2 Million Minutes leaves students no time for tech hobbies
Considering the popularity high school sports in the United States, it’s easy to blame them for distracting students from their studies. But high-tech hobbies like video games, instant messaging, social networking (MySpace, Facebook, Orkut etc.) consume huge chunks of time that could be focused on studies.
At least, that’s the sort of paradigm shift a new documentary called 2 Million Minutes encourages. The film creates a sense of urgency for students by starting the stopwatch in ninth grade and counting down to twelfth grade in minutes. In total, four years is 2,102,400 minutes.
Here’s a taste of how the film creates a sense of urgency from the 2 Million Minutes web site:
Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately?
…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult?
How a student spends their Two Million Minutes – in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off — will effect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.
Here’s a preview:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=WS_QENuOYL8[/youtube]
Skeptics of the film like the National Association of Secondary School Principals say it “engages in ’statistical sleight of hand,’ by providing statistics about dropout rates in the United States, but never mentions similar statistics from China or India,” according to ABC News.
“The group also says that the film focuses exclusively on math, science and engineering, but doesn’t consider excellence in other subjects, and that the film compares students of different achievement levels.”
Another potential accuracy problem is the film’s sample size, which is limited to 6 students.
Still, if nothing else the documentary draws attention to the rich social environments high schools have become in the United States. Learning to interact with peers personably is certainly important, but so are hard skills like math, science and technological savvy.
Specifically the film targets “parental expectations” as a major contributor to students focusing more on socializing than studying, and asserts that most other countries in the world applaud intellectual achievements more than the United States.
But then, some may argue that all anyone needs is good networking skills. They believe that idea people hold all of the chips and those who have implementation skills can easily be lined up. That may be true, but ideas generally spring from life experiences and observations. Without those two components, true and original innovation can become sparse.
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