“Two Million Minutes”

There are approximately 2 million minutes for students from ninth grade to graduation. The video “Two Million Minutes,” which we watched in class showed how students from the United States, China, and India spent that time. I couldn’t believe how much harder students from China and India work compared to the students from the U.S. Not only did the Chinese and Indian students go to school for more hours a day than did the American students, but the time they spent studying after school far surpassed the U.S. students. I think the fact that the students here in the U.S. can achieve a GPA of 3.7 or higher and spend almost no time studying, when compared with these other counties, is proof that we don’t hold our students to the same standards.

There are obvious differences in the lives of these three groups of students. The U.S. students were more interested in making friends and having fun than the other two groups. The reason for that was also obvious. The students in China and India were living in smaller homes and spent more time with family. They focused on studying in order to keep competitive with all of the other hard working students in their countries. They also have to fight hunger and other obstacles that the U.S. students do not. Sports were only brought up by the U.S. students. I found that interesting because instead of sports in China and India they focus on other extracurricular activities like learning to play an instrument or computer programming. I was also surprised and a little upset to learn that U.S. students on average don’t take more than 2 years of algebra or go beyond their first year of biology during high school.

 Working was also another topic in the video. They talked about how U.S. students work after school for money to use when they hang out with friends or buying a car. The other students spend the time they would use working for studying because they know that instant gratification is less important than getting a secure better paying job in the future. It almost seemed as though students in the U.S. thought they were special and it was a given that they were they were guaranteed a job later in life. After watching the video it was clear that U.S. students have a sense of entitlement and aren’t willing to work as hard for the same job as someone else from China and India.