“When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’” -- from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat
First, let me thank you all for your attention to the film this week. You probably know my answer to the question in the title of this post. I do think there is a crisis - a quiet crisis that is more dangerous than any crisis we face as a country. But this blogging session is not about what
I think. It is your opportunity to give your opinion about 2 Million Minutes, about the so-called crisis in American education, and your feelings about your experience with American education.The film 2 Million Minutes tells the story of how six students use their 2,000,000 minutes (4 yrs) of high school. It quickly becomes obvious that the two students from India and the two from China spend far more time in school and studying than the two students from the United States. While all six students went on to college, the Indian and Chinese students were disappointed that they did not get into their first choice of schools. What does this say about them? Are they weaker students than the film portrayed? Or did they just set their sights higher than the American students?
So, how does all of this relate to you?
Are you concerned or alarmed by what you saw? Do you think that American students like you should be doing something different? Should school officials and teachers being doing something different to help improve how American students are performing?
Is there really a crisis?
You may think that all this talk about a crisis in American education is just dead wrong. What do you think? Is there really a crisis? Do you think that you'll be prepared to compete for the really good jobs when you graduate from college?
Do you think American students spend enough time in school and studying? Do we spend too much time on other things - sports, TV, video games, etc.? Do you think that you should make changes in the amount of time that you study?
Regardless of how you feel about 2 Million Minutes, there is a lot to talk about and debate. I want this to be the most active blogging session so far. Read all of the comments that have been made, enter your own comment, then come back often throughout this week to continue the conversation. The only thing that I ask, is that you keep the conversation thoughtful and intelligent. Be sure to give reasons for the opinions you offer.
Before commenting, take a few minutes to watch the following video:
Helpful Links
USA Today article about 2 Million Minutes
Boston Globe - My lazy American students
This session will end at 12 am on Monday, April 2.
Student Sleeping image from Flickr
Posts
61 comments:
I wasnt that suprised by what I saw because I already knew that The United States wasnt the "smartest" country in terms of students and international rankings in acedemics. Compared to the Indian and Chinese students we saw are studying habits are very diffrent. They usually are all study no play and we are more of doing both.I do think its somewhat of a crisis and that we should improve because nobody likes to be last and espicially when it comes to education which is the foundation for life these days. One thing that the other countries in the video had was their parents were engineers or into physics so once their parents had wanted them to do the same they invest a lot in their childrens education which some parents dont do. Something we should do is realize its ok to have fun, but we dont need to waste so much time doing nothing and more time doing something.
I believe that this movie relates to me and the human race. This is because I am an American student that goes to school and will grow-up and have an education. I believe the movie is about, how American's education will decrease and other educations will increase like China's and India's. I think this is a crisis, because Americans are not meeting thier potential and doing what we are capable of doing. We are not challenging ourselves enough. I strongly believe that we should study more and try to challenge ourselves more as well. For example, our disscussion in class, "If you reach for the moon and miss, you'll land upon the stars". The girl from china played the violin, studied, and practiced dance. She applied for Yale University and although she was not accepted, she went to an equivalent and equally challanging school. You could apply her situation to the example that i provided above referencing the moon and th stars. This was a modivational movie to watch. It helped me become aware of American student's education and just how important it is.
I agree with Joanie. If we dont start taking things as seriously as other countries whats gonna happen to our future generations?
