My oldest son Drewpy is working on a Grade 5 group project to describe the various levels of government – Federal, Provincial and Municipal. The goal is to understand how everyone works together in a democratic society for the good of the people. He explained it to me in the simplest of terms so I could understand. Here’s what he and his colleagues came up with to help create a visual.
The Federal government is like a cow – big and slow moving. They spend most of their time out in a field. They hang out with other cows but don’t really communicate with them – just a lot of standing around and looking at each other, grazing, and passing time.
The Provincial government is the udder on the big cow. Whether it likes it or not, the udder has to go in the same direction as the cow. The udder holds all the milk that is produced by the cow. And udders don’t leak – they try and hold onto the milk as long as they can. You have to actually milk the cow – the udder doesn’t give you milk unless you ask.
There are a lot of teats on an udder. Each teat is like a Municipal government. Teats pull on the udder in hopes that milk will trickle down. Some teats are better than others at getting milk. Usually, the more often a teat tries to milk, the better it gets at tracking down the milk. Once the milk is collected, it gets sent in different directions depending on where it’s needed most. Should it be used to make butter? Or combined with other stuff to make cheese?
Holy Heifer! Kids. What crazy imaginations they have, eh? The Federal Government just mingling about with no clear purpose. And the Province holding on to their resources until they are asked. Ha Ha. Then the Municipal offices have to work so hard for their share and then having to pick and choose where it ends up because there just isn’t enough to go around.
The teacher thought their idea was very imaginative. To be so young and have come up with that analogy – well, clearly it was bovine intervention!