Introduction

In contemporary capitalistic societies, a key imperative seems to be digitalization. Digitalization is a discourse and megatrend that affect all levels of societal and social acting and changes the lives of us all (Lindgren et al. 2019; Talsi and Tuuva-Hongisto 2009). Digitalization as a term has many meanings. The Cambridge Dictionary (2022), for example, defines digitalization as 'using or relating digital signals and computer technology' or presenting information in terms of numbers' (0 and 1), which, however, refers more to digitization than digitalization more widely. In this article, we consider digitalization concretely and from the perspective of individuals who use—and are forced to use—digital services and supply. Digitalization, under this scrutiny, means changes in many fields of life, e.g., in education where teaching and learning practices are moving from personal encounters to more distant and algorithm-based ways to operate. We also define digitalization as a discursive process in which almost no alternative ways to be and do are presented.

Digitalization as a megatrend puts into practice the revolution of the information age and network society that started some decades ago as a global project (cf. Castells 1996). Information technology has risen as a huge societal force: digitalization is now a project that advances inevitably and is used as an argument for the need for other structural societal to change (Stanković et al. 2021). This imperative is pushed forward with methods and promises that critical discussions have named sociotechnological and digital imaginaries (Kuusipalo and Alastalo 2019; Tuuva-Hongisto et al. 2021). Societal imaginaries, in this sense, are not fairy tales or political nonsense but represent policy-level ideologies and discourses: desired framing of reforms. Societal imaginaries are 'collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures' (Jasanoff and Kim 2015). However, changing discursive programs into societal implementations and lived realities is more difficult than promised and imagined.

In this article, we look at digitalization of education as one manifestation of sociotechnological imaginaries. We take a stance towards digitalization as a developmental phase of technocapitalism (Feenberg 1991; Suarez-Villa 2009) as, for example, the European Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan 2021–2027 (European Commission 2021) mentions the massive economic value of the digitalization of education. The new Action Plan has been created to outline the Commission’s vision for ‘high quality, inclusive and accessible digital education in Europe’. One of its overall objectives is to make ‘education fit for the digital age’. The objectives are ratified with two strategic priorities that are ‘development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem’ and the enhancement of ‘digital skills and competences for the digital transformation’ (see Stanković et al. 2021).

The article takes part in the contemporary discussions of postdigitalism where digitalization is neither ignored nor taken as a self-evident and questioned reality per se, but reflected with connections to economic rationality, commodification, or ‘metrification’ of educational aims (e.g., Knox 2019: 357). We tie our analysis with a postdigital paradigm that considers the consequences of the digital age and pays attention to the needs of a humanistic perspective (e.g., Hayes 2021). One critical stimulus for this article is the wide technological optimism that seems to cover European learning societies regulated by organizations like the EU and OECD. Within this optimism, digital education is understood as a self-evident mechanism to reach both economic progress and educational ideals at the same time (cf. Anders 1956/1979; Jokisaari 2010). In strategic visions and political declarations, digitalization is not explained or argued as a choice but presented as self-evidence in justifying itself. Within this notion, we witness, for example, Michel Foucault’s (1969/1972) idea about what the attribute ‘discursive’ means: a discourse is a truth that legitimates itself without any need to be kept up with other means. Discursive words, when enunciated from a powerful position, have practical implications as they begin to guide policies, practical activities, and life-course choices of ‘all’ (see Stanković et al. 2021).

The Foucaultian (1969/1972) way to define discourse is also paying attention to the fact that large discursive ‘dos and don’ts’ are usually not signed just by anyone recognizable and remain on a sufficiently abstract level. Articulated programs and visions of digital education are published by governments, ministries, trade unions, and training organizations or centers. The strongest and loudest discourse is not produced by grassroots-level pedagogists but by economists, economically oriented politicians, and industries that produce digital infrastructure. One facet that usually remains hidden as a beneficiary in the declarations of digitalization is those who do business with and from it.

