We could be doing so much better
By Bill Fox/Columnist
I recently saw the Michael Moore movie Where to Invade Next, which is currently available on the pay TV channels and Netflix. The film is about Michael going to other countries and “invading” them so that he could steal their ideas and hopefully bring them back to the USA!
Mike’s first stop is Italy, where he talks to a couple in their 30s. He is a policeman and she works for a clothing company. Decreed by law, they get four weeks of paid vacation, and when you add in government holidays and such, it adds up to more. After hearing about their five months paid maternity leave, Moore “invades” two large Italian companies. He has difficulty believing such benefits could be good for business.
Workers getting such benefits and being allowed two-hour lunches (where they can have home-cooked meals) makes for a healthier, happier and more productive work force, the CEOs say. A union rep notes that these gains have been hard won. But the picture of an industrial situation where all sides seem to define success as cooperation, health and successful production amazes Moore.
At a German pencil factory, he hears about the benefits of having workers represented on their company’s board and ending the workday early. In France, he sees what school meals are like if you really care about kids’ health. He continually contrasts what life is like in the U.S. For example, he shows the difference between school lunches in American school cafeterias with those of French schools.
Finland, according to the U.N., has the best and most effective education system in the world. As Michael saw, the education system values a happy, fulfilled, productive citizenry treating students with less homework, and a wider array of subjects, shorter school days, and free college. In Ontario, as a result of the Mike Harris years, our systems are motivated to produce graduates with a goal of producing a strong work force…not necessarily a happy work force. As we have seen with standardized testing, more pleasurable learning is often substituted by teachers, who feel they have to teach for the tests.
Recently I was talking to a local retired math teacher and he also questioned the value of having so many maths in our high schools and how stressful it can be for some. And for what purpose? If that is where your interests are, that is great, but how many of us had no choice but to take math to fulfill our number of credits and how useful was my trigonometry, geometry, and algebra?
In Iceland, Michael observed the value of female leadership in the political and business realms, and how, in Iceland, the financial sector were not immune to having bankers jailed after their reckless behaviour crumbled the country’s economy.
Michael asks a lot of good questions as a result of his experiences. Do we want to make it possible for new parents to be with their newborn babies for their all-important first months of life? Or will we force parents who can’t afford childcare out of the workforce? In education, do we treat young people as if they are our future and most valuable resource, providing them with the best education without forcing students into endless debt? Or do we “educate” our children with standardized tests in under funded, crumbling, schools while feeding them garbage that will eventually kill them? And if you claim America can’t afford it, how come so many other countries can?
He goes on to wonder if the prison system is meant solely to punish and dehumanize while almost guaranteeing that criminals become repeat offenders who endanger our communities? Or do we want to be a nation like Norway that seeks to rehabilitate criminals, providing them with needed life and job skills so they have a chance at becoming productive members of society instead of returning to a life of crime?
I hope you watch this film for yourself, and hopefully it motivates us to make some changes in Canada. I defend Michael Moore at bdfox@rogers.com.