Two Million Minutes - Essay Example

Two Million Minutes: Summary and Response Among the three superpowers of the world, ly the US, China, and India, the pace of growth of China and India is currently more than that of the US. In order to maintain its position, the US is trying to raise the bar rather than being satisfied with the status quo. Nevertheless, out of the two million minutes spent in the four years of schooling, the Chinese and Indian students spend much more time actually studying and developing their academic skills than the American students do.

American students’ two million minutes of schooling are distributed between games, jobs, and studies. This is providing the Indian and Chinese students with an edge over the American students academically, and is contributing to their fast economic growth. This comes as a challenge for the US. In order to cope with the future challenges, it is imperative that creativity is encouraged at every level. Even the five and six year old Indian students are so clear about their ambitions and have stunningly high career aspirations.

The highly intellectual, engaging, and yet funny personalities of the Indian professionals can be attributed to their school system. Indian students in the middle school are significantly advanced as compared to the American students at their level in school. Indian students graduating from high schools are two to three years ahead of the American high school graduates with respect to skills and knowledge. Although I consent with Bob Compton for the most part on his stance over the issue he has raised, yet I think that his argument was not sufficiently strong.

According to Bob Compton, math and science are valuable because these subjects help the students become skilled professionals so that they can earn good money in the high tech industry. The aspect overlooked by Bob Compton is the value and significance of these cognitive subjects to the society as a whole outside the sphere of economics. The issue that the US government and the concerned authorities in the US need to target is the quality of education provided in the schools in the US. It is good that students in the US are allowed more freedom and variety to choose their profession from.

Students from India and China are not very advantaged in this respect. However, the curriculum selected for the different levels of education in the US lacks the depth and elements that are required to enable the American students to compete with the students of the growing economies intellectually. Another fundamental element that lacks in the US and that provides India and China with an edge over the US is that the American students generally impart much lesser importance to the education than the Indian and Chinese students.

Policies and strategies in the US should be made to dawn the importance of education upon the students so that they take more interest in studies and actually utilize the tremendous resources that they have in the US. Improving the quality of education and making the students realize the importance of education is the solution.