We approach the topic of this article via the case of Serbia: a society that stands on a threshold of digitalization which makes it analytically interesting within the theme. Historical changes and turbulence in Serbia have caused ongoing societal instability, as well as the manifoldness and variety of national, political, and sociocultural identities (Orpana 2014: 11). Currently, Serbia’s aspirations towards EU membership have led to a need for coherent definitions of Serbian nationality and state identity, as well as policies that reflect them. To prove that their educational systems and practices are ‘modern’, the societies need to appear convincingly digitized. In its formal manifestation, Serbia presents itself as a country aspiring for modernization and integration into the European community, and changes in the educational system are one of the main fruits of this effort. All this means that the digitalization of education gets paid a lot of state-level attention (Senić Ružić 2021). There is another argument for choosing Serbia as a contextual case for our analysis as well: from national statistics, as well as from European comparisons, we know that Serbia still suffers from visible educational inequality and exclusion, especially when we look at marginalized minorities influenced by their social status and cultural specificities (Milanković et al. 2015).

We approach the digitalization of education with references to the rationality and reason of technology and technocapitalism. We trace this starting point back as far as György Lukács’ (1968/1971) and his predecessors’ presentations about the commodification of human relationships, interaction, and growing up—but move from their class- and labor-centered theories towards principles of education. The scrutiny, however, is empirically focused: the article is based on data collected from Serbian educational authorities and educational realities. Educational equality/inequality form one string of the analysis, as it appears to be a focal argument in the digital optimism that emphasizes empowerment. However, it seems to outdo how the technologization of education can make educational relationships empty of reciprocal connections that still are seen as necessary conditions for positive human development (e.g., Freire 1970; hooks 2003).

Educational Policy as a Means for Societal Change: Serbia and Imaginaries of Digitalization

Education as a social, cognitive, and dialectic activity (see Popkewitz 2008: 83) is used as a means of achieving multiple ambitions. Changes in educational policy are linked to larger policy reforms and education always has state-level functions: political reforms form education, and vice versa. From the last two decades of the twentieth century, education policy in Europe has been explicitly shifting to a direction that takes into consideration how education can be used in advancing economic growth. This converging development in policies across countries has been linked to the growing influence and interests of the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Kivirauma et al. 2009: 147; Lingard 2021: 39). Behind all these policies, a critical analyst can recognize the aspirations of the producers of digital equipment and infra as well (Stanković et al. 2021). Digitalization does not only create economy but also leans on it and is legitimized by it as it produces great added value to those who own means of production, in the classical Marxian sense (1867). Apart from some reflections of postdigitalization theories (e.g., Knox 2019: 363), this perspective is discussed infrequently.

Besides the above perspective, the digitalization of education offers lenses through which borders, boundaries, and gaps between formal educational policies and concrete educational realities can be analyzed. Serbia, as a ‘newcomer’ of digitalization, is a fascinating scene here because the discussion around the topic is intensive, discursively goal-directed, and covered by societal and educational imaginaries. Historically, Serbian educational policy and practices have led to many problems. The educational reality has been exclusive and preserved the existence of large non-educated and oppressed demographic groups. Serbia now has a law for basic education where many improvements are put under scrutiny. The digitalization of education has been cited as one main part of these improvements and as a solver of the problems of demographic educational inequality, for example.

Serbia has not been alone in its campaigning. Since 2003, the EU has donated more than €100 million to reform the education sector at all levels, being Serbia's main partner when it comes to developing new curricula, financing new school equipment, and introducing new standards for education. EU support for Serbia aims to harmonize its educational system with the standards, policies and practices of EU countries and is intended for (1) capacity building of educational institutions and employees in education, (2) harmonization of education systems with labor market needs through the development of qualifications systems, (3) introduction of innovative and inclusive teaching practices, and (4) equipping schools with modern teaching aids (e.g., Senić Ružić 2021). All these intentions are connected by optimistic policies of digitalization that are believed to change educational imaginaries into lived educational realities.

