The Chaser Report - What Happens When Schools Ban Phones

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Charles' kids have become the first victims of Chris Minns' utopia creating phone ban in schools. You will absolutely never guess the thing that got banned next. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles, and I'm in the studio. Dom, where are you? I'm on the street. I'm walking on a beautiful, I'm going to pretend it's 4 a.m. It's an afternoon that is somehow 4 a.m. where you're listening. Yes, it's a lovely afternoon, except for the fact that my beloved one-year-old daughter has some sort of a virus and can't

go to child care. Therefore, I'm being a modern dad, Charles, a modern dad who is walking down the street with a stroller and with his microphone, and with his phone right up next to his mouth to try and get good sound quality. So it looks like an absolute idiot. So yes, picture that and laugh away. You sound, and I don't know whether this is going to come through in the recording, like you've got a terrible lisp as well. Yes, no, I do. I do. I've developed it as an expectation. I figured I wasn't just enough of a wanker as my normal self. So I don't want to make fun of people who've got speech impediments. No, I don't.

I presume I'm just my normal cell phone. This is a microphone thing. Or is it, are you part of the Vodafone network by any chance? No, I'm on Optus. That's why I'm on Optus. That's why you can get my details on the dark web. Optus's reception is good. It's just that if you get them the slightest bit of customer data, they sell it.

Yeah, right. Okay, well, why don't we have an ad break, and during the ad break, why don't we reconnect and see whether we can make you not have a list? So what does your child have? I'm not saying it's COVID, but she's just got fevers and run your nose and all the stuff that kids get, except now the slightest hint of any virus, child care just goes, take her home, don't bring her in, whereas the old days back in 2019, it was, oh, look, as long as she's not in the mid-38th, we'll take her, it doesn't matter, they're all sick all the time.

So, yeah, it's been an interesting time to have young children given that they get every single disease known to humanity. Well, it's an interesting time to also raise teenagers, Dom, because I raised two teenagers and we live in New South Wales and they're about to ban mobile phones in schools. Oh, my goodness. It is absolutely terrifying. So what has happened at my kids' local school, they just go to the local comprehensive, is they are so scared.

This is what my kids reckon. The teachers are so scared of this phone ban that they've decided to bring it in two weeks early. Oh, really? Yeah. So as of, I think it was on Monday, you're not allowed mobile phones in school because they're trying it for two weeks

so that people get used to it. They're so getting that they're doing an extra fortnight of phone bans, an extra fortnight of no fortnight, in fact. Yes. The poor kids, it's like cutting a limb off, isn't removing a 14-year-old's phone? Oh, no, absolutely. Like, they are complete, it's like, you know,

it's like what the CIA did in the mid-1980s to the African-American population, which is they just shoveled the whole heap of crack cocaine, got them all addicted to it. And then it's as if they suddenly one day just removed it. Like, it just doesn't, like, it's not going to work. Like, it's literally, like, so I'll just run through all the things that they've done in preparation. So first of all, having this trial two-week period where people can get used to not having their phone.

So I don't think you sort of get a detention if you're caught with the phone yet, right? But not only that they've had assemblies for each year and sat them down to work out what people can do during lunchtime, you know, like whether they should have to develop a friendship circle or, you know. Oh, how awful. Yeah. And I know, it's just horrible. I mean, did you remember the type of people who went to high school with Dom?

You wouldn't want to talk to them if you didn't have to. Oh, I mean, at most, the text chat. So I could just play a game at the same time. No, I wouldn't want to give a human being my full attention at the age of 14 or 15 unless there was some sort of avatar in a game that I could shoot. Exactly. I mean, that to me is the greatest evolution in being a teenager in recent history

is being able to shoot your classmate and not having to go to jail. It's brilliant. And then this morning, we received a mobile phone. like an advisory, huge long email from the school, telling us about all their plans. They're wargaming this more than any other sort of. Like, COVID was minor compared to banning mobile phones. Because there's a whole lot of unintended consequences that I hadn't even thought of.

