Two Million Minutes

    The film Two Million Minutes interviews an assortment of kids from America, India and China. All are successful, but for different reasons and because of different reasons. The movie argues that America has fallen behind other countries in terms of education because of the lack of motivation and discipline.
     The people interviewed in the movie were all chosen strategically to show a variety of kids to represent these three countries. The boy from India kept up on his schoolwork and spent the majority of his time learning, while taking time out of his busy academic driven schedule to form a band with three friends. The Indian girl featured in this film spent time with family as well as studied hard everyday of the week. The Chinese girl dedicated most of her time for schoolwork while having ballet and violin on the side-all three activities having high standard and an involve an incredible amount of discipline. The Chinese boy's main interests were math and computer games-though he does all of his studying before beginning the allotted amount of computer games. The American boy balanced numerous activities including a variety of clubs, football and a job along with his schoolwork (though schoolwork was always second priority). The American girl was in the top 5% of her graduating class, yet also very social and a sports star.
      This movie chose to include activities outside of school as well as academics to show the well-roundedness of all countries and to disprove the myth that all Indian and Chinese students do is study. The main difference this movie is trying to get at though in terms of academics is that American students tend to view schoolwork as a priority, just lower down the list whereas Asian students view schoolwork as top priority. This movie also shows the incredible amount of determinatino and discipline of the Asian kids, while American kids are portrayed as lazy and unmotivated. It was mentioned in the movie that Asian kids need to work hard to get a good job in order to support themselves, their family and a decent lifestyle. For many American kids they are already economically stable so they do not feel the drive to make a better life for themselves. It was also mentioned how Asian kids have their future planned out for them at a young age, while American kids do not know what area of study they would like to go into until halfway through college. I believe this statement contradicts the previous one because it seems as if you have a future planned out, there is less need to work so hard at everything, and instead your focus should be on the area of study. Is the problem in America the parents because they hand their kids everything? Although that could be the foundation for the problem there is much more to it. It seems as if American kids are exposed to much more than academics, and therefore have more opprutunities. They may feel that being successful in life branches way behond academics, and that one must also be really good at a sport, have a job or a large circle of friends, and if you happen to be good in school on top of that then that's great.
        It is a matter of lifestyle and culture that sets America apart from their Indian and Chinese counterparts. For this movie to more accurately portray American students they should not have interviewed two students who have a lot of academic success, yet rarely study because of their involvement in other activities. That is not portraying the average American student. Instead, to more accurately portray American students the makers of the film should have interviewed an American student who gets good grades and spends a lot of time studying while balancing her other activities. The second person could be your average football player who tries in school and does his homework but does not push himself to go outside of his comfort zone when it comes to school. These kids would give a more accurate portrayal of America instead of making others believe that all Americans get good grades without working at it (however the statistics that flashed across the screen-only a small percent of kids are proficient in math, they rarely push themselves to take more years of a class then required...-states otherwise).
       The whole movie is looking down at America, while it seems as if the Asian kids are looking at America as simply having a much easier lifestyle. "Like a dream..." the Indian girl quotes. How bad is America? If they compared America to France and Brazil instead, would we still come out on the bottom?