In 2021, Right-Wing Americanized Educational Austerity Measures
October 30, 2025โข434 words
โThe corporatization of education seeks to produce human beings who serve the system, obedient workers, consumers who do not question, and citizens who remain passive.โ - Chris Hedges
โThe whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves.โ - Noam Chomsky
โIn the conservative imagination, the world is always being ruined by liberal elites and their contempt for the common man, and the cure for this is always to smash the institutions of learning and culture.โ - Thomas Frank
โEurocentric education has dehumanized Indigenous peoples by denying their languages, knowledge systems, and histories. The struggle for decolonizing education is not just about inclusion; it is about restoring our humanity.โ - Marie Battiste
With ongoing budget cuts that affected education at all levels, Alberta's UCP further restructured education in 2021 with an austerity on efficiency and reform. As if simplicity alone could heal years of systemic strain, the government's "back-to-basics" slogan promised a return to science, math, and literacy, the core subjects.
Alberta austerity measures were felt in Kโ12 classrooms hidden in rhetoric of renewal.
Wage freezes that left teachers with stagnant pay and rising inflationary costs overshadowed the government's modest increases linked to a few new schools and modernization projects. They were a growing number of teachers that began to look for second and third jobs to supplement their income to pay for their rents, mortgages, vehicle payments, child care, food and clothing.
The tone hardened toward higher education.
Universities and colleges became competitors as a result of performance-based funding, which linked their continued existence to enrollment figures and measurable impacts rather than scholarly research. Working-class and Indigenous students had fewer opportunities as a result of institutions having to increase tuition and reduce programs due to operating grants that were subtly reduced by inflation. Many of the universities were seen as bastions of social democracy ideology, and in turn UCP defunded these higher education institutions in the millions of dollars!
Beneath the austerity reforms, the draft Kโ6 curriculum exposed an Americanized right-wing conservative ideology that aimed to control an alarming narrative.
The draft glorified phonics and "traditional" lessons while downplaying the atrocities of residential schools, suppressing Indigenous history, and making climate change a trivial issue. Teachers, researchers, and Indigenous leaders across Canada saw it as an act of erasure rather than just a failure in education. Under these circumstances, Kโ12 educational institutions and universities found themselves on the defensive in the UCP political arena.
https://static.unitedconservative.ca/UCP-Policy-Nov-2021.pdf
https://globalnews.ca/news/7688799/university-of-alberta-budget-cuts/
https://albertaviews.ca/assault-higher-education/
https://www.caut.ca/bulletin/commentary-alberta-is-showing-canada-how-to-destroy-education/
https://caunicef.org/2021/12/02/decolonization-of-education-the-alberta-ucp-curriculum-draft/