I mean, my vision of this, because the way I imagine it's working child, and it's just being discussed by the Min's government, right? Because they promised to bring this in. I thought it was going to be like one of those gigs where you go, and they lock your phone up in one of those sort of neoprene kind of wet suit bags, and then at the end of the day, they give it back to you. And so you'd have to sort of lug around this stupid dayglow object that was no use to you all day, tantalizingly close but locked by the powers of being.

In my case, it was Chris Rock who looked it up, but in this case, it's, you know, the school. Is that how it works, or is it? No, no, it's far worse and meaner than that, which is they're requiring students to exercise self-control to just keep it in their bag. What? It is just, this is a school where you can't walk into the bathrooms at recess because of all the people vaping. Like it's just too, it's too full of steam. It's like basically a steam bath. The thing that somehow there's going to be a mobile phone bet, like it's just, it's just ridiculous. But the point is that they, they're serious about it. They're clearly

aiming to sort of get lots of people in trouble day one. So that, right. They enforce their will, right? But there's a whole lot of just, because I didn't realize, I assumed, oh, you'll be able to get it out to be able to pay for your lunch or whatever. Because I don't know about you, but my kids don't, like, you don't get cards anymore. What happens is you just set up Apple pay for them on their own mobile phone. Like, that's how my son pays for his canteen or whatever. And they go, no, no, no, because that will involve the use of a phone,

even if it's just for a very practical thing like paying for your lunch. So they've had to, they've built an app called Munch Monitor so that they can, they can pay for it using an app. You can pre-pay for it on the web or something. That's funny. It's just deeply more complicated. There's also other people, like a whole lot of people have health apps on there to monitor various health conditions. Like glucose and stuff. Yeah.

And so you've got to apply to the school to be allowed to, you know, keep your kid alive. Oh my God. I must say, I'm very relieved that they figured out a whole new app ecosystem to teach the kids how to get lunch orders. Because the notion that they'd have to use cash and actually do those sums in their own head like we used to have to do. I mean, that is just cruel. That would be against some sort of Geneva Convention or something, wouldn't it?

But then giving kids cash. But also, then how do you find out what your school timetable is? Now, back in our day, you'd get out your little diary and, you know, look at your timetable. Everyone just looks at their phone. They've all got their timetables written on their phone. Oh, yeah. So they're implementing, like, there's going to be a day where people can print out their timetables

so that they can carry them around. Like they're, you know, in a Charles Dickens novel in the 1870, or 1840s or whatever. Paper? In 2023, there's going to be paper. Oh, my gosh. Just think of the environment. Like, there's going to be thousands of trees cut down as a result of this policy.

I'm currently, Charles, as you know, I'm currently both a university student and teacher. And I'm pleased to say that in the sort of two months since I've returned to this world, I have not had to deal with a single piece of paper. Like, there isn't any paper anymore. I went to the library the other day. And I don't even know if there are still books there.

As far as I can tell, it's just people using laptops to view PDFs of books on their screen. It's wonderful for the environment. And kids, how are they going to cope? They won't know what paper is. Yes. I know, exactly. I mean, they'll have to look up TikTok to get an explainer from somebody about what paper is.

Oh, they're going to get paper cut. The whole school's going to get paper cut. Oh, it'll be their first exposure, yes, to pay. Yes. Oh, my goodness. This is barbaric. How are we supposed to, how are our children supposed to compete in the kind of technological age, in the digital era? They don't know how to use phones for everything.

I know. It's crippling them. I know. It's tying like a heavy weight around their. They're shackles to paper. And not only they, it actually gets worse because they're now insisting, because my son often rides his bike to school, right? Because it's the perfect distance.

It's about, I don't know, four or five kilometers away. But, like, it's a good bike ride, right? There's a whole lot of back streets. Absolutely. They're insisting on him using a penny farthing from next term. That's outrageous. I mean, as long as he doesn't have to use public transport, because that really is backwards.

Oh, no, yeah, no. You wouldn't want that. Yeah, you definitely wouldn't want that. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. All right. And no, so anyway, so, but I've got to tell you this yarn because it's incredible, right? So they've been practicing, since Monday, they've been practicing not having mobile phones. Right.

As a result, all the boys, like, even the sort of, like, I would say my son is a fairly cool kid, right? Like, you know, hangs out in the basketball courts or, you know. Got his mother's jeans. Yeah, yeah. But they've started playing chess at lunchtime, right? What? Because they've got nothing else to do. They used to sort of scroll through TikTok or whatever.

So the whole school has gone chess mad, right? Charles, don't you can't tell anyone this? Because this will make the phone ban look like a good idea. The notion of children sitting down and playing chess at lunchtime. This is like an idyllic, wet dream fantasy of like some sort of fast-year-old educator. If you only found the devices, the boys will pay chess. This is what Chris means. No, no, like the Premier of New South Wales ran on this in the elections.

He will be doing ads about it on television. You know, the future of tomorrow is playing chess at lunchtime. Anyway, so that was all going well, except not everyone's very good at chess, right? So there's a sort of various levels. And it started being a bit of a hierarchy in the playground of people who were good at chess, right? And the people who weren't good at chess started interrupting the games of the people who were good at chess, right? and sitting on the pieces and hiding the pieces and things like that, right? Oh, no.

Which to me is a perfect case study in, well, that's exactly what you want in, you know, is a bit of social friction. Like, actually, what happens when you all look away from your screens is you actually have to deal with the dickhead sitting next to you who inevitably is going to be a dickhead because you're all fucking 14 and 15 year old shitheads. Like, that's 99% of you are going to be dicks, right? Well, Charles, you know what that means. That makes me nostalgic for the good old days of cyberbullism

when the psychological destruction was just done online. Yes. Like the good old day. Not this sort of physical in your face, beat them up with the chess piece. So anyway, so that happened, and there were these kids, and obviously somebody must have dobed. And so the principal came out into the playground. Nabbed two of the wrong people who hadn't actually been part of the chess for a car.

and sent them off to be, you know, dealt with and get detentions or whatever. And then the next day, they'd taken away all the chess pieces. They'd taken away all the chess boards. Chess is now banned at Lycah High School. Yes. As a real, as a first, they came for my phones and I did nothing. And I did nothing.

Then they came for chess. Next time for wedgies. Well, this is the thing. So I said, so what are you going to do now? And he's, like, to my son, and it's going, I don't know. I really was quite enjoying, you know, getting back into chess. He hadn't played it for a while. And I said, well, is there sort of another sport to play or whatever?

And apparently they've also banned volleyball in the main area because too many people, having got off their phones, had started to play volleyball, and the teachers didn't like the possibility of being hit by all these volleyball. Oh, my goodness. So I think that... I've got a brilliant idea. What if they make chess boards out of paper, our little pieces of paper?

And move the pieces of paper. No, no, you just write down the moves. So you go, you know, C7 G8 or whatever it is. You learn how to play in your head. Yes. That's it. That's what, that's, well, I think that's what Chris Minns was thinking when he banned mobile phones. Yes.

I would have thought Chris Minn would want to encourage people playing chess. It's very labor to have this sort of strategy and killing the people on the board. That's the way Chris Min's got to be premiered. From what my recollection is, there were sort of female candidates, and you took them off the ball. And lobe and lobe and behold, the next white guy's premier. Isn't that how it works? Yeah, I think that's right. In the low party, white always wins, isn't it?

I just feel like, though, that writing itself is a technology, it's a human technology. It might be a bit too advanced. I think we've probably got to remove writing. Like, just following the logic of Chris Minza's policies, that too is a technology. I think we need to get rid of that from the playground. So I'm not sure. It's distracting them. The reading and writing is distracting them.

From knifeing. From their schoolwork. From their school work. Yeah. I don't like that. I think it's inappropriate. I think it's not what we want to see. I quite like the idea.

I like the idea of just teaching factional politics as the only thing that you can do at school. That's all you need. You certainly don't need talent. No. And without wanting to name, names, all you need to do is work out who's the person next to you in your sort of school room, be friends

with them forever, and then put them in charge of the transport department in a couple of decades time. Isn't that how it works? Without interviewing them properly. Is that right? Okay. Yeah. Is that... I mean, not that I'm suggesting that due process wasn't followed.

The person who may have been chosen wasn't the best person for the job. I have the utmost face in the meritocracy, the clear meritocracy that is New South Wales later. Yes. Don't take it in no way. And if anything dodgy did happen, John, without phones we wouldn't know, without pens, we wouldn't be able to write about it. Well, I think, no, see, but this is my point. I think what has happened is you start banning phones.

And then those in power who've been given the power to ban phones just go, okay, cool, I'm going to ban chess. I'm going to ban volleyball. I'm going to ban. And you create a selection process. Yeah. And so I think that there's a very, like, You know, in four years' time, I'm just saying, you know, it may be the case that mobile phones will be better. You know, that speaking out against corruption and the appointment of your best friends to the departmental position that should be, you know, under arm's length.

Yeah. They're all things that will be in a ban from being commented upon. I mean, if you're viewing this is the first step in a totalitarian state. Well, that's what I'm saying. I see where you're going, Charles. But I remind you of the other Tran of New South Wales Labor, there's a strand that means that there's no danger. I mean, people talk about, you know, back in the day,

the Imenzies is used to portray Labor is in bed with the communists and all this stuff and they're going to have a secret sort of takeover. That's all bullshit. Labor couldn't organize a totalitarian state. Yes, that's right. And they can't even get the voice up. It would be the most moderate totalitarian,

most disappointingly moderate totalitarian state ever. And in the end, they just all descend into a sort of mutual corruption Fest and voluntarily remove themselves. That's the one thing they'll never do. Make the trains run on time, Charles? Yeah. Well, and also we won't be able to tell whether the trains are running on

time because we won't have our phones. By the way, before we go, Charles, what happens if your child needs to contact you urgently or you need to contact your child urgently? Are they allowed to use the phone in that scenario or do they get detention for, you know, getting a call that grandma died? I think the whole point is

you're sort of not supposed to take You're supposed to leave it at home. Like, that's the ideal world. But, you know, worst case scenario, you leave it in your bag. I suspect everyone will just be leaving it in their bags. But then temptation will come to sort of thing. Oh, that's right. And it's supposed to be completely off.

If it's in your bag, it's supposed to be completely off, not like on sleep. Manza for phone thieves, Charles. I mean, I'm going to go to my local high school. Yes. I can get 20 grand in 10 minutes, rousing through the bags. But it's just so annoying because there's, like, I text my kids all the time. And then they learn good protocol in sneakily answering your phone when you can't. You need that for modern life.

You need to know. How about instead of learning all that and learning all those skills, they learn that sometimes you can win an election with a bullshit, not researched, sound bite meant to grab support from the Daily Telegraph. Yes. Like, we're going to ban mobile phones if we win. Yes. Yeah, that's what the students of New South Wales have learned about, isn't it?

Brain fart. And I'll be watching closely the ratings of this show because my bet is that we have the 13 to 17-year-old market stitched up. Well, Charles, but how do they listen to podcasts on their phones? It'll plummet the moment the band comes in for good across the state. We're fucked. Oh, well, it's been nice doing the podcast. No, no, but it's all right. We'll just write it out and send it to them in writing.

We'll send them a letter in the mail. And they'll get paper cuts. It hasn't been thought through. Maybe we need a new, maybe if someone appointed their mates are on the education department, they could sort all this out. Good idea. Our gear is from Road. We are part of the Iconicless network.

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