<p>Very sad state of our education system </p>
<p>2</a> MILLION MINUTES :: A DOCUMENTARY FILM ON GLOBAL EDUCATION</p>
<p>I thought it was very thought-provoking, particularly about the sports emphasis of many American families.</p>
<p>I've had a lot of parents tell me that that documentary is a must-see.</p>
<p>Five thousand Americans have taken the 10th grade test - zero have passed.According to Compton who seems to be tracking the results.
I passed the english/bio easily, not so good in math, but still got to the proficient level in chemistry.</p>
<p>SCARY</p>
<p>“Two</a> Million Minutes” well meaning, misleading</p>
<p>
[quote]
But, in its desire to strike fear into the hearts of complacent upper-middle class Americans who take for granted our status as Greatest Country in the World, it fails to consider a set of key points. The first point made forcefully by Commissioner Jones in the discussion following the movie is that Chinese and Indian schools are dealing with a wholly more homogenous population than ours. Our school systems are charged with educating all children, and with this diversity comes challenge and opportunity. But the Indian children we see in a private school in high-tech Bangalore — represent a select group of a select group; we do not see the hundreds of millions who cannot afford to attend school of any kind.</p>
<p>Though the movie implies that the Chinese and Indian systems convey more appropriate values than our system, even this hour-long glimpse into the lives of these children would make most of us shudder: an insistence on global competitiveness at any cost, seven days a week of wall-to-wall studying; hypercompetitive parents.</p>
<p>"Two Million Minutes" is worth a viewing, but dont go shipping your ninth-grader overseas any time soon.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What's the select group in the United States doing?</p>
<p>I haven't seen the entire movie - can it be viewed from the website?</p>
<p>I did take one part of the challenge test late last night. I was already up too late so I only took the English Grammar test. I found it very easy, of course, being a native English speaker, and I finished it in 3 minutes out of the allowed 30 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I opened the report just now and saw that they marked 2 of my responses wrong! I don't think my responses were wrong - here are the questions:</p>
<p>Find out the most appropriate tone/mood contextually
The thud and the jingle of the traditional baker’s bamboo can still be heard in some places. </p>
<p>Incorrect</p>
<p>Select the correct answer from the following choices:<br>
Sad </p>
<p>Hopeful </p>
<p>Nostalgic </p>
<p>None of these </p>
<pre><code>I do not know the answer
</code></pre>
<p>Your Answer: Nostalgic<br>
Correct Answer: Hopeful </p>
<p>Fill in the blank with the most appropriate answer
My young son _________ speak English when we lived in London. </p>
<p>Incorrect</p>
<p>Select the correct answer from the following choices:<br>
had to </p>
<p>could </p>
<p>can </p>
<p>none of these </p>
<pre><code>I do not know the answer
</code></pre>
<p>Your Answer: had to<br>
Correct Answer: could </p>
<p>I think my answers were better than theirs, and certainly not wrong. Anyone disagree?</p>
<p>NYmomof2, I would have answered the same as you did on those two questions.</p>
<p>^^I would have picked the same answers.</p>
<p>Me too. So I won't bother with the test. Could implies that there should be a second half of the sentence, namely the clause, "but he can't any more." For the first without more context I see NOTHING hopeful.</p>
<p>Yeah, these tests are stupid. The history one was full of random trivia – quite honestly, I don't care whether Vietnamese occupied 6% or 7.5% of Indochina at the time of the Vietnam War, and whether or not our kids know things like that really has no relationship to their actual learning.</p>
<p>I've seen the film. It follows six students-- a boy and a girl from the US, India and China-- in their senior year of high school. </p>
<p>The two American students are successful students at a competitive Midwest high school. They don't study very hard, and the girl in particular is an unlikeable not-too-bright social butterfly who appears to cheat her way to good grades. The Chinese and Indian students are upper-class kids at high-pressure schools. They have a horrible life, truly horrible, studying <em>all the time</em>. I certainly wouldn't want my son to have to live like that. There's got to be a middle way between no studying at all and studying 18 hours a day 7 days a week.</p>
<p>I agree about "nostalgic," and think that either "could" or "had to" would be a correct answer.</p>
<p>But if someone is capable of speaking English, then presumably he "could" speak it anywhere. That's why "could" does not make sense to me.</p>
<p>could or had to might be a foreign language interpretation, meaning if they didn't/weren't allowed to in their home country, now were allowed to?</p>
<p>"Could" makes sense to me. There are plenty of ways that sentence could work in a conversation:</p>
<p>My son could speak English when we lived in London. (He was three years old then; now we live in Gdansk and he has forgotten it all).</p>
<p>My son could speak English when we lived in London. (See, he had already learned English at the age of eight, isn't he marvelous.)</p>
<p>My son could speak English when we lived in London. (He was born there and monolingual. But when we moved back to our native Paris, the poor kid couldn't speak English anymore because the other kids didn't understand him. He was forced to learn French in a hurry.)</p>
<p>"Had to" also makes sense. Certainly either one is grammatically correct.</p>
<p>Stupid test, stupid documentary. Hey, let's take 2 random US students and pretend they represent the country's best and brightest and compare them academically with the most motivated, driven and intelligent people their age in India to illustrate how pathetic the US education system is. Let's not mention the fact that these Indian students are part of a select minority lucky enough to even get any education at all, while every single child in the US is not only given the opportunity to get an education, but is required to attend school until a certain age.</p>
<p>You know what I think would be more striking? Take typical honors and average ed. tests in, say, the 2nd algebra course and compare the rigor of those at different schools. I'll bet the differences are wide.</p>
<p>So far most Gates' ideas on education have failed. He should just drop money from airplanes into poor neighborhods. At least they could have some fun with it.</p>
<p>I was on a development team at my daughters school, that was formed to handle the Gates grants- unfortunately- while with " best intentions"- it required cooperation of staff to implement & quite a few did not want their classrooms looked at that closely.</p>
<p>Of course Seattle had their grants cut by quite a bit- because we didn't spend the money where it was intended to go. If other schools were like the one where I was, the Gates money was spent and than afterward we said " oh yes- transformation- we spent it there". :rolleyes:</p>
<p>One of the things the money was spent on- was having the principal , several teachers and parents to go across the country and visit schools that were " working".
Not much structure as to what they were looking for or the questions they would ask, not anything about making a report to the community when they returned ( which incidentally was during school, so subs had to be hired as well as the teachers compensated for their field trip)- basically nothing ever came of a two week trip to NYC & Chicago.</p>
<p>I don't think the foundation failed, although they were naive about the ability of the district to track the money</p>
<p>They also spent tons of money to create smaller high schools. No positive results at all and they are ending the effort. The key to good schools starts and ends pretty much with the parents. Bad parents=bad schools. No amount of spending helps. They tried that in Kansas City.</p>