Alberta’s Real Disgrace Is Not Banning Atwood & Huxley (Bad Though That Is): It Is Something Far Worse

Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides is responsible for arguably the largest ban of school library books in Canadian history. The first Alberta school board to apply his Ministerial Order has had to ban 226 of currently-held books from all its schools because they contained passages with “explicit sexual content” as defined by the Minister’s Order. They also had to ban an additional 60 books because they contained “non-explicit sexual content” which the Minister’s Order prohibits in schools with students below Grade 10. [The Edmonton Public School Board’s list of the 286 banned books is available to the end of this article.]

Outrage boiled over when it became clear that some of the world’s and Canada’s best books were among those that violated the Minister’s Order. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith accused the school board of “vicious compliance” despite the fact that it simply did as directed by the Minister’s Order defining the criteria for identifying books to be banned from every school library: 

“The school authority must not select for inclusion in a school library, or make available to any children or students in a school library, materials containing explicit sexual content.”

His Order continued:

“The school authority must not permit any children, or any students enrolled in a grade or level below grade 10, to access school library materials containing non-explicit sexual content.” 

Banning Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Aldoux Huxley’s Brave New World, Judy Blume’s Forever, and other equally esteemed books because there is at least one sexually explicit passage within them became the focus of widespread anger and ridicule, including mine in last week’s post. 

But that is not the central problem with the Government’s action, and to focus on the banning of famous books primarily diverts attention from the real harm – the Minister’s Order itself.

Educators and librarians in school boards across Alberta (and across Canada) choose books for their school libraries based on the educational and personal needs and interests of their students, guided by board material selection policy, such as that of the Medicine Hat (AB) Public School Division’s “Guidelines for Acquisition of New Materials”:

1. To provide materials in a variety of formats that will enrich and support the curriculum and the personal needs of the students, taking into consideration their varied interests, abilities, and learning styles;

2. To provide materials for the enjoyment and creative use of leisure;

3. To provide materials with differing viewpoints so that students may develop the practice of critical analysis;

4. To provide materials which are representative of many religious, ethnic and cultural groups to depict our multi-cultural heritage;

5. To select materials of high quality and to ensure a comprehensive learning resource collection appropriate to the students;

6. To place a priority on the selection of Canadian resources;

7. To ensure commercially-sponsored materials are as free as practical from advertising which is excessive, obtrusive, or objectionable;

8. To provide technologies for creating, learning and sharing.

In other words, the library is to contain material for a variety of important reasons and for a variety of different student interests and needs.

The Education Minister’s Order undermines all of this. It requires removal of a book, however meritorious and whatever needs it serves, if it has a single passage deemed to be “explicit” sexual content or “non-explicit” sexual content.  The Order is the result of active lobbying by several right-wing parents’ rights organization like Action4Canada and Parents for Choice in Education who want their views and their beliefs imposed on all students in Alberta.

As Action4Canada posted on its website immediately after Minister Nicolaides issued his order:

Action4Canada is pleased to announce A MASSIVE WIN in Alberta against the pornographic books! Most importantly, this is a victory for our precious children. PRAISE GOD!

Thank you to the Alberta Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, for meeting with Action4Canada’s team, responding to our concerns and acknowledging the evidence of sexually explicit materials in Alberta schools. It’s a positive step toward restoring morality and common sense in education. [emphasis in the original]

Public education in a democracy is oriented to the diversity of its community and is not to be a tool for one segment of the community to impose its ideology on all others. School libraries and learning commons are those places within schools where this is especially important. They are a resource centre for all students to encounter materials from different viewpoints and addressing their different interests and needs so to help them develop critical thinking essential to their present and future lives as learners, family members, community members, workers, and citizens in a democracy.

Difficult decisions about what material to include within the library given the age of the students, the diversity of their interests and needs, and the resources available to the school is a complex and difficult task best undertaken by professional educators and librarians, not by politicians trying to win favour with their base or divert the public’s attention from embarrassing scandals.

Yet, that is what is happening in Alberta and that is what has to be opposed most strongly. While the removal of acclaimed books is outrageous, the removal of 250 other titles is an even bigger problem since, arguably, all were appropriately in Edmonton school libraries – primarily high school libraries. Despite claims by the Minister and his supporters to the contrary, there has been no clear evidence that the young adult novels he decried at the beginning of his move to censorship were in any elementary school libraries in the province, and, if there were libraries where they had been included by mistake, every school board or division already has straightforward processes for correcting such errors. Ministerial censorship is taking a wrecking ball to Alberta’s school system when simply drawing the error to the attention of a school official would have quickly resolved the matter if an error had occurred.

A by-product of heavy-handed censorship is often, as in this case, the removal of material that reflects the lives of marginalized peoples. My colleague, Danielle MacKinlay, a member of the Centre for Free Expression’s Working Group on Intellectual Freedom and a community librarian at the Nova Scotia Community College, analyzed the 226 books removed from the Edmonton Public School libraries according to the Minister’s Order and found that 50.2% of them were either focused on LGBTQ+ issues or in which LGBTQ+ content was a part of the story.

A similar analysis showed that much of the material for young adults that was removed dealt with many difficult issues facing teenagers today -- self-doubt, consent, sexual assault, suicidal feelings, gender identity, community violence, and family violence – including the four books that Minister Nicolaides used to set the stage for his subsequent order – all award-winning young-adult books: 

• Craig Thompson’s Blankets which has been translated into more than 20 languages and which The Guardian Weekly review described as “One of the best graphic novels of all time…a touching, passionate account of growing up” and Time Magazine described as “a great American novel”;
• Alison Bechdel’s Fun House which has been translated into 20 languages, was a finalist for the 2006 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award and was described by the Library Journal as “One of the best graphic memoirs to date”;
• Mike Curato’s Flamer which, in a starred review, the School Library Journal wrote, “Curato has created a beautiful story of a teen who must decide if he will force himself into the mold of what he thinks a ‘normal’ boy is, or if he can allow himself to live life on his own terms. An essential book that shows readers that they are never alone in their struggles”; and
• Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer which the San Francisco Book Review wrote:
  “Regardless of who you are or how you identify, this graphic novel will speak to you... Throughout this intensely honest and poignant memoir, Maia struggles with things like fitting in as a homeschooled kid, being terrified of puberty, and struggling to ask people to use is preferred pronouns ... Maia Kobabe tells is story with such skill, beauty, and feeling that you won’t be able to put it down or resist its magnetic emotional pull.”

There is considerable research showing that access to diverse, inclusive school library collections improves literacy, empathy, and overall student wellbeing. The loss of these resources has measurable educational consequences.

The real harm of the Minister’s censorship order is that books, primarily for young adults, chosen by educators and librarians to have a diverse school library that meets students’ various interests and needs have been removed to satisfy the moral and ideological beliefs of part of the Government’s political base. Whether done by this government or a government with different ideological views, political censorship of school libraries’ collections harms students and schools.

As well, the Minister's directive, and the school boards' willing compliance, normalizes censorship that threatens the foundation of democracy which is about a vibrant public discourse about what is legitimate and what is illegitimate in society. When the majority attempts to shut down that discourse through censorship, we start moving from democracy to authoritarianism.

Click here to see the full list of books removed from Edmonton Public School Libraries.