Group 2: Digital Overtake

Context

In the year 2049, education has shifted to become de-streamed within all of Ontario, specifically becoming digital.

After the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the government realised that they could save so much more money by continuing to have education online. Therefore, the government decided to make learning solely online. However, due to parents protesting about no one being able to stay home from their work to look after their kids, the government decided to still keep school boards intact. Students would still come into the school building however be on their devices during their class period to attend their online classes. There would be teachers (and people hired and trusted by each board) to be present within the classrooms to supervise. By the year 2035, there would be one teacher for every subject of every grade level. The lessons would take place online so every student in Ontario could attend the same class. Every student would receive the same type of assessment and could use digital technologies. Grading would be done by AI in order to ensure equal and fair practice. There will still be staff within the building for administrative aid and maintenance but no teaching will be done by any of these staff within the building. Students have different class periods and schedules and go to different classrooms to attend each of their online classes. Post Secondary admissions would shift from only considering grades, to also including interviews with students in order to help select students who could demonstrate civic responsibility without the use of digital tools.

Government/Politics Structure

From a GDP viewpoint, Ontario is thriving in comparison to its other provinces. In the year 2030, a new party had formed and been selected to represent the province; The Independence Party of Canada (IPC). The IPC stood for neoliberal ideologies that privatized the economy. Ontario was in the midst of unaffordable housing, increased homelessness, rising food prices, a mental health epidemic, and declining public institutions such as healthcare and schools.

The IPC highlighted how the economy was to blame for these problems. The Ontario government had created these problems through mismanagement of public funds. Despite putting more money in these areas than ever before in its history, the situation continued to spiral. Therefore, the solution was to increase privatization, so that the province will gain more money overall, and success or failure in this neoliberal economy will be a result of the individuals’ merit.

Government Controlled Institutions: Education was the IPC’s first target. The IPC presented the pilot project of one teacher per subject for each grade. In 2023, the Ontario government had been spending $34.7 billion in education. By the time of the 2030 elections, it had increased by an approximate $600 million per year to a total of $40 billion. In the pre-election political debate, the IPC promised Ontario citizens that they would save them 40 billion per year which would then go into resolving the food price and housing dilemmas. The IPC won by a landslide.

The IPC selected highly qualified curriculum developers who had written a number of academic articles that listed the benefits of privatization. These curriculum developers ensured that the Ontario curriculum from K-12 would allow students to reach their full potential through usage of digital technology, and an equitable grading schema that utilized AI to grade. The AI was developed to grade based on having key words in students answers which would highlight their usage of the IPC ideology. The entire curriculum aimed to create responsible citizens by teaching them values of meritocracy. The curriculum encourages digital competencies, and as such it has created accessible centres for using digital technologies. When people are not at work, they are on social media, or engaging in digital creation to pass time.

The updated version of ChatGPT incorporates responses that also include the IPC’s values and draws upon social media forums, and academic articles to confirm the superiority of the ideology. While teacher unions were against the implementation of the pilot project, it received a lot of support from parents who just wanted their students to be successful in schools. However, in the year 2042 after over a decade of the system in place, graduates of this system began protesting against it as they believe that it is actually being used in favour of the upper-class who have the connections and social capital to perform better in interviews to receive better jobs than the majority of the population that is digitally dependent. The IPC and its supporters who provide generous donations to the province, deny the accusations as the current system is a reflection of meritocracy, and those who work hard will obtain the occupations they want.

Furthermore, parents are happier than ever that their children are doing well in classrooms, and that schools supervise their children so that they can work hard to make a living. Across the province students have a graduation rate of 90% regardless of class, gender, or race. These statistics are often cited in public speeches because it highlights how the current system has created a successful , culturally relevant and equitable curriculum. This change in schooling had a ripple effect on other elements in society such as the workforce:

The economy has had an increase in GDP. As students graduate high school they are digitally dependent, and as such those who do not work hard to practice for interviews, do not perform well and so they are unable to get into post-secondary despite having near perfect averages in highschool. Many higher paid jobs require skills that cannot rely on digital dependence, such as in medicine, science, law, software engineers etc. As such, only a select of the most hard working people are able to demonstrate the competency to study these fields and be able to perform after graduation. Consequently, the majority of the population performs jobs that do not require specific abilities and only need a secondary school diploma to enter.

Links to Individual Narratives

Individual Narrative for Education: Narrative for Education