Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes a decade of intense practice—roughly 10,000 hours—to achieve mastery in any field.
So, how does this apply to gifted students? Do gifted students from different countries actually invest their time differently in accruing those 10,000 hours needed to become masters of their field? And, in comparison, how do students in the U.S. fare?
As researchers of how academically gifted students develop talent, we recently surveyed academically advanced seventh grade students in the U.S. and India. We found differences in culture and education practices between these two groups that could have significant economic implications.
Who Is Putting in More Academic Hours?
There have been numerous articles emphasizing how even the most academically advanced U.S. students, compared to students from other (often Asian) countries, are lagging on math and science subjects, when compared to their international peers.
U.S. students are considered to have less of a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas. A recent Pew Research report shows that international students outpace U.S. students in earning STEM degrees.
India is second only to China in sending over 100,000 students to universities in the United States. Pew found 38 percent of Indian students in the U.S. are studying engineering and 26 percent are studying math and computer science.
Along with Duke University Talent Identification Program colleagues Martha Putallaz and Patrick Malone, we surveyed 668 U.S. and 353 Indian academically advanced seventh grade students one week after they participated in talent search testing.
One of the unique challenges of studying such rare individuals is finding samples large enough so that findings can reasonably generalize. This is what we were able to do in the current study. Our paper was recently published in the journal Gifted Child Quarterly.
Neither Exhausted Nor Sleep-Deprived
We asked these students how they spent their time both inside and outside of school, during the week and on the weekend across a variety of areas, including academics, electronics, sleep/family, and extracurricular activities.
We found these academically advanced U.S. and Indian students spent very similar amounts of time on extracurricular activities and with family. Students from both countries reported sleeping over eight hours each night.
In “Today’s Exhausted Superkids,“ journalist Frank Bruni argued that ”many teenagers today are so hyped up and stressed out that they’re getting only a fraction of the [sleep] they need.” Our findings, based on our survey of over 1,000 academically advanced students, run counter to this idea.
On the weekend, we found that U.S. students in our study spent essentially no time on academics, whereas Indian students did.
Differences Between US and Indian Kids
We were surprised to see that Indian students spent about seven hours more per week than U.S. students on academics generally, with significantly more time spent on STEM subjects.
Conversely, U.S. students spent about seven hours more per week than Indian students using electronics (TV, internet, social media, video games, smartphone, music), most likely for entertainment.
Given that the typical Indian school year is about four to eight weeks longer, this means spread across a year, academically advanced Indian students spend about 400 to 600 more hours on academics (including STEM areas) each year than their U.S. counterparts.
