Chicago,June 12: US President Barack Obama on Friday & nbsp;emphasised the need for improving the country’s education system as its students have to compete with Indian and Chinese kids, who spend more time in school and less time playing “video games”.
President Obama wants to watch Slumdog Millionaire
Obama said while at one time America produced the highest number of school and college graduates, Ph.Ds, engineers and scientists, it has fallen behind now and is no longer “head and shoulders above other countries when it (comes) to education”.
“We have got to pick up the pace because the world has gotten competitive. The Chinese, the Indians are coming at us and they are coming at us hard, and they are hungry and they are really buckling down,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in neighbouring Wisconsin.
“Their (Indian and Chinese) kids watch a lot less TV than our kids do, play a lot fewer video games, they are in the classroom a lot longer,” he said.
At present, the US is in the “middle” and has settled into “mediocrity” among wealthy, advanced, industrialised countries. There is need to improve and step up its game as its kids are falling behind when it comes to science and math, Obama said.
The President said while the entire American education system is not plagued with problems, his government would focus on professional development for teachers, recruit and train more of them, besides asking parents to put more emphasis on education with their kids.
The US government has set aside money for improving curriculum, teacher training, recruitment in its stimulus spending, he said.
Obama has said on more than one occasion that Americans have to raise their standards of education as they have to compete with the students of India and China.
“We cannot afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when they are competing against kids in China and India who are actually in school about a month longer than our kids,” he had said in a March town hall meeting in California.
The main focus of Obama’s address was the need to reform the country’s health care system so as to bring down costs and provide cover to over 50 million uninsured Americans.
Taking his plan of government-sponsored health insurance that would compete with private insurers to the people, Obama said if the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, “it will keep them honest and it will help keep their prices down”.
Obama wants the health care legislation on his desk by October.
–Agencies