I agree with Joanie and Eden that if we don't take things seriously what is our future generation of fellow americans going to be like. I also agree with one of the ladies in the video how you manage your time is the most important, but I think being like the Chinese and Indians would be a stressful and boring life, studying all the time and stuff. But that is what makes a sucessful person if you want to study that much. I am glad that the chinese are better than us because know they aren't in poverty. But would I like the US to be most sucessfull in education and economics and overall accomplishments. I think the US can improve in its education but I really wouldn't want that 24/7 study and school life. Overall I think this is a crisis because the US is setting the bar lower than other countries or like Joanie said the US isn't meeting it's full potential.
like the Joanie, Jeremiah , and EDen (my fellow smart americans) said this may affect our future generations of americans. I think the movie definitley affects me becuz i AM A AMERICAN!! Us americans may not be smarter than the the asians and indians becuz like joanie said the US setted the bar to low for us. I do think this is a crisis becuz it will eventually affect our future generation and becuz it makes the US look like they rnt tryin to meet high gols but settle for little achievements. LIKE MR VELIZ and his DAD SAID IF U SHOOT FOT THE MOON AND MISS ULL STILL BE IN THE STARS.
YES MR VELIZ i do think i should change how i study. I think ishould study more often becuz like the one dude said its like the most impotant part and it will make me achieve higher achievements and raise the bar.
i Dont think we spend to much time on sports and other things. FOR instance i play football like 24/7 but i hav a mostly organized life so i set a schedule on my sports and school life.
i Dont think we spend to much time on sports and other things. FOR instance i play football like 24/7 but i hav a mostly organized life so i set a schedule on my sports and school life.
I wasn't to surprised by what i saw about the other country's being "smarter" than America. Before we watched 2 Million Minutes, I already knew that the United States was not as serious about studying, school, and our education as the other countries such as India and China. I don't think that students should focus completely on their school work either. I think there should be a balance between fun activities, and studying. Also, like Joanie and Eden, i agree that if we don't start taking our education more serious, what is going to happen to our future generations? At the beginning of each nine weeks I always find myself telling myself that i will study more and get all A's, compared to A's and B's. This doesn't happen though. Eventually I get bored and don't start to study as much. Even though my grades do improve, I don't see how the Chinese and Indian kids can devote almost all their time to studying. I don't think that the Chinese and Indian kids are less smart because they didn't get into the first choice college and the kids from the United States did. I just think it means that the United States kids set the bar lower for their education.
Americans are capable of being as smart as foreign people. In fact, we could even be smarter. The problem is, Americans are so into having fun, partying, and playing sports, we dont use our brain to our fullest extent. If we dont step up on our enthusiasm in education this could become a great crisis. Right now, most kids in highschool devote more time to sports or video games then studying and school. In China, highschoolers focus on all work and no play. We need to figure out a way to balance out this equally so we have a nice mix of both in our everyday lifes. Seeing that we rank close to the lowest in mathematics was not too much of a surprise because of our little effort put into learning. Us teenagers, as a new generation need to start spending more time studying and devoting our time to learning while still leaving time for our sports and having fun. If this does not happen, our generations will learn less and less because of their lack of participation in studying and cooperation in learning at school. As I said before, this could become a great crisis, and we need to change it now.
I aslo agree with Caston. We are capable of all the work and studying, but we as American's want to also have fun. We should change before this becomes a big crisis.
I think the students in China and India were just setting their sights higher than the american students because despite the fact they obviously studied more than the american students, there are many perspectives of what "a lot of studying is" in our society today which might be the reason why they didn't get into the college of their choice. After watching the film, 2,000,000 minutes, I wasn't alarmed at the message of the film necessarily. Instead, I was alarmed at the statistics. For example, the math profieciency for 12th grade african-american and hispanic students was 3 and 4%. American students as a whole need to wake up and smell the textbooks because if we're going to be competing with other countries for the big hi-tech jobs we should at least have a somewhat good edge because in 2008,there was a 9.2 % increase of foreign students from Asia that graduated in the U.S. Also, I believe that teachers shouldn't just give their students a worksheet and expect them to ace a test without having a classroom discussion or some form of interactive learning. Aka, if you're a teacher that thinks it's fine to give your students a worksheet and give them a test two weeks later without some form of interactive learning, trust me, you're not helping your students learn to the best of their ability. In addition, I believe this is a major crisis in american education because statistics show that America is near the bottom of the list in terms of how our students perform competitively in the field of academics. If we keep going down the road we're going, we're going to be at the very bottom and everyone else will be getting the hi-tech jobs and we will be stuck with the people who work at McDonalds flipping burgers. I'm not saying we should stay crammed up in our rooms doing nothing but studying, but rather have a fine balance of work and play. In 2008, 17-year olds that watched tv for about 2 hours a day scored a 290 on a national test which, according to the U.S. Dept. of Education, means they "are able to search for specific information, interrelate ideas, and make generalizations about literature, science, and social studies materials." In other words, as long as students are studying as much as they go to football games, I believe there isn't anything wrong with that.
