“Scared straight,” an old tactic of the war on drugs, is making an appearance in the war on ignorance in a new film called 2 Million Minutes.

Math, science and engineering educators have been warning for years that American failings are pushing jobs and investment to better-trained foreign workers.

The issue hasn’t caught fire in the presidential campaign. And the public doesn’t seem to share the urgency, either.

Maybe the kids will listen.

2 Million Minutes argues that “the battle for America’s economic future isn’t being fought by our government. It’s being fought by our kids.”

And in a series of international comparisons, the U.S. kids are not doing so well. The one area where they score better than the rest is self-confidence.

Once they leave the eighth grade, students have a little more than 2 million minutes to get ready for work or college and the transition to being an adult. This documentary, made by high-tech entrepreneur Robert Compton, follows two high school seniors in Carmel, Ind., two in Bangalore, India, and two in Shanghai, China, to see how they use their time.