2 Million Minutes

Today we watched a video in class called 2 Million Minutes. They estimate that students spend on average 2 million minutes in school this video follows school in China, The United States, and India. In each countries those 2 million minutes are spend drastically different. The difference in how time is spent reflects how students do on testing, their level of determination, and the career path they choose to take.

In China there determination comes from wanted to get out of poverty, they want a better life for themselves and their family. Most of the students time in China is spent either at school or at home. They are not allowed to drive at the age of 16 like we are here in America. Their family wants nothing more than for their child to succeed in school and get a quality education. Chinese students are in school twice as long over all than here in America.

Indian schools are for-profit schools.They have education much like China with long days and an intense work load. The students parents push the career onto their child that they feel will make them successful. They do not take jobs that are risks like careers in sports, music or arts. They want a career that will allow them to be financially stable. One girl stated she felt "American education is like a dream no homework, light syllabuss and study only when you want to." This statement is pretty much true. Most, not all, American students do not spend as much studying as they do hanging out with friends or playing sports.

The American school they visited was a suburb school with great test scores. These students spend much less time on school work then they do on other activities. We scored 24 out of 29 countries in math. One professional talked about how Americans do work hard that is not the problem. The problem is how we spend out time, many students are involved in extra circular activities that take up a lot of time. For example, football there is an average of 20 hours a week spent practicing football. If the time was spent on homework and school there could be a big difference in school work completed by the student.