The reforms of schooling and education as technological renewals remain narrow from the perspective of educational philosophy and pedagogic action. When we consider even the contemporary philosophy of education, there is no focus on technology; rather we face such concepts as pedagogical ethics, moral regulation, trustfulness, intimateness, and interactive relationships, and increases of solidarity, empathy, and esthetic capability (Biesta 2013). Further, if we ask actual pedagogists, basic humanistic capabilities and orientations, as well as general competences called academic skills, are still mentioned as important aims of education. Learning to think, question, discuss, and argue, as well as growing up into literacy, are seen as multilevel capabilities and capacities to be reached (cf. Freire 1970; Piattoeva and Saari 2020). Even handicraft with letters, numbers, and papers as a haptic interaction between a text and its reader or writer is still seen as an action that has a constitutive role in learning and cognitive development and can be a significant building block in language development (Mangen and Velay 2010).

Classically, education has been presented as a field of many contradictions and paradoxes. One contemporary contradiction is a combination of educational policies (educational equality), educational philosophy (pedagogical ethics), and a tendency called techno-optimism (technologization of education) (Piattoeva and Saari 2020). Digitalization has a lot to do with technological rationality and technocapitalism with their discourses, where digitechnical skills are overcoming both ethical, academic, and pedagogical aspirations of education (Knox 2019: 358). In the following sections, we look at what forms this contradiction takes—if it does—in the empirical context of our scrutiny.

Case Scrutiny as an Approach: Confronting Imaginaries and Realities

In this article, we follow the logic of case analysis in exploring what kinds of meanings are given to digitalization as a formal educational reform—and how these relate to the political and pedagogical ‘strings’ of education, as well as to an unequal pedagogical reality. The research task is scrutinized via the case of Serbia through empirical data sets. In this process, we loosely follow Robert E. Stake’s (1995, 2003) idea of an instrumental case study, where the case has been approached to form a wider understanding of phenomena and their contexts. Serbia has been chosen as a case society because of its intensive educational reforms and discussions in promoting them.

The main data set for this analysis consists of policy makers’ answers to a qualitative questionnaire where information was collected concerning the following themes: the phases of the national reform of education and schooling, governmental goals for the process, and professional perceptions of digital education based on the informants’ working positions. A questionnaire with open-ended questions was sent to 19 state officials, digital agencies, schoolteachers, and NGO actors working with issues of digital education, in spring 2021. In Serbia, both INGOs and NGOs are important conversationalists and praxis contributors (e.g., educators and trainers) in the efforts of digitalization and digitization.

We received seven responses to our questionnaire. The informants represented universities, high schools, ministry-level digitization programs and foundations. In fall 2021, two NGO actors who work closely with the national curriculum developers were also interviewed online. The interview concentrated on the same issues as the qualitative questionnaire. The number of informants may be small but more important is that they all held powerful positions in relation to educational reform and thus, produced concordant content when discussing the topic. After all, formal discourse is restricted and cannot be presented randomly and carelessly.

This data was analyzed with dialogic thematic analysis (Koski 2011). Expressions that, according to the hermeneutic epistemology (Gadamer 1979; Sivenius and Armila 2021), have been interpreted as meaningful were picked apart to form a more exact and focused data corpus. After this deconstruction of the data, a reconstruction was done where more abstract clusters of meanings were constructed under a defining umbrella concept developed inductively from the data. These conceptualizations, then, were put into a dialogue with the critical social theory of commodification (Lukács 1968/1971), as well as with other selected literature about the topic. However, it is important to note that the critical viewpoint is not directed towards our informants as individual actors but towards the discursive coercion of technocapitalism that we all tightly live in.

The dimension of lived educational reality was scrutinized via the educational possibilities of two extremely different demographic groups in Serbia as examples of it. As the global pandemic prevented observations in real-life research fields, we traced notions of educational stratification from Serbian webpages concerning the education of groups of people with different socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds. These notions were then posed against each other in a describing way and mirrored with the imaginary-level meanings analyzed in the first phase of the study. To be capable of contextualizing our data, we have familiarized ourselves with the Serbian discussion around educational policies, digitalization, educational legislation, and state level curricula (e.g., UNESCO 2021).

