As the proud father of two teenage girls with straight “A” grades, I never imagined how a classroom of first graders in Bangalore, India would change my girls’ education, their lives and my own life forever. But that is exactly what happened on my very first trip through exotic, engaging, emerging India in 2005.

I had a frightening flash of insight in that first grade classroom – Indian children are better educated, more motivated and more likely to succeed in the 21st century economy than American children. It came from asking a simple le question to a dozen 5 and 6-year old Indian children – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Their ambitions astonished me – “Engineer, engineer, scientist, cardiologist, engineer, fighter pilot, engineer, doctor…” How amazing! Those first graders had already set high intellectual and career goals. Perhaps this class was an aberration, a coterie of little Indian geniuses, or perhaps there was something more profound in Indian education and Indian culture than I ever imagined.

Worried about how my girls would compete in the 21st century with such ambitious children, I decided to more fully explore education in the countries we hear little about in the U.S. – India, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Thailand. What I learned in two years of travel and visiting K-12 schools throughout these countries worried me deeply, not only about my own daughters’ ability to compete economically but the ability of all American children to have a rising standard of living in their life times.

A disturbing conclusion emerged from my travels – that Global Education Standards have passed the United States by, and Americans have no idea that it has happened. Particularly in India and China, K-12 education produces students clearly more advanced in math and science but also better-rounded in literature, history, language, economics, art and music.

These students spend less time on sports and more time in school – as much as 100% more in the case of China. They spend less time socializing and more time in tutoring. They don’t hold part time jobs, because they see intellectual pursuits as a full-time requirement.

Most troubling of all, this educational superiority is occurring in countries where the K-12 student population dwarfs our own: India has 211 million K-12 students; China has 200 million as compared to America’s 53 million.

These are two countries that Americans have not had to compete with until recent years. China opened itself to global competition in 1978 after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution. India only opened itself to global competition in 1991 with the abolishment of the Raj system.

So in the decades ahead Americans will still be competing economically with our historic competitors – the Japanese, who crushed the U.S. auto industry, the Koreans, Singaporeans, Taiwanese who captured electronics and steel and the Europeans who remain potent competitors. Now every American child will also be competing with four Indian children and four Chinese children – children who are getting a better education, are more highly motivated and whose countries are unified in their economic focus.

As a parent, what was I to do for my own teenage daughters – to help them be globally competitive while they were being educated in an insular U.S. education system oblivious to the Global Education Standards?

First, we changed how the girls prioritize their time. We reduced year round athletics to seasonal and filled that time with tutoring in math and science. In America, tutors are for helping the slow students. Much as an American parent with an athletically gifted child would hunt for the best coaches, camps and equipment, in India and China the more talented the student, the more tutoring the parents seek.

Second, I needed tools to assess and advance my girls’ learning. I tried the Kumon math system but found it slow and too paper intensive. So with an Indian partner, I designed and produced an online math education system, built to the Indian Math Standards – www.IndianMathOnline.com.

As I shared my stories of India with friends I struggled to communicate how accelerated the Indian education system was compared to the U.S. I published a blog of my travels through India – to help other American parents understand their views of India are 20 years outdated. Here I described my experiences in K-12 schools in India – how motivated the students are and how much time they dedicate to their studies.

Additionally, I speak to the entrepreneurial spirit that is embodied by so many young Indians. For example, one 12-year-old boy, named Ravi, started his own retail sales business – selling  trinkets on the street. From there, he learned to give tours to visitors at the Hanging   Gardens in Mumbai, learning NINE languages – at least conversationally – which greatly increased his selling success with foreigners. Ravi aspires to someday be a certified Tour Guide – a well-paying, respectable career – or to buy a business. I was amazed by how enterprising Ravi was – especially at such a young age and coming from a background of little opportunity.

As a result of my observations of education – and students’ motivation and dedication to it in India and China – I decided to make an hour long documentary film that compares and contrasts the high school experience in the U.S., India and China called Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination. The title comes from the fact that every child has roughly 2,000,000 minutes of life during high school.


Robert Compton is an Indianapolis venture capitalist and the creator and executive producer of “2 Million Minutes”, a provocative new documentary that looks at how American education falls short in today’s global economy. He can be reached at www.2mminutes.com.