“The Sky’s the Limit”: On the Impossible Promise of E-Learning in the Toronto District School Board by Beyhan Farhadi A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2019 Graduate Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto © Beyhan Farhadi, 2019 ii “The Sky’s the Limit”: On the Impossible Promise of E-learning in the Toronto District School Board Beyhan Farhadi Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto 2019 Abstract Under the banner “The Sky’s the Limit,” electronically delivered instruction (e-learning) in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) emerged as an approach that promised expanded opportunities for students to prepare for a competitive, globalized, and networked economy. In contrast, this year-long ethnographic study on e-learning in secondary day school programs in the TDSB reveals intensified inequalities that map geographically in areas divided by class and race, serving students in schools with greater learning opportunities. By this, I refer to the concentration of e-learning students in schools that are ranked highly on the TDSB’s Learning Opportunity Index (LOI). I also show how the TDSB leverages e-learning to facilitate private– public partnership with Canadian International School (CIS), Vietnam. It is a program that accredits Vietnamese students with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma so that they better qualify for university programs abroad. In the context of these results, I argue that that the promise made by e-learning is impossible to fulfil because it is a technology that reinforces merit-based schooling systems that tend to reproduce social and cultural hierarchy. Social scientists working on educational issues have long identified how inequality is spatialized, particularly as a dynamic of exclusionary processes and inclusionary activities that reproduce hierarchies. These hierarchies condition student identity and perpetuate systems of disadvantage and violence wrought by settler colonialism, anti-Black racism, gender discrimination, and iii conceptions of disability within a global capitalist economy. Systems, however, are not static. Systems can be contested. While emphasizing the institutional nature of oppression, I hold schooling systems in tension with the insights of students, whose desire for a more inclusive society produces the force that makes progress possible. It is the responsibility of public education to realize this desire, for the benefit of all students. In a time of deepening cuts, education faces a crisis manufactured by social divestment, rising income inequality, and entrenchment of cultural hierarchies that discredit diversity as a value that can produce structural transformation and social justice. As an integral part of communities, schools must harness the power of people, rather than technology, to respond to this crisis. iv Dedication For Mahrokh. v Acknowledgments These next few pages, detailed in order of encounter, reflect my gratitude for communities that have nourished my physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being in preparation for and during my PhD journey. My sister, Seyhan Kogukoglu, you and I have had the good fortune of reencountering one another, and I am grateful for our mutual interests in love, justice, and repair. May we continue to laugh and learn together, always. Jena Tharani, my fondest childhood memories are bound to you; they remind me of the importance of play in life. You have been an important site of kinship and intellectual exchange, and I am thankful for our reconnection and continued friendship. Ksenija Spasic, you are one of my most cherished people—you are creative and inspiring with an extraordinary capacity for empathy and love. So grateful for you. Khosh Farhadi, thank you for taking on this PhD with me. It’s been us for as long as life was worth remembering; you make joy and good things with me. We have persisted and grown together, survived together, and have embarked of the greatest of love projects, Zayne and Darius. Thank you for building a home with me, for embracing vulnerability, foregrounding justice, and making space for spontaneous dancing. I wish us nothing but the courage to pursue freedom together, and to keep walking the talk for our children, no matter the circumstances. Zayne Farhadi and Darius Farhadi, by the time you both are old enough to comprehend the magnitude of this, it will feel like another universe. Thank you for making me a mother, an identity I don’t always find space to express, but whose grounding I always find with you both. I hope I make you proud because you feel loved and supported to move through the world more confidently, and with integrity, humility, and compassion. I can only hope to model what I wish for you two. To Mahrokh Behruzi, I dedicate this dissertation to you, not only to honour your role in shaping our lives, but also to process the impact of an illness through which I have gained perspective on