Write a Backgrounder Paper for the Case Study provided in the attached files. The backgrounder paper is supposed to provide some solid, well-researched (and annotated!) sources as a foundation for yo
What is a “backgrounder” paper?
A good group case study is supported by appropriate evidence, based upon research into the context of the ethical problem that is presented. While everyone in the group will be responsible for researching some aspect of the case and/or its resolution, the backgrounder papers for the case study provide a more in-depth look at some of the background information the group needs to reach (and support) its conclusions. This does NOT mean trying to solve the case, or prejudicing the group toward one outcome or another, but instead giving everyone access to some necessary and common background information, properly cited.
The backgrounder paper is supposed to provide your group with some solid, well-researched (and annotated!) sources as a foundation for your discussion about the case. It is NOT supposed to offer opinions, direction, or otherwise attempt to sway the group in a particular direction.
The better the backgrounder, the less extra research the rest of the group may need to do to support your case study conclusions.
Further, this is supposed to be a paper — so not just a collection of facts and annotations - but it is supposed to drill down on some specific aspect of the case and provide solid academic research (not Google scans!) that supports the data. It is NOT supposed to survey the landscape of the whole case— too wide, too shallow, and risks trying to resolve the case!
Module:
Ask one of those 80-year-olds what is different about society today from when they were young, and they would probably talk about the amazing new technologies, many of which they don’t use or understand, but they would also likely talk about the gadgets that have contributed to the loss of community life. They might talk about how difficult it was to find the money to go to university, or how they were the first person in their whole extended family who went. They might describe what it was like growing up in a large family, with many siblings, or how they spent most of their days, summer, and winter, amusing themselves outside by playing with whatever sticks or balls they could scrounge. Food was home-cooked (how could it be anything else?), and much of it was home-grown.
Doctors were a luxury, hospitals were places where old people went to die, medical procedures (whether removing tonsils or having babies) were done on the kitchen table, electricity was linked to a few lights, the heat was provided by coal (shovelled) or wood (split), toilets were often outside all year round, and running water meant racing your brother to the well to pump your bucket first. For most people, there was inequality of wealth – though many were poor; but also, for most people, there was an equality of opportunity, too. If you were willing to work hard, you could make a decent living for yourself and your family.
Of course, it was also a society rife with the cruel realities of racial, gender, and religious discrimination, where there (literally) could be a different kind of justice depending on which side of the tracks you lived on.
As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, however, the world has turned over, again. We now need to consider the global implications of the choices we make – not that choices before did not have such global implications, but they were not recognized as they should have been.
Largely perhaps because of consequentialist logic, we are seeing what happens when we make decisions that do not consider consequences for others, especially for future generations.
Doing nothing will continue the trajectory of social, cultural, ecological, and economic problems whose roots are firmly established in how the world has managed its affairs since 1945. But what to do, and for what good reasons, to provide a future in which justice and dignity for all are embedded?
In this module, we will look at two aspects of the social and cultural problems we need to address, in a rapidly changing world. You may consider both of these cases to depict an extreme situation -- but that is what we are facing, perhaps sooner than we realize.
(If you wonder how anything so drastic could work, check out Seth Klein’s book A Good War: Mobilising Canada for the Climate Emergency (2020). Klein parallels what needs to be done, to what Canada did during the Second World War.)
What should we do, and together, is not some academic question -- the longer we wait, the more dire the situation will become.
Write a Backgrounder paper for the following case study:
Case Study
The year is 2024. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused at least as much damage to the global economy as it did to the population, a coalition national government was formed to take Canada through the difficult times that lay ahead. It was faced with a “wicked” problem: rising youth unemployment was matched by an increased lack of access to the post-secondary education that 21st-century Canadian society needed its young people to have.
Whether it was because of where they lived, the under-funding of post-secondary education, or the inability of those institutions to change with the times to provide the education and training that led to useful employment, even if students could afford their first degree or diploma, the personal cost for many translated into a crippling, life-long student debt. At the same time, there was increasing disengagement in the political process by the young people, who felt they were outnumbered by their elders and lived in a society geared to the older generation, rather than to the next.
With an aging population, and a massive infrastructure deficit, with much work needing to be done both to clean up the country and also to shift to a carbon-negative culture, Canada was slipping in its commitments at home to fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The coalition national government has proposed a way of dealing with this “wicked” problem: At age 18, whether students have officially completed their high school education or not, every person (without exception or exemption) is required to enroll in National Service Canada (NSC) for two years. Their training and work for these two years of national service would be determined by the government; they would be given room and board, a clothing allowance, and a small amount of money for personal use. Some could opt for service in the Canadian Armed Forces if they chose. All students would be deployed to regions other than the one that was their registered home address.
At the end of these two years, they would be given two further years of free post-secondary education (university or college), in an area dependent upon the national and regional needs identified in the Canadian Employment Index, according to their aptitude. Room, board, tuition, books, and a small allowance for personal use would be provided. They would be required to take a job in their sector, for which they would be paid a wage at the industry scale, for a further two years, to complete their National Service Canada requirements.
This would mean that every young person would have a better appreciation of the value of Canadian citizenship, a knowledge of a different part of the country, have spent two years working for the benefit of their society, received an education that was useful for employment, and basic work experience – without incurring a dime of student debt – all by the age of 24.
It would guarantee universal access to post-secondary education for all Canadians, regardless of their socio-economic standing. It would mobilize young Canadians to make necessary contributions to education and work which was in the national interest when the world is sliding further into the effects of the growing climate crisis.
Anyone who avoided this service by leaving the country would automatically forfeit their Canadian citizenship and on return, would face a minimum six-year prison sentence, to be spent doing community service, at the end of which they would be allowed to be a permanent resident, but never a citizen.
Your task (as an objective ethics advisory panel) is to provide only objective information to support a balanced ethical assessment of this proposed program, and objective information to support any recommendations on whether or not it should be implemented, giving good reasons for your conclusions that also take into consideration the “wicked problem” it is intended to address. The backgrounder paper should only provide objective information from 3-5 resources, not the assessment of the case or any recommendations for the case.
(Feel free to consider the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, if that helps!)