I agree with Grace =D The foreign students aren't less smarter because theu didn't get into their 1st college, it just means americans as a whole set the bar lower in terms of education
This video didn't surprise me at all. I already knew that the United States didn't contain the smartest kids in the world. If you look at the facts that the movie gave us, the United States seems to be more helpful to foreign peoples than true American citizens. I see this as such because a lot of PhD degrees are being given to a lot of foreigners. I believe this movie relates to all that care to act upon the showing of this film. The film seemed to be just a helpful reminder that America isn't the best at everything. For example our engineering small businesses are started by a lot of Indians.This film also showed me that success isn't determined by the amount of work you put in or how dedicated you are, it is determined by how far you but the bar. The people in India and China set the bar extremely high, yet they failed to meet their goal. This goes to show how much they expect of themselves. On the other hand the Americans didn't try as hard or set the bar as high as the others, showing that the average American citizen sets the bar high enough to succeed without a doubt of that they will pass with just a little work.
I, unlike Darrell, did think that the US had the smartest kids in the world. That is why the video definetly suprised me with how low the the math profiency's were and just how little studying we do compared to the indian and asians. I agree with the man in the video with the fadora that is really doesn't matter how many students come out of college or how smart they are but how the US puts those kids to work and how business invest in them!:)
I agree with Adriana that the chinese and Indian students set their bar at a higher level and it effects their whole academic lifetime. The students from the United States study and do homework as much as they would like to while,as they said in the video, the kids from China stay up all night studying and if we would put that much effort into our studying and academics our academic ranking would increase by a lot.Our immigrancy is increasing and taking a lot of jobs here in the United States and we need to change that by our students now. For example the percentage of Indian employees for Microsoft are 34%, NASA has 36% which means it is almost 4 out of 10 NASA scientists are Indian. While 67% of our employees In the U.S.are Chinese.
I agree with Adrianna, Grace, and Joanie. I agrre with them about how the Americans set the bar to low. For instance sure the Americans made it to the colleges that they wanted to and the Indian and Chinese people didn't. The Americans only made it to the colleges that they wanted to attend since they set the bar lower than the Indian and Chinese students did. I agree with joanie and Caston since they said we are capable of achieving the stuff that the Indians and Chinese do but we also like to have fun too. Like how i play football and other athletics but I am also a student.
Tom, I agree. We have set our bar lower and so it may seem that we are trying our hardest but we are just passing expectations and The Asians and Indians have much higher expectations comming into the world I
believe
Americans live life to its full potential and enjoy it with sports and tecnology that has dropped our education level down. I also agree with Danielle about how I feel about the movie.
I think that 2 million minutes is right that we should study more but, the reason we came to this country was to be free so the more time we have to do things we like the more we will put up with school. Plus the sports and other extra curricular activities stimulate the brain. Like football teaches you to make quick decisions and how to work as a team.
i agree with Tom about how we do set the bar low which is bad but we should still leave time out to relax.
I really Think this movie was eye openening for everyone who watched it.There were serveral moments in the movie were I was in disbelief. Although I was in disbelief it showed me to new aspects
I think we should get taught more than we already do because just because Brittany and Neil got there first choice of college that may not always be right what if The Chinese students and Indian Students get there first choice of college in the future and the American students doesnt get into any college. We really should boost our studying time and limit our time on techonlogy a day because so many people are always playing video games they dont ever study or do homework.
