Photos courtesy of Robert Compton

---

Robert Compton’s documentary, “Two Million Minutes,” has generated national discussion about how American students have fallen behind students in India and China, particularly math and science.

While in Bangalore, India, in 2005, conversation with software developers there sparked his interest in the Indian educational system and made him realize that the American educational system was sub par. His concern for the education of his daughters and, more broadly, for that of young people in the United States, inspired his film.

Q: “Two Million Minutes” is about how students competing in the global economy allocate their time during the four years they spend in high school.  What do you hope the audience will take away from “Two Million Minutes”?

I hope the audience will take away not that American students need to become more like Chinese and Indian students. What I did want them to see was that this is how the two largest countries are educating their students — to a very high level of knowledge in every subject. Where it really is glaringly different is in math, science, biology, technology and computer science.

I want American students and American parents to understand that this is how our two largest economic competitors are preparing their students to go to college and on to careers in what will be the most economically competitive century in world history.

Q: I noticed that Indian and Chinese school systems didn’t place as much, if any, emphasis on community service. Do you think that by making compulsory community service as important as academics, we are wasting time that would be better spent learning math and science?

I think community service teaches lots of important skills and values. And particularly, I think it teaches a lot of empathy for others, which I think is a very important skill in life. It teaches that there is a world beyond school. Where I differ is that I don’t think community service should be mandatory. It should be something that comes from one’s heart as opposed to a requirement by an educational institution. And that’s how it works in India and China. Admission into college is based on your GPA and how well you do on the entrance exam. Nothing else matters.

Apoorva, the Indian girl in my film, and a number of her friends volunteered to go to the blind school. They would help the students at the blind school with their studies. If Braille wasn’t available, they would read textbooks to them. They would help them with their homework. Indians more than Chinese do more for the poor because the poor are all around them. Indians do a lot of volunteer work. I employ a lot of Indian software developers, and a very large percentage of them go to temple and volunteer at the soup kitchen. The Hindu religion is very much a religion of giving back and helping those in need. In India, even people with not a whole lot of money are regular contributors to the poor. They give some of the little money that they do have. I didn’t see that as much in China, but I still met a lot of students over there who do community service work even though it’s not a requirement for school.

Q: The premise of the documentary is that American students are falling behind our peers in India and China. Do you think that this is a failure of the system or of our attitude toward education?

I think the answer is more subtle and complex than “Is it the system, or is it the attitude?” What I would say, if I had to pick between the two, is it’s primarily our attitude toward education in our culture. American culture is primarily a culture of sports, leisure and entertainment. That’s what we do, and that explains why there are seven ESPN channels on cable. We’ve been number one in the world economically and militarily for 60 years, and we’ve become complacent.

In America, in high school, I know pretty well where every student is on a Friday night in the fall. They’re at the football game. In China and India, they’re at home studying because they have school on Saturday. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but we are a culture that spends a lot of time away from intellectual development. We are the wealthiest country in the world. The other countries aren’t that wealthy, so they’re striving for success. We had a culture that worked really well for the last 60 years, but it is not a culture that will do well for the next 60 years. If we don’t change our attitude toward education, we will continue to fall further and further behind.

Pages: 1 2