New York, May 21: Inching closer towards clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama has urged the American parents to raise the standards of their children so that they can compete with those from India and China in particular in the field of math and science.

''We have to have high standards, because our children here in Montana (State) and all across the country are going to be competing against kids in China, and kids in India, and they've got to do better than they're doing, especially on math and science,'' Obama said during an election rally in Billings, Montana.

This is possibly for the second or third time during his presidential run that Obama has specifically mentioned India and China and said that US kids would have to compete against them in the field of math and science as they are fast marching ahead and increasingly reducing the gap between the two countries.

''I believe in high standards for our children,'' Obama said, adding that by this he did not intend to increase the burden on American kids.

''I don't think that you raise standards just by a single, high-stakes standardized test, administered in the middle of the year, because what's happening is teachers and school administrators are feeling obliged to teach to the test. And when you teach to the test, students lose interest, teachers lose interest, and subjects get crowded out,'' he said.

Amidst applause, Obama said: ''I want our students to learn art, music, civics, history ... all the things that make an education worthwhile. So we're going to work with local administrators and local school districts to come up with assessments that are fair, that measure progress for students during the course of the school year.''