love and loss. This is just one small contribution to your legacy—of strength, and survival—that vi live through those whose spirits you have touched. Deniz, Pauzash, Sara, Aydin, and Papa Farhadi, thank you all for your love. Avron Kulak, if I have anyone to credit with inspiring my turn to academia, it is you. Not only was your course transformative in the way it has since oriented me ethically, but also for the friendship I have had the privilege of developing with you and Terri, two people with such immense heart and curiosity. Thank you for modeling the compassion, love, and integrity I only hope I can approximate in my own life. Mary Jo Masterson, my unofficial godmother. We began as colleagues who bonded over the absurdity of interpersonal dynamics in the workplace, and I cherish you for always being such a kind and loving person as well as one of my most vocal supporters. Darren Gobert, you are a force of excellence intellectually and as a mentor. I am proud to have been your student both as an undergrad and as a master’s student in the English Department at York University. You have set the standard for rigour in research, to which you equally hold teaching and supervising, and to you I owe a debt of gratitude for pushing me in a direction I never imagined accessible. Naila Keleta-Mae, amiga mía, I cherish you, your family, and our friendship. You have a set a horizon that has provided me with loving guidance and perspective. Not only are you an exemplary thinker and talent, but you are joyful and intentional in your movement through the world. Thank you for always being so encouraging. Saúl García-López, La Saula, eres tremendo. My keeper of secrets and creative fire, I am deeply grateful for our friendship and for the queer life you navigate so fearlessly. I am proud of you, not only for the gifts you have produced for the world with La Pocha, but also for your precision in pedagogy and scholarship. Thank you for opening your heart and family to me. I love you more. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitrónica Gómez, it is a privilege to claim La Pocha as a conceptual home, a space where I feel signified. Thank you both for your radical tenderness when our paths cross, and for inspiring a politics and imagination that bring an embodied poetics vii to bear on our contemporary moment. I owe a great deal of my intellectual heritage to your work, Guillermo, and I am grateful for your intellectual provocations, “transgressive noise,” and artistic interventions. This world needs it now, more than ever. Kristin Joseph, you are my hero. You are an educator who leaves no one behind, a friend who has always has my back, and a woman who endures no matter the challenge. I cherish our journey together. Triston Joseph, you and your chillest of chill vibes are always keeping the energy grounded. Thank you. To my L’Amily, especially to my first mentors, Valerie Nelson, Darla Wilson, and Tricia Sukhdeo, thank you for setting the groundwork for excellence in education. This dissertation emerges from my commitment to the principles and values fostered at L’Am. To Port Union Cares, it has been a privilege and honour to lead and collaborate with such a transformative team. I am most proud of the friendships I have developed with the families we supported, as they begin a new chapter. Dagmawit and Aminedab, the Alnassars, and Zeba, Elnaz, and Arshia, this country is a better place because you are in it. Thank you for the opportunity to work for and dream alongside you. To my #pettycrew of organizers and friends at Scarborough Families for Public Education —Joy N. Henderson, Kat Wrobel, and Austin Jafri—thank you for making political despair bearable. The revolution is hard work! I am grateful to take it on with you all. The academy is not designed to support everyone, and I wanted to acknowledge those students who have withstood toxicity, oppression, and marginalization for any or all of their programs in ways that are specific to their positionality, history, and access to resources. Everyone should have an opportunity to thrive in graduate programs, and that opportunity is unequally distributed and sometimes entirely precluded—especially for Black and Indigenous students, students of colour, and queer and trans students as well as those facing economic barriers and for whom the environment is disabling. I claim this accomplishment contingently, recognizing the politics of access, while feeling humbled by the strength and opportunity my communities have afforded me, as well as those communities this dissertation will serve. viii In celebration of those friends and colleagues who have cultivated my spirit since I began the program, I want to especially thank the following people: Alexis Kyle Mitchell, for being my entry point to friendship and queer life in the academy, I miss you dearly; David Seitz, for softening the boundaries between work and pleasure, indulging in dark humour, and for introducing me to Star Trek.