Two Million Minutes

Ask a student in India what they want to be when they grow up and they'll probably answer: scientist, engineer, cardiologist or doctor. And if you ask them what any of those professions are, they'll tell you. Ask a student in the U.S. what they want to be when they grow up and you may hear: movie star, football player, singer or fireman.

At least this is what venture capitalist Robert A. Compton heard when he asked young students what they envisioned for their life's work.

Compton's quest for information began in 2002, as he noticed the majority of his companies' engineers stemming from India and China.

Compton decided to travel to India to locate the source of this trend.

Meeting with entrepreneurs and university staff, high schools and middle schools, Compton tried to get a sense of what was going on economically and entrepreneurially in this developing nation. What emerged was a documentary chronicling students from India, the U.S. and China.

Compton's documentary, 2 Million Minutes, follows six students: Brittany Brechbuhl and Neil Ahrendt from the U.S., Apoorva Uppala and Rohit Sridharan from India, and Hu Xiaoyuan and Jin Ruizhang from China.

Chronicling the students' two million minutes -- four years in high school -- the documentary compares how each set of students prepares to enter college and the professional world. And it is how Chinese and Indian students prepare, Compton believes, that make them the most challenging economic competitors of the 21st century.

Profiling students from high performing schools, Compton wanted to cross compare some of the best students from each country. The film however, suggests that the "best" in the United States falls short of global education standards.

"They are working harder academically, and there are more of them and they're hungrier," says Compton of China and India's students.

Chinese students, for example, study an average of 583,200 minutes over the course of high school. Indian students follow with 422,400 and U.S. students bring up the rear with 302,400.

Work ethic aside, with 211 million primary school-aged students in India, 200 million in China and 53 million in the United States, population volume alone indicates that global competition for jobs will be increasing. Compton believes the United States will no longer lead developed nations if it doesn't raise education standards and produce more innovators in the fields of math, science and engineering -- the future inventors, teachers and . Still, many don't acknowledge the existence of a competitive global market.

"Because these things unfold over time, people tend to overlook them," says Shirley Ann Jackson, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in the film. Jackson says that American students need to reevaluate their distribution of activity and effort over time.

And it is this very thing, the distribution of activities and effort across the span of two million minutes - that set students from China and India apart from those in the United States, according to the film.

All work and no play

In the film, it's 5:45 a.m. on a Saturday morning and Uppala is heading out to a tutoring session -- called "tuitions" in the film -- for math where she will study until regular class starts. Similarly, Sridharan spends his Saturday evening in tuitions, preparing for the entrance exam to the Indian Institute of Technology. Conversely, Americans Brechbuhl and Ahrendt have a weekend consisting of social outings, including high school football games.

Highlighting differences such as these, the documentary particularly underscores the American value of athletic achievement over academic achievement. The city of Carmel, Ind., just prior to the film being shot, spent $13 million on renovations to stadium and athletic facilities.

"All the passion and energy that American families put into high school sports, Indian and Chinese families put into high school academics," said Compton.

Indian student Sridharan echoes this sentiment, "India is not a country where (soccer) is appreciated as a profession, so ... academics is my choice."

In India and China, the same celebrity status afforded to athletes and performers is given to technology executives.

"Indian kids look up to the tech entrepreneurs in the USA and they're the heroes. When I used to go back as a tech executive, I was treated like a movie star in India," said Vivek Wadhwa in the film, an executive-in-residence at Duke University.

And like the athletic and performance industry is to many impoverished kids in the United States, getting into the science, math or engineering industry is a way out of poverty for many children in India and China, and a major reason why it is so highly valued.

"In India and China they are struggling to get out of poverty. Becoming an engineer, becoming a scientist is a passport out of poverty. That's not the case in the USA. The hunger isn't there, the desire isn't there, the need isn't there," said Wadwa in the film. "And that's why you'll find that Indian and Chinese kids are a lot more motivated to get in these fields and to succeed because they are fighting starvation, they're fighting hunger."

Parental guidance

Another influence on U.S. student attitudes toward education, believes Compton, are cultural and political attitudes held by parents.

Compton poses the question in an interview: "If parents in our society don't value math and science, why should kids?"

In the documentary, Ahrendt's father, for example, doesn't want his son to go into math, science or engineering. He wants his son to be a "thinker and creator" as opposed to a "rote technician." Neither does he acknowledge a global competition, ending the clip with, "... compete with the rest of the world, I don't think so."

Uppala's father has ideas vastly different from Ahrendt's. He says in the film that his first priority is to make his kids globally competitive.

"All the time, right from day one, I am attempting the same thing, give the freedom, give the fearlessness to face anybody, freely and effortlessly," says Uppala's father.

His statement reflects Compton's observations on how differently parents in India and China "show love" for their children.

"If they show promise in, let's say, chemistry, you will sacrifice to hire the best chemistry tutor you can," says Compton. "In America, if you love your child and they show potential as a pitcher, you will go out and hire the best pitching coach you can find. But if your child is getting an 'A' in chemistry, you wouldn't do a thing."

The leader of the pack

If the U.S. is to maintain its position as the global leader of developed nations, its political leadership will have to take legislative action and inspire the nation, according to Compton.

"I think it starts with our leaders," he said. "We need to show leadership the way that (President) Kennedy did. He basically inspired Americans to want to get to the moon; he didn't issue a bunch of tests ... He started with inspiration."

Compton also urges Americans to take the fervor employed in fostering athletic ability and apply it to nurturing intellectuality.

From the critics

The documentary has received mixed reviews. Some think that Chinese and Indian students are under too much academic pressure, arguing that American students are more relaxed and well rounded. Others see the documentary as an outright attack on the U.S. education system. Still, other viewers, most notably presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, recognize the issue that Compton addresses in 2 Million Minutes.

"(Obama and McCain) understand that competitively, for our country, China and India's emphasis on math and science and strong education represents a significant economic challenge -- just by the sheer size of the countries. I think they each have a different idea on how to address that," Compton said.

Taking action

After comparing nations, Compton still has great confidence in the American public, its leaders and their ability to rally around and remedy what he views as an education crisis.

"Americans will rise to the occasion if they understand the challenge," he said. "We need leaders who recognize the challenge and are able to articulate it in a way that inspires us to action and inspires us to set higher standards."

Whether you agree or disagree that standards in education must be redefined to mitigate this alleged global crisis, there is no doubt that questions posed and addressed by the film give viewers something to think about: "What does my child want to be when he or she grows up?"

And though some kids may have life all planned out at as young as 5 years old, don't worry; your child has 4,227,840 minutes between first and eighth-grade to figure it all out.