I agree with Anna. While I believe we have set the bar really low for ourselves, I believe americans live life to the fullest. I mean, if we didn't, we wouldn't excel in our #1 subject: self-confidence. =P
I agree with Walker that this movie was very eye-opening.
I agree with eden alot I was really suprised also, but i did feel as though we were acted but not to much. I mean i am american and i am us to everything beening the best like, we are the strongest nation, we have the best army, and other things that go on..like are freedom. This movie really showed me that we are not that smartest in acedemics, and how other countryies excell in math and other school activities. I was reall suprised about that they can fit just as many sports and fun time in as us. Like most of my friends felt like at the end when we got into the school they wanted and they didnt(the other people)(not the american people), but then i reallized that they had a way higher goal than us, i mean they were trying for the best school and we were trying for FSU or something. Well they thought we were living the dream because we socalized more than them, but what i was really mad at what they were saying about how we spend to much time doing sports like football....Thats what makes an Americans. They also make millions playing sports, now i know 4% of the people make but when they do it is wearth it. Overall i do think we should try harding for acedemics and our studing. I agree with eden and joaine about how we should taking things more seriously.
i agree with everything Walker said, i belive that what he said as the basic of this whole thing for me.
I was really alarmed about what I saw because to me I thought Americans were at the top of education, but what I saw says that we are at the bottom and China and Iindia were at the top. I really think we shouldn't step up our game because the people in India or China never got their dream to come true and in America the two students for filled their dream and didn't even put much effort into it like the students from China and India did. I think teachers should give us more homework to give us a challenge because it could probably help us get better at learning so we can show that the U.S. should be at the top to.I believe there is a crisis in the USA because our education should double because their is probably information in this world in math, science, civics, and more that we'll never learn about. I believe if I step up my goals and show people I am smart and I should go to this college, I believe I'll have a 99% of gettiong into my dream college. I do think we spend a goog amount of time in school, but not in studying because usually the rate of students wanting to watch TV than homework has grown tremendously. Yes, I believe we spend more time doing other things than doing school work or studying because students would probably rather do something they enjoy than studying. I believe I should spend more time studying because it'll probably help me in the future and also give me good grades. I hope this gives you a clear view of I believe from the questions I answered.
I was really alarmed about what I saw because to me I thought Americans were at the top of education, but what I saw says that we are at the bottom and China and Iindia were at the top. I really think we shouldn't step up our game because the people in India or China never got their dream to come true and in America the two students for filled their dream and didn't even put much effort into it like the students from China and India did. I think teachers should give us more homework to give us a challenge because it could probably help us get better at learning so we can show that the U.S. should be at the top to.I believe there is a crisis in the USA because our education should double because their is probably information in this world in math, science, civics, and more that we'll never learn about. I believe if I step up my goals and show people I am smart and I should go to this college, I believe I'll have a 99% of gettiong into my dream college. I do think we spend a goog amount of time in school, but not in studying because usually the rate of students wanting to watch TV than homework has grown tremendously. Yes, I believe we spend more time doing other things than doing school work or studying because students would probably rather do something they enjoy than studying. I believe I should spend more time studying because it'll probably help me in the future and also give me good grades. I hope this gives you a clear view of I believe from the questions I answered.
Oops! I accidently pressed it twice sorry.
I agree with abbey that we should get more hw and about how students spend way more time on the tv than studying! Also I cant believe we were 24th out of 29 for the ranking of mathematics! That is really sad and we should really step our game up so we can prove to people that we aren't as dumb as it looks and that we are smarter than people really think we are!
Great start.
Many have expressed concern over the position of the United States in comparison with India and China, and I believe that is an important first step. You need to recognize that a problem exists before you can begin to remedy it.