More widely, the ‘case’ of this analysis represents the current Zeitgeist within which digitalization is suggested as a solver of many social problems. In the textual limitations of one article, only a few dimensions of the case can be scrutinized. After all, a case always talks about something else than just itself (Stake 1995; 2003). In this article, the toughness of educational inequality and the difficulties in getting rid of it if other forms of equality are not paid attention to are covered. The general global techno-optimism fed by technocapitalism is also talked about (e.g., Suarez-Villa 2009).

Our empirical analysis is presented in two sections. Firstly, we present a thematic analysis of meanings given to digitalization as part of the educational reform by Serbian professionals. This analysis gives light to one dimension of our case: to the level of imaginaries produced by official discourse. Our second theme looks at the stratified educational reality—which shows concretely the gap between educational imaginaries and educational realities and problematizes the power of digitalization in bridging the gap. Quotations from the data are distinguished from other text with italics or indentations, and our compactions in presenting results are marked in bold. The questionnaire data was collected in Serbian (and translated into English by a Serbian colleague), and the interview data was collected in English. Any possible mistakes in quotations are original; we did not change people’s expressions.

Imagining the Digitalization of Education

In our data gathered from state authorities and educational professionals, the digitalization of education is given an umbrella meaning of sociocultural and socioeconomic modernization: digitalization is defined as a huge reform and a promise of a new sociocultural, as well as socioeconomic, capital for society. Within this theme, the planned trends in education are seen as something fundamentally radical that promotes general and shared societal know-how: wide acquisition of information, currently required civil capabilities, as well as exact digital skills and civic manners for ‘all’. The informants used the term 'modernization' that is believed to separate the societal present and future from the past. Sociocultural and socioeconomic modernization form a dominant category of meanings that covers all other meanings and is argued with the sub-categories presented below. This strong and non-questioned imaginary with a self-evident belief in technology as an improving force pays no attention to criticism directed towards the technologization of going to school (cf. Jandrić 2021; Teräs et al. 2020; Piattoeva and Saari 2020).

Further, the informants of this analysis seem to think there is a rush and a need for a carpe diem—there is a worry about different rhythms of digitalization between Serbia and ‘others’. The data consists of continuing references that argue for digitalization and digitization as processes where something that already exists elsewhere should be brought into a new, waiting and wanting context. In this rush, we can recognize a familiar desire where wider societal turns and benefits are sought and launched via schools and their pupils as a generation with fresh contact to societal changes (Koski 2001; Lingard 2021). The rhetoric of youthfulness, speed, success, and progress are strengthened by discursive references to an opportunity to create a ‘western’ system of education with its emphasis on ‘you’ as a learning individual:

So take this opportunity, you’re this time of change. Open window of opportunity because change in curricula is rare, so you need to wait for the moment when there is the issue of changes. Now change here is on the table. Now push this game in the right way. It’s literally now or never.

[When digitalization in education proceeds] you can step into programming, improve your programming knowledge and skills and be successful in programming competition. As a programming teacher, you can help yourself and your students or make it easier to introduce programming into teaching or extracurricular activities.

The latter quotation shows our informants’ perceptions of the first and foremost new skill: digitization and programming. After this is reached, manifold and even more instrumental content for using digitalization in learning can be found (see also Senić Ružić 2021). Within this practical theme, the contents of learning become defined in terms that lead our interpretations towards commodification: towards learning something technical and measurable and doing it in a technical way. Inside this rhetoric, digitechnical skills overcome both ethical and academic aspirations of education (cf. Biesta 2013). A lot of attention focuses on what people need to know about technology—that is, the forms of competence and understanding they need to use technology effectively and for purposes wanted by society.

This new learning economy (see Jandrić and Hayes 2020; Polanyi 2009) in this welcoming context emphasizes the discursive self-evidence of competition. One instrumental and strategic meaning given to digitalization is constructed by references to market, competitiveness, labor, and economy. Within its educational strategy, Serbia aims to become a serious participant of a trend where the market economy and individual benefits are intertwined in a process of preparing young people for a competitive labor market. This economistic ontology, as well, gives ground to interpretations of digitalization as a process of educational commodification (cf. Lukács 1968/1971); when connected with technocapitalism, learning and pedagogic relationships become externally instrumental, and they can be measured in terms of currency.

