Show Me Your Moves

Dear Followers,


One must take the information presented in the documentary 2 Million Minutes with a grain of salt. The documentary, while presenting several factual arguments regarding the status of American education in relation to the rest of the world, is based on a binary between “Western learning” and “Eastern learning” that reinforces harmful stereotypes. The documentary is meant more as a shock tactic for action than a framework for reform, making claims that we, the US, will lose our competitive edge unless we reform.


The documentary appears to present an objective view on the question of the American educational system. Through the use of hard statistics and a “direct” view into the lives of several high school students, the viewer should have no problem accepting what is presented as the truth. However, 2 Million Minutes is a carefully crafted piece designed for one purpose: to shock the viewer into action in order to reform the American educational system. While created for the ears of educators and professionals, the documentary, whether purposefully or not, makes a demeaning statement about American students that they are provoked to respond to.


The heavy use of biased juxtaposition helps drive home this statement. The nature of film makes this particularly easy by presenting the viewer with imagery that reinforces the binary. Students from the United States are often shown when they are having fun whereas the students from India and China are often shown when they are studying or working. This subtle technique matches the equally subtle and condescending tone of the documentary that makes American students out to be lazy and unmotivated.


This imagery is only reinforced by the heavy appeal to statistics and educational authorities in the documentary. The following are some of the statistics used: 40% of American students do not take science past general biology, American students spend 1,500 hours watching television and 900 hours in the classroom every year, Chinese students spend twice as much time studying than American students, and 60% of PhDs are earned by foreign nationals in the US.


In no way are these statistics comparative. They are merely a statement left to interpretation about a population. Nowhere does the film present similar statistics for Indian and Chinese statistics unless they deliver information that can further be used to degrade American students. To boot, these statistics are generally presented following a negative depiction of American students to deliver a powerful blow. This is demonstrated when the female American and her friends are watching Grey’s Anatomy in lieu of studying.


When presented with this information, we as the viewers are presented with a dilemma. We can choose to accept the “blatant” weaknesses in the American educational system, or we can choose to do something about these weaknesses as described by the film. This decision is produced by the human drive for improvement. However, 2 Million Minutes gives us no method in which to reform the educational system. Perhaps the best part of the documentary is when at the end, each of the educational speakers rephrases the problem. However, all the information presented in the documentary would seem to contradict this rephrasing.


By reinforcing the stereotype that the educational system in America is flawed because of American students themselves, even if unintended, 2 Million Minutes does not address the problem at the heart of the education issue. The problem cannot simply be the students or the whole education system itself, as the very nations that are pulling ahead in the “education race” emulated the American educational system following the Second World War.


Instead, the problem is internal, the result of a practice that has developed in response to the areas of American education that haven’t held up throughout the years. Education in America has always had one fatal flaw: availability. Suburban schools like Wayzata are light-years ahead of urban schools because of funding. Politicians, ignoring the financial problems associated with education, designed a new way to combat the disparity in education: the standardized test.


The standardized test has only fanned the flames. What separates the US educational system from that of any other nation is the great degree of individuality and innovation that our students are exposed to. By giving students the freedom to choose more career paths and placing an emphasis on extracurricular activities which foster an application of skills, the American educational system uniquely offers students the tools for higher education.


With the standardization of education, politicians and educators have ignored the individual nature of learning by superimposing a set of universal standards that all students must live up to in order to progress. This has killed the creative nature of the American educational system by forcing students to excel at subjects that they do not excel at. Not every child is the same. No wonder we are seeing more dropouts than ever in recent years. If we are going to get past this education problem, we are going to need more than a simple criticism of the existing educational system.


P.S. I meant for this rhetorical analysis to be as objective as possible. However, I could not simply stand by and take the arguments made in the documentary as fact.


Falcon Punch,
Noel