The Great Vacation Squeeze

Gr 9 Up—Vacations for working Americans are short and getting shorter—if they get paid time off at all. Writer/director/producer John de Graaf sets out to demonstrate that this is detrimental to American bodies and minds. On camera, Europeans speak of five and six weeks of mandated time off, and American doctors give anecdotal evidence of patients who used (presumably paid) vacations to relieve stress and improve their health. The shortfall of this film is that most of the vacations shown are high end: world travel, amusement parks, and camping with state-of-the-art clothing and equipment. Only in the last section does a college student mention that not everyone can afford this type of vacation. The fact that many Americans don't use all their vacation, even when it is allotted, is mentioned but not explored. The film is technically proficient, and the interviews are thought provoking, but a travel agent, a national park employee, and an authority on European travel, Rick Steves, are not unbiased sources. For educational use, it would have been helpful to have a wider variety of viewpoints and source details for the statistics. (All but five countries worldwide mandate vacation time? "Many studies" find vacations make workers more productive?) Motivated teachers might present this film with supplemental material (poverty statistics, dual-income family and part-time worker numbers, information on breadwinners with more than one job, economic effects of mandatory paid vacation) to spark more than a feel-good "adults work too hard" discussion.—Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX