Juno News - March 17, 2019


Premier Ford's most popular announcement ever？


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

191.48936

Word Count

654

Sentence Count

48


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Doug Ford set to release one of his least partisan, least political announcements to date.
00:00:10.620 And it may just prove to be his most popular one ever.
00:00:15.860 No, I'm not talking about scrapping the carbon tax.
00:00:18.540 I'm not talking about fighting those social justice warrior unions at universities
00:00:23.040 or trimming the size of the provincial government.
00:00:25.840 I'm talking about banning cell phones in school classrooms.
00:00:30.520 Public schools, elementary schools, high schools.
00:00:33.220 Banning them from all class time use.
00:00:36.920 The policy is already in place in certain schools and certain school boards.
00:00:40.800 But the Ontario government is going to roll this out across the province.
00:00:45.000 Every single school.
00:00:47.180 Yes, you can have them on your backpacks.
00:00:49.020 Yes, you can have them in the playground.
00:00:50.400 I guess in the hallways if you need them.
00:00:52.480 No usage in the classrooms.
00:00:55.380 Now they're going to leave the policy up to the individual schools of how they enforce it.
00:01:00.000 What you do, how you punish people, how you make kids not use them.
00:01:03.880 But the flat out rule, no using your phones in class time.
00:01:08.820 That is the new rule and boy is it getting a lot of applause.
00:01:12.400 Not just from people who watch politics, day-to-day observers of the political scene,
00:01:16.740 but regular folks, regular parents who are saying it's about darn time.
00:01:22.700 There's a lot of concerns out there about kids using cell phones too much, kids using technology way too much.
00:01:28.380 Distractions, rewiring the brain, all these things that we're really only just beginning to understand.
00:01:34.400 And people who are a lot more informed than me about the science of this are writing a whole bunch of papers on it
00:01:39.320 about how this can be detrimental to your health in many different respects.
00:01:44.240 And also just detrimental to your whole social maturation and how you're socialized for the years ahead.
00:01:50.380 And I think it's also an issue that adults are going to have to be talking about.
00:01:54.600 Because it's not just up to the school boards and the schools and the teachers and the principals to enforce this.
00:01:59.620 It's what's happening at home.
00:02:00.980 It's what's happening with the family.
00:02:02.940 Setting rules, saying, okay, from 5 to 7 p.m., from 7 to 9 p.m., whatever it is,
00:02:08.740 you can't pick up your phone for those two hours.
00:02:11.260 We're only going to have family time.
00:02:12.960 You're going to have to read.
00:02:13.980 You're going to have to play with board games.
00:02:15.260 You're going to have to do chores.
00:02:16.320 No, just sitting there on your phone constantly.
00:02:20.000 I remember a few years ago we had the anti-bullying mania that was going on.
00:02:23.700 A lot of people saying we're being bullied all the time in school, in classroom,
00:02:27.600 and it was pushing kids to even self-harm.
00:02:30.440 Some kids were committing suicide in the most extreme cases.
00:02:34.200 And you're not in control of what other people say to you,
00:02:36.540 but you are in control of how you respond to situations,
00:02:39.100 and you're also in control of whether or not you sign up to all these different apps and devices
00:02:44.540 that enable people to be bugging you and nagging you at all times of the day.
00:02:49.460 This was part of the problem with the new phones and the social media.
00:02:53.000 The bullying can go from the classroom, in person, where the teacher can hear it,
00:02:57.280 to on the phones, to when you leave the classroom.
00:03:00.500 So this is just one small step headed in the right direction to tell kids,
00:03:04.560 and to tell their parents, and to send a message through our education system.
00:03:08.140 Don't be so connected to your phones.
00:03:10.420 It shouldn't be your only lifeline to reality.
00:03:13.120 As more and more parents applaud this news from the Ford government,
00:03:17.260 you should probably expect other provinces to face calls for them to follow suit,
00:03:21.320 and do the same, and I think they'd be wise to do it.
00:03:24.240 What do you think?