Now, let's start thinking about that next step. Who is it that is responsible for this situation? What should be done to begin to turn things around? What can you do? What can I and your other teachers do? What can school administrators do?
Finally, what role should parents play in helping improve education in America?
To start turning things around we should raise the bar higher and try to achieve more advanced things. I will study more often. Our teachers should give us more study guides and homework to help us be more involved in school. Our school administrators should challenge us to achieve high expectations. We should all try to spend more time reading than watching television. We should also at least complete or finish our homework assignments and ask teachers more often f
..or help when needed.
Parents should also play a role by being a role model for their children and read more often and be involved with school activities and make sure that thier kids are completing thier homework. Parents should also punish thier children for doing bad in school and maybe rewarding them for doing well in school
The teachers and parents are responsible for this because the teachers should give us more homework and more of a challenge and our parents should not let us be on our televisons and playing video games as much as they do, some parents let there kids play video games 24/7 instead of focusing on academics. What should be done to turn things around is higher the required standards and teachers should challenge us more and make us give more effort than we already do. What us students can do is take action and make the right choices by focusing more on our academics than sitting by computers and video games all day. What you, Mr.Veliz and the other teachers can do is require us to have more requirements and give us more homework and more assignments and projects. The school administration should require the teachers to push us harder than the teachers already do. The parents should minimize the amount of time we use on the computer and televison and video games.
I agree with Haley. This is partly teachers and parents faults. Parents could encourage us to do good in school, and to actually do our school work. Teachers could prepare us for the challenges ahead, and help us students raise the bar. I also think that students are part of the problem because it is mostly up to us to study.
I think its partially teachers and administration fault but not really our parents. Of course there suppose to encourage us but if you think about it encouragement from your parents isn't necessarily going to make you study more, because some kids tend to not listen to there parents. I think its partially administration and teachers faults because their the ones who are doing the teaching and rule enforcing so they have to put forth the effort to challenge us, but not to an extent were kids are getting left behind. What I think they can do to help is to challenge us and spend extra time on something that is troubling some students.
As students as far as doing studying we should do something like weekly study groups so that its something you have to do and your not doing it by yourself so you cant get distracted.
I think students and teachers are equally responsible for this situiation. For example, the chinese boy from the movie said he learns things easily and loves to take tests. Therefore, he was enrolled in a prestigious college in China. Students are also responsible for this situiation because some of the students in countries, especially America, are slackers, which makes countries like America look bad. Teachers are responsible for this situiation because some teachers teach their students in an interactive way and some teachers don't. I think school administrators should hire teachers they know can teach students efficiently and that are mature. I think parents should support their kids if they are doing well and help them in any way they can to help them excel.
We can try to study harder and not slack off as much, but i think if the administrators put a prize up for grabs for who has the best GPA or the best scores on the FCAT then we would probably work harder. I think that everyone though is responsible for the US being so low because it is not just the students it is the coaches, teachers, and even parents too that don't take it as seriously as they should. I think that a 2.0 to play sports is too low it should be either a 2.5 or a 3.0 because if we have our goals higher then we can and will succeed in school.
The parents should pay more attention to their kids' grades and even help them out if they aren't doing to well eventually the hard work will pay off where your kid goes to Harvard or Yale instead of clown school.
I agree with Adrianna because she says that it is everybody's fault which is true because that instead of maybe 10 students we all slack off at one point or another. Also teachers and administrators can make school a little too boring so we don't really focus as much as we should.
I agree with Joanie it is partly the parents' and teachers' fault.
I agree with Joanie about how it is partly the teachers and parents' fault. I also agree with Adrianna about how it's everyone's fault.
