2 Million Minutes in 2 Class Periods

1. Life for high school students in China and India is straightforward: their lives are based on studying and having to deal with lower class conditions, including poverty. Students in these countries are focused on studies alone, rarely on anything else such as sports or having fun with friends. They also have to structure their lives on poverty-like conditions. Their environment in which they grew up motivates them to work hard in life to make a life. Compared to the US, the conditions and results are almost completely opposite. Students in the US basically study less and play more. Life is easy and academics are not taken as seriously, creating a dim future for the US.

2. Chinese high schools take education seriously. For instance, the Chinese school day is approximately 9 hours, aside for the extra two month long school year if compared to the US. The things that they study are important to life after high school such as advance topics that their high schools don’t even have access to/teach. Students try hard because of their economic status. Their view of life is either a degree or poverty. For entertainment, they “sometimes” hang out with their friends or do “fun” things related to school work.

3. High school life in India is also harsh due to the conditions that students face in everyday life. Majority of the students live in poverty and have to study hard to have a possible future. Many of the students there study to become engineers because it is a common goal for families. Their families and poverty are used as motivation to do well in school and study hard. Their school days are also long in preparation for college, aside from the fact that majority do rigorous studying over weekends.

4. Students in India and China know what they will be doing in ten years because they have everything planned out. If their main plan doesn’t fall through, they have a back-up plan to support their future and save them from poverty. They will basically graduate with a degree or experience poverty.

5. Parents in China and India take their children’s education seriously. They enforce the amount of studying their children are required to do both at school and at home. Some believe that their children are not studying enough, even when they are to the point at which they have no social life. Parents in the US are less aware that their student’s work is not sufficient enough for them to compete against the world.

6. Students in China and India were selected to compete against students in the US because a greater contrast was needed to realize how much the US failing at education. Both of these foreign countries are also two of the top four in the world in being the most advance.

7. This statement clearly shows that students in the US are not able to compete with others around the world. Their efforts in contributing to the economy will be less of an impact due to how far they are behind everyone else.

8. Vallejo High School is not, as a whole, helping me prepare for college. There are multiple gaps and areas in which I need to be helped on to succeed in life after high school. The lack of commitment of certain staff from my school greatly affects whether I perform good or bad in college. As an individual, I have done things such as challenge myself more and stepping up my efforts in education.

9. Compton is a father of a US girl in high school whom in which he thinks is not getting good education. His plan is to evaluate the curriculum of the schools in the US and compare them to two top countries and compare them to see what is needed to be done.

10. Mr. Tillay is correct when all of the given examples are not concerned with our learning in school. Based on our self evaluations and comparisons to others who are greater prepared, we are able to see what is needed to be done by others so that we ourselves can progress. I've learned that as a Vallejo High School student, I have little help left to receive and I must do the rest on my own to succeed in life after high school.