Bob Compton is frustrated.
He’s shaking his head over the reaction to his documentary, Two Million Minutes, by Harvard graduate students during a recent screening.
I’ve already mentioned this in a previous post, but over on Whitney Tilson’s blog, Bob really lays it out. You’ve got to read it.
The key piece in Bob’s missive:
Candidly, I don’t think I’ve met a more close-minded and dogmatic bunch of people — except maybe in a religious cult. These students seemed unable to fathom the possibility that students in other countries may be edging out those in the U.S. or that our education system might not offer the best preparation for the high-knowledge, high-wage careers of the 21st century. I kept looking around for the vat of Kool-Aid from which clearly I had not yet drank.
Unburdened by either experience in or knowledge of India and China, these future leaders of American education were able to find enormous and tragic flaws in both Indian and Chinese education — based almost entirely on 57 minutes of film. Some went on to espouse what they viewed as compelling arguments for the current and future superiority of the Great American Education System.
This mindset of superiority and lack of curiosity about education in the two largest countries in the world is both disheartening and frightening to me.
OUCH! And WOW!
Remember, Bob is a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist with an MBA from Harvard. He was perhaps expecting this particular crowd of government and education graduate students at his alma mater to be open, familiar with the facts, and ready to consider and discuss the ways in which US education might be improved.
Um, no.
How sad. And yes, scary.
2 Comments
November 28, 2007 at 3:27 pm
[...] responses to the film from Harvard grad students here , Bob’s response to their response here, and a bit of correspondence with Neil Ahrendt, an American student featured in the film [...]
January 29, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Hey! I remember when my dad came home and told me about the reaction of these Harvard students. It is quite upsetting that they were so unfamiliar with the truth on this particular topic. Hopefully my dad’s film has opened their eyes to the raw reality of United States education.