Edmonton’s public school board is yanking more than 200 books from its library shelves this year — including literary classics such as Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid's Tale" — to comply with provincial directive on banning books containing inappropriate sexual content.
The list of books to be removed was leaked and widely shared online Thursday, and the school division verified the list Friday.
Public School Board chair Julie Kusiek, in a statement, says anyone unhappy with the move should contact Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides.
"Division staff worked over the summer to ensure that only books that directly met the criteria in the ministerial order were added to the division’s removal list," the statement says.
The result, she said, is "several excellent books will be removed from our shelves this fall."
Kusiek said trustees have already heard concerns from families about the list of books, and trustees share their concerns.
"We encourage anyone who has a concern about a book being removed, or the criteria for book removal set out in the ministerial order, to contact the Minister of Education and Childcare directly,” she wrote.
In a response, Nicolaides said his office is reviewing the Edmonton public board list and has asked the division to clarify why the books on it have been chosen for removal.
"We will work with them to ensure the standards are accurately implemented," he said.
He added Alberta Education plans to work with all school boards to ensure the policy is implemented appropriately, "with the intent of ensuring young kids are not exposed to sexually explicit books.”
Edmonton Public's list of books — the first such look into the policy's effect in schools — also includes Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," and books by authors like Alice Munro and Ayn Rand.
Dozens of additional books will also be made inaccessible to students in kindergarten through Grade 9, including George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
Nicolaides, speaking in Calgary, wouldn't say if he was surprised by any of the titles on Edmonton Public's list.
"I do have some questions about how some of these titles were selected, and I'll be talking more with Edmonton Public," he said Friday.
The school division, in an email, says the list isn't complete and further titles are expected to be added.
Nicolaides has directed schools to remove books with sexually explicit content from shelves by the end of September. They must also have in place by the new year clear policies on how the new directive will be maintained.
The rules, contained in a ministerial order signed by Nicolaides last month, ban books with explicit sexual content for students in all grades. Those in Grade 10 and over may have access to books containing what the province deems to be non-explicit sexual content.
The rules were announced by Nicolaides after he said officials found four graphic novels with explicit sexual content in school libraries.
"This is simply about ensuring young students are not exposed to content depicting oral sex, child molestation or other very inappropriate content," Nicolaides said last month.
Critics have accused Nicolaides of overstepping his mandate while pandering to the social conservative wing of the governing United Conservative Party.
Howard Sapers, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said he was disappointed by the division's list and concerned about the path the province is going down.
"Let's just think about what the loss is to students and to their community when students don't get exposed to a variety of thought and expression," said Sapers, who also served two terms as a member of Alberta's legislature.
"It's important to individual growth, but it's also important to the kind of society we want to live in."
Earlier this month, Saper's organization and Nicolaides had a public spat over the policy, after an opinion column the association published said the government was engaging in "textbook censorship," to which the minister said the association was pushing a "false narrative."
The minister's office also took issue with Sapers writing that books like "The Handmaid's Tale" would fall victim to the policy. Nicolaides' office said at the time that such a choice didn't align with the intent of the policy, which school boards were expected to uphold.
Sapers says he "took no joy" in seeing his prediction come true.
"There is absolutely a need to be vigilant about what young minds are exposed to, to make sure that it's not harmful," he said.
"But when you have a policy that is just so over-broad that this is the result, then it's hard to accept the government at its word that it did not intend to see large-scale book banning."
The move comes as students head back to school for the new year, including 115,000 across more than 200 schools in the Edmonton public system. On top of that, talks aimed at averting a potential provincewide strike by some 51,000 teachers have hit the ditch.
Opposition NDP education critic Amanda Chapman said the government's priorities are wrong, and the province should be more focused on heading off a strike.
"Instead, they’ve set their sights on keeping the works of prolific Canadian authors like Margaret Atwood out of the classroom,” Chapman says in a statement.
Public Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