The digitalization of education in terms of fundamental change, and imaginaries dealing with it, become realized in our informants’ expressions which we can interpret as reflections of a new pedagogical Zeitgeist that believes in education in a wide sense: in terms of a shared learning society. In our data, the digitalization of education is seen to lead to acquiring knowledge, competence, habits, and skills, especially in the field of life-long learning. In this rhetoric, we can see a shift from technics, competition, and currency towards innovation, stimulation, empowerment, and quality. Within these references with a pedagogically relevant sound, a critical analyst can also interpret a tone of psychocapitalism, where a general ‘must’ is transformed and translated into a desire, competence, and goal of individual actors. Empowerment and emancipation have an implicit but regulated direction as a means of the New Public Management in education that is guided transnationally, as noted by our informants (Gunter et al. 2016). In this context, the educational divide gets the name ‘digital divide’.

Modernization of education is not about education as an amount of knowledge, it’s about the way people are educated, brings new level of skills for teachers and students. ... In cooperation between European Union as a donor and UNICEF who deals with the children, actually, want to help the digital divide, which is big part of our project, that they helped with some donations in computers, and they need to spread it over the most part in poverty areas. Of course, we know that centralization and other stuff can be more involved, so we now want to show if we can.

The informants also brought forth meaning systems that can be translated into the language of educational policies explicitly. These meanings, connected with the digitalization of education, are constructed with conceptualizations of democracy, equality, and inclusion. These promises of digitalization, as well, are referred to in our data as issues that exist elsewhere and can be brought into Serbia digitally: 'Let’s call this process with support from countries with more experience.'

Within this policy theme, democracy remains an undefined and abstract reference, but equality gets more concrete and population-connected content: 'improving the quality, fairness, and relevance of the education system, with special reference to the quality of education in the languages of national minorities'. In this, we can recognize a quite general example of a digital imaginary: a thought that many problems relating to people’s social backgrounds and concrete material circumstances can be tackled in the digital disappearance of time and place (cf. Piattoneva and Saari 2020). This discursive imaginary lies in a belief that physical, material, and social obstacles fade away when information, people, and interaction tangle together in digital networks. In addition, the internal state-level tensions may lighten in these imaginaries where digitalization relates to the harmonization of national-level civilization and welfare. Further, this imaginary draws society towards the ‘west’ with more experience.

Interestingly, educational access gets a twofold meaning in our data: it is convinced that education becomes accessible via digitalization, but also believed that certain minorities can become accessible by the educational system with digital connections. Our discussions with the informants about ways through which, for example, imaginaries of lifelong learning become possible for 'all', include several references to the traditional idea of accessibility—a reference that is familiar from many analyses of digital division (Van Dijk and Hacker 2003: 315–316; Livingstone and Helsper 2007: 672–673): 'There are such poor people in remote areas who still have no access to Internet or computers.' In discussions about accessibility, an interesting turn appears: these kinds of ‘problem people’ are taken as targets of interventions. They must be found, and digital pathways can serve in reaching them. From the functional perspective of technocapitalism, problematic people are unnecessary and outsiders.

In our data, the digitalization of education, when succeeding, is seen as a proof of aspirations that promote Serbian participation in European cooperation more widely (also Senić Ružić 2021). In this, educational reform can be interpreted as a bigger issue than the renewal of national curricula and schooling praxis. If the society is willing to be a seriously taken part of ‘Europeanism’, some rules must be followed. 'We are exceptional of the rule. … This is the only way to make a big step … to actively contribute to this mechanism of European cooperation … as an equal member.' Within this discussion, the idea of internal harmonization widens towards a topic of external and international inclusion—and has, again, a lot to do with the reference of modernization in our data. This posits that, discursively, Serbia is somewhere out, as if ‘the world’ exists outside it: Serbia is aiming to be in line with European and world trends. In this, the traditional imaginary of education that brings outsiders in (cf. Antikainen et al. 2006) is widened from the level of individuals to the level of society. Interestingly, the issue is not only about the formal level of national regulation but is also a question of a new national, digital identity (cf. Senić Ružić 2021) via modernization of education: our children have a chance to transform their image.