I think that the teachers and the principal at our school should take all of the information from the movie into consideration. I think one of the reasons that our teachers don't assign us allot of homework, is because they know that we have other activities aside from learning that we all participate in. One of my teachers teaches the class like we are in kindergarden. This could be because since there are frequently missing assignments from a variety of students, they either don't know if we are understanding the material or not, or if we all just have no clue, and do not want to turn in a paper with wrong answers. I think that if people keep not turning in assignments, we could end up learning even slower which could cause us to lag behind in academics. As well as this, I think parents should maybe get more involved in the students work, because this could help the student understand a concept, that they just don't get because of the way the teacher is wording or explaining it.
I think that Joanie has a point, Americans aren't living up to our full potential. We don't study as much as India or China's children yet we get into our colleges of choice more often than those kids do. In class Jordan made the point of saying that we have lower expectations than those countries. We aren't the most academically amazing country, but we don't stink at everything. We do have a crisis on our hands however. This crisis is showing how much we know when we are in school, but it's also not showing our full potential because we don't study as much. Just because we don't study doesn't mean we're complete dunderheads.
Sorry, I deleted my previous comment and then re-published it, but it didn't show. What I originally said:
Sorry, I deleted my previous comment and then re-published it, but it didn't show.
I agree with Caston, that Americans are so busy partying, playing sports and on Facebook that they aren't spending enough time studying and aren't reaching their full potential in their educations. Before watching this video, I already knew that Indian and Chinese students studied a great deal more than American students, but I was surprised to learn just how many opportunities, chances and freedoms we have compared to those in India and China. Their chances of getting into their college of first choice are basically one in a million. And yet, American students usually get into their college of choice even though they set the bar lower. Also, I think we could do a lot better in Math, considering that we are ranked very low out of the top 29 countries in the world. I think it is important that we balance our time and make sure that we are studying along with playing sports, having fun and using technology. The world is going to continue to grow and change around us, and American students need to realize it is time to start setting the bar higher and studying more, before this becomes a big crisis.
I agree with Haley and Joanie, I think that is important for parents to encourage their children to try hard in everything they do in school and push them to set the bar higher. Teachers should also try to challenge their students more, make sure they are encouraging them to study frequently and that they are preparing students for what lies ahead. Even though parents and teachers play an important role in what their children decide about their education, in the end it is up to the student on how much they study and how hard they try. Therefore, I think it is essential that American students begin to start managing their time more wisely and make sure they ate studying daily. In order to help improve education in America, I think that parents should really start paying attention to how their child is doing in school, and like Tom said, rewarding them when they do good and reprimanding them when they do bad. Parents can also make sure they are helping their children reach their full potential and encourage their children to try their nest in school and make sure they are studying.
Best, not nest^
I think that the people or person that can change this is the school superintendent. As students we can help the teachers and parents by influencing them to talk to the principals and other school officials.The teachers can influence more homework and do activities in class to help our education and make sure we truly understand what we are learning by giving us pop quizzes.
I would also like to add on to what Cameron said. I think she is right that Americans aren't bad at everything. There are some areas that we really do excel in, even if compared to China and India's results it isn't as impressive. I still think there is plenty of room for improvement, by studying more frequently and setting the bar higher. However, I don't yet think that this is a huge crisis, but it could turn into one if Americans continue to have low expectations and not try as hard as they are capable of. This movie had some very intriguing things in it, and I do not think it should be ignored. Although sports ans other activities might be considered important, in the end, it is academics that is the most likely to get you a job.
I believe everybody is responsible for this situation because the people can make their own decisions, even the government. To turn the situation around we should try to double the rate of what e learn today and make it more advanced and work students harder so America can earn their respect in education. I think I can try to work harder and try to challenge my brain to make me smarter. Mr.Veliz and other teachers can try to challenege us to and put a little pressure on us. I believe school administrators can change some of the rules in our school to raise the bar higher. Finally parents can help their children by encouraging them to try harder and have confidence.
I think teachers should work with us on how to manage our time. They should create situations for us to have to figure out on how to set a good amount of time for each thing we want to do. We are all responsible for this situation. We can all step in and make a difference, but we have not. Therefore, we must.
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