The Plot of This Week’s ‘Simpsons’ Episode Is Happening in Schools Across the Country

The Simpsons doesn’t typically address the real-world problems facing America’s education system, unless there really are some schools run by bloodthirsty cannibals.

And as far as we know, greased-up, half-naked Scottish caretakers falling out of air ducts isn’t a common occurrence.

But this week’s episode, “Keep Chalm and Gary On” actually touched on an important development that’s been in the news a lot lately. The episode finds Superintendent Chalmers losing his job and going to work as a custodian at Mr. Burns’ nuclear power plant. It isn’t long before Chalmers stumbles upon a horde of mutant snails, whose slimy secretions turn out to have highly profitable anti-aging properties.

The reason why Chalmers loses his superintendent job is due to a plagiarism accusation, made anonymously by Bart and his friends. Why? Because Chalmers was forcing the students to place their phones in Yondr Pouch-like bags for the entirety of the school day, thus ruining their ability to cheat on assignments with the help of A.I.

Apart from the stuff about mutant snail mucus, this is all really happening. Schools across the country are currently turning to companies like Yondr to lock up students’ phones. As NBC News recently reported, Yondr pouches are “used by about 2 million students in schools in all 50 states.”

But these pouches aren’t cheap, costing “$30 per student for the pouch, training and support to start up the program.” And while most of us can agree that students probably shouldn’t be spending school hours watching TikTok videos of A.I.-generated kittens battle sharks, instead of learning, this money could arguably be far better spent elsewhere. Especially because the pouches themselves are reportedly super-easy to hack.

So really, come to think of it, all Bart Simpson needed to do was Google how to hack the pouches instead of straight-up trying to ruin a man’s life.