The data directed our attention to a special meaning through which the digitalization of education is argued as necessary for Serbia as a state. In the current European discussion, digitalization is taken for granted and other changes are presented as necessary because of its determinism (see Senić Ružić 2021; Stanković et al. 2021). In our interview data, in turn, digitalization is needed inevitably to make a big change, and those who demand it—and are active agencies of educational policy—are more often representatives of NGOs than state institutions or agencies: 'We took the reverse way, uh, the usual way is to write the curricula and then you do and create materials according to, regarding those core areas and we do it the diverse way, we created materials as a showcase, for the subject, informatics, computing and then say to the educational policies.' This is an interesting direction, from 'bottom' to top. Making educational policies from the top down can be a slow political process in which campaigns may arise. Maybe this is one reason—besides the wiggly state level regulation (Segert 2014; Polić-Tögel 2014)—for the atmosphere of also a rush and continuous updating within the perceptions of our informants: 'Informatics and computing you need to learn every day because the technology changes so fast that if you teach, how you teach 20 years ago you were out of date. Uh, thing is so and that is very hard.' However, in this context, it is notable that NGOs form a significant part of digital business in Serbia and can benefit greatly from technological investments (cf. Knox 2019: 363).

To sum up, digitalization for our informants is very much equal to an idea of a fundamental change to which they assign the attribute 'modern'. Digitalization is given a transformative role within a process where education is seen as one key for the society to become European, to be a member of an international community (both formally and informally), and to be internationally competitive with competitive and technologically capable citizens. In these shared references of becoming modern, we can recognize Sheila Jasanoff’s and Sang-Hyun Kim’s (2015) ideas of technological imaginaries as visions of a desirable future. References to competitive labor market can be linked with policies of commodification where even micro-level educational conditions are posed to work for technocapitalism (cf. Suarez-Villa 2009).

The Other Side of the Mirror: Educational Realities in a Digitalizing Society

In this section we look at some concrete examples of Serbian education today and at its stratified nature: the Roma people’s educational exclusion on one hand, and an elite group of digital students on the other. The examples might seem random but are sought and chosen carefully. Stake’s (2003) instructions guided us in paying attention to these targets and to show empirically how educational reforms—digitalization, for example—tend to remain on a level of imaginaries if the profound inequality of people’s living conditions is not taken into consideration.

Within the current political interests, there is a need for Europeans to ‘put aside their differences’ (Borrell 2021). Concretely, and among other issues, this means that to be ‘European’, Serbia must overcome selective human rights, poverty, and illiteracy as well as lack of education (e.g., Jokisalo-Neumann 2014). The Roma population in Serbia (the size of which differs depending on the source from 160,000 to almost 500,000) is included in all three of them. By facing discrimination and poverty, their opportunities and aspirations to obtain education are strained. In Serbia, one still can meet a 16-year-old European Roma teenager who has lived without water and electricity since birth—and who only can be ‘imagined’ to be in an advanced level computer science class, or in a highly developed virtual learning platform. According to UNICEF, which pays a lot of attention to the Serbian situation, ca. 80 percent of Roma children in Serbia start primary school, which is 18% below the national average. By the time Roma children reach upper secondary school age, only 21% of them are enrolled compared to the national average of 89% (Taylor 2022).

This dropout rate says a lot about a serious conflict between the educational system and the Roma people’s everyday opportunities and interests. This demographic equity gap is often interpreted with references to cultural confrontations (cf. Hinton-Smith and Padilla-Carmona 2021), which, in the context of our analysis, can be seen as a form of digital divide as well. This gap that disturbs digital imaginaries has also been recognized by some of our professional informants as an obstacle to the wide realization of modern, digitized learning environments and experiences for ‘the equal all’ in Serbia (cf. Cvejić 2015). Despite this recognition, many oppressive structures creating socioeconomic and sociocultural stratification, leading to educational exclusion, are ignored in our data.

