Dads Center Week Recap--2 million minutes, Friday night family movie night

Friday night we had family movie night.  The film of the week?  2 Million Minutes  All six of the older children were required to join us in the family room for this important message.  Did they all comprehend?  Not willingly.  A couple of the kids kept telling us the movie doesn't apply to them.  Hm.

Afterwards, actually, for 2.5 hours, we sat there watching the movie and then talking about it, the future, and what course our kids needed to take into the future to be competitive with their counterparts from around the world. 

In 2 Million Minutes, the lives of 6 high school seniors are observed--two from the US, two from India and two from China.  From the onset, it's obvious that we American parents are possibly not ensuring that our kids are ready for global competition.   The question remains, but are we. 

The answer seems to be by all accounts that we're not, when our kids globally are ranked in the 20s in their math skills.  In the movie, we saw one of the girls getting up at 5:30 a.m. on a SATURDAY to go to math tutoring.  That was before she went to school.

I had the opportunity to see the Indian students in Chicago for the EWA meeting.  They were very impressive young people. 

As an outcome of the conversations with the elder kids on Friday night, we picked up Sun Tzu's The Art of War for one of the boys to begin reading.  "Know thy enemy as well as thyself," could not seem to be any more applicable than this situation.   Are the other kids, "enemies?" Well, no, but they are competitors.  Competitors for the good, high-paying jobs we want our seven going after in the next two decades. 

And so my hope is to continue the intrigue of 2 Million Minutes and use that to encourage our kids to do better.  Are we going to hang our hat only on that movie?  No, but it does serve as an inspiration. 

Kari and I've been talking and we really need to find some activities and subjects to get the girls in our house more interested in math and science.  My three truly share my lack of understanding of math principles.  I'm a writer and artist for Heaven's sakes.  But in the past six months in my present job, it's become more and more apparent that as a parent, we have to put more focus at home on keeping, getting the kids interested in math and science, and particularly our girls.

We've even talked about having the kids do Raft Rally either today or tomorrow as an in-house activity.  This will begin to show them some physics and science and get their minds thinking, at least for 30 minutes.   

In the meantime, I'm headed outside to build an over-head area on the short side of the house where we can park bikes and get them out of the garage.  It's a complete mess from all the backyard building.  And I need to make two work benches for the garage for tools and the new circular saw Kari's letting me get for our anniversary present.  Of course, when I get that and get it going, that means I'm in line for crown molding and the wood flooring we want to put in upstairs. 

Comments

[PJ]

Hi! As a parent of a kindergarten ready child, I hear ya! I'm having trouble finding 2 million minutes in town. Neither Blockbuster nor Hollywood Video have it. Where did you rent it from?
Tks!
P

[Daddy Claxton]

PJ, the best thing I know is to simply order the movie, which you can do at the following URL: (https://payment.2mminutes.com/imo/DoublePaymentAction.do?action=Start)

You might also contact the 2 Million Minutes people at the following address and they might be able to give you some options I don't know about. (http://www.2mminutes.com/contactus.html)

Good luck getting a copy. I wish there was more I could do to help.

Donny