest so much more into their children because China has the rule that one child per family.  It seems to me that not all parents of American students help their children with their education.  Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and am eager to learn more about other countries educational system.