In the contemporary rhetoric of educational reform analyzed here, people who have remained outsiders of digitalization become—maybe by accident—defined as a problem: a kind of ‘useless’ people if the system does not manage to catch them in a desired way. If the modernization of society demands digitally capable citizens, and if citizenship education is leaning on digitalization, those who have no access to education or to digital infra and equipment have no access to the capabilities via which their societal relevance is assessed. In digital imaginaries of the new educational policy in Serbia, digitalization is used as a means for ‘finding’ marginalized people to be included in a societally proper way. This inclusion can be interpreted in terms of educational equality but also as a need for a certain kind of citizenship image by a competitive society.

However, the general poverty of the Roma people in Serbia, which in 2017 was estimated as five times higher than the rest of the population, can keep them completely away from digital educational opportunities (World Bank 2017). The Committee of Roma People and its board have listed some recommendations to improve their situation, starting from early education programs and reaching university level learning contents. In these recommendations, wide attention is not paid to digitalization but to the very basic levels of schooling and everyday inequality—to textbooks, daily meals, schooling transportation, and teaching language. If these issues are not in order, digitalization cannot accomplish much as an equalizing factor. The Committee of Roma people, for example, has gathered Roma NGOs to strengthen their missions and goals in gaining equal living conditions—before and much more than new technologies and digitalization of education. Representatives of this educational reality focus on equality of opportunities as a real starting block for educational reform and development. Those who look at this reality from close by are not discussing innovations, visions, or technological stimulation (or contents) of learning but opportunities and empowerment in a very concrete way and in terms of non-digital studying equipment and language. In recognizing this and to make a difference, a need to see different social conditions and positionalities for postdigital agencies is necessary (Hayes 2021)—at least if we begin to define 'success' in terms of digital capabilities.

Another kind of educational reality becomes visible when we look at another side of Serbian educational reality: at elite private high schools that concentrate on economics and trade and organize their teaching in a totally digitized manner. In this reality, such terms as innovation, currency, success, and competition are encountered again. Today, there are already around 50 private high schools in Serbia. One of the most prestigious among them is the Information Technology High School (ITHS) with its motto: 'Our vision is a school that is constantly adapting to the modern world in which we live.' (2022) In this motto, a crystallized discourse can be seen which can also be recognized in the political- and strategic-level discussions of the state authorities. When ITHS introduces itself, we face the same techno-optimistic imaginaries as in the discussions with our professional informants from a wider societal level: 'With modern, efficient and, above all, interactive teaching, adapted to the needs, abilities, and interests of students, we offer the profile of IT technicians required by modern society.'

ITHS, like many other private high schools, works according to the curriculum verified by the Ministry of Education. All studies are offered and conducted in a digitized way. Besides digital skills, business competences are emphasized as crucial skills of a young citizen, as well as commodificated and instrumental capabilities to step into the labor market (to make big money) whenever there is a recognized need or option to do so. However, a competitive state economy and strong labor market as outcomes of commodified—and digitized—schooling opportunities become realized with and for those who already have financial and sociocultural resources (cf. Jandrić and Hayes 2020). When we analyze the profile of candidate students of ITHS, we see that especially and provably talented youth are welcome, and the organizing of teaching shows how only youth who have access to the most modern digital infra and equipment can conduct the studies. Further, when we look at the high student fees of the institution, we easily see that they are not meant for just anyone. These kinds of educational institutions can be seen as economic environments whose studies are based on material utility and externally rationalized objectification (Sivenius et al. 2018).

Being socioeconomically exclusive, ITHS seems to be a socioculturally exclusive educational institution as well: there are no Roma youth attending this school yet. The exclusion of Roma children from education, of course, has deeper roots and is obvious on every level of the educational system. Within this example, however, we aim to show how the digitalized learning environments have not managed to be available for ‘all’ and how strongly educational divide and digital divide intertwine. In the case of Serbia, they do it in a very visible and concrete way. Digitalization does not bridge but broadens the gap.

Conclusion: A Need for Postdigital Policy and Practice

In Serbia, like in any other western society today, educational policy, as well as teaching aids, teaching capabilities, learning, and studying relate to the megatrend of digitalization and its imaginaries. Serbia has begun the process of modernizing the education sector in line with European trends and coercions. Currently, when we discuss modernization, we also discuss digitalization as an imperative that cannot be overlooked. As a discursive project, digitalization is put forward with promises and imaginaries of, for example, access, equality, and inclusion. All these imaginaries seem to be especially ‘suitable’ and repeated in Serbia, whose minorities have suffered from educational marginalization throughout its long history. Unlike in many other European countries, the promise of social mobility via education in Serbia has been narrow and weak (cf. Antikainen et al. 2006). Now, digitalization is imagined as a tool to make a fundamental change, and such a belief has been adopted from educational reclaims of such international organizations as OECD, for example. These reclaims, however, systematically overtake discussions of digitalization as a phase of technocapitalism and its principles; capitalism is not a societal and economic order that leans on the politics of equality and opportunities of ‘all’. Further, it is not interested in the kind of humanistic philosophy that is often seen as a base for educational ethics.

Still, digitalization as a reform is believed to improve the quality of many things. In our data collected from educational authorities, promises of improvements and terms of harmonization can be recognized on two levels: in the international environment as well as at a national level. The state-level applying to ‘Europeanism’ (e.g., McCormick 2020), as well as the calming of internal tensions when national minorities are taken ‘in’, are intertwined imaginaries connected to digitizing education. However, when we turn the viewpoint from formal programs towards the stratified educational realities, we can identify concrete conditions that digitalization per se cannot solve.

Serbia has a peculiar society and history. National reports talk about frustrated minorities and gaps between people and decision makers (Polić-Tögel 2014). Digitalization as a huge reform hardly solves these problems, and minorities’ positions in education hardly change with digitalization. As shown, elite level high schools with their digital studying possibilities and platforms available only for wealthy students meet the professional level meanings of digitalization and are already inside processes and realities—that are just ‘imagined’ in state-level strategies and programs. The sociocultural and socioeconomic gaps between population groups are still extremely large in many relations.

The sociology of schooling has shown how education—despite its many equality principles—serves as a means for societal stratification, as one unintended (or at least often hidden) consequence of it. The digitalization of education brings another new twist into the mechanisms of this stratification and its analytical tracing. In this article, we have paid attention to a group and a case with hardly any access to education, but tendencies of excluding stratification and symbolic violence can also be seen in environments and differences that are not so obvious. In fact, digitalization reveals many prevailing hierarchies and strengthens them if this unintended twist is not recognized. The empirical target and context of this article has been Balkan, but the same kinds of educational divides strengthened by digitalization can probably be recognized everywhere.

If digital imaginaries are blindly followed, they benefit those who are already privileged. In future programs, strategies, and analyses of digital education, this dimension should be taken into consideration more than today. The lived educational policies—educational realities and concrete possibilities—of people with different socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds should be looked at first, and only after a profound understanding of them, promises to tackle inequalities can be made. If we accept the principle that education is a human right, and that equal access to education with an ethical quality is something that should be advanced, there is a lot of empirical evidence for a need to look critically at digitalization as the main (and almost only) part of educational reforms. Aims of democracy and empowerment in educational discourse seem, and are, ethical but if they are transformed as tools for digitized psychocapitalism, they begin to serve other ‘masters’ than intended. In this tendency, technology can commodificate education and invite only those with technological resources, capabilities, and aspirations. Those who call for more personal educational relationships and equality of opportunities are at a risk of becoming silenced. In discussions about digitizing education, there seems to be a call for pedagogical theories of postdigitalism (Knox 2019: 359) where human and societal conditions are considered when making educational prospects.