So, late yesterday, Premier Sith Smith blinked on her ban of 2SLGBTQ books from schools. I have opinions. This follows on the heels of the Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) publishing a rather lengthy list of books that would have to be banned based on the province's guidelines. Of course, Premier Smith got upset that not only did the book include 2SLGBTQ titles, but also included Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" (among others). Clearly, she says, the school boards didn't understand the intent of the Government's guidelines.
Here's the thing - it was transparently obvious from the day that Minister Nicolaides first announced that the UCP was going to "do something about the scourge of inappropriate books in school libraries". How do we know this? Well - it's pretty simple - all four of the books the UCP put forth as examples just happen to be graphic novels written by - and for - 2SLGBTQ audiences. These aren't books meant for elementary school readers, either - in spite of the vague insinuations the government made that "young children could get their hands on these". This was always about banning 2SLGBTQ topics from the classroom.
The actual language of the policy was sweepingly broad - to such an extent that it would end up effectively being a ban on school libraries having any novels that address the complexities of being human. I would say that's a surprise, but it really isn't - the people pushing these bans make the most prudish of stereotypical Victorian England seem positively liberal. I have no doubt they would like to see any sex in literature banned as being "obscene".
The blunt reality here is that short of writing a policy here that explicitly targets 2SLGBTQ literature, there is no way the government can do what they set out to do. The goal was at the outset to ban 2SLGBTQ people from representation in schools - full stop.
Danielle Smith can stand up and say that this was "vicious compliance" on the part of the EPSB all she wants - all she is doing is confirming what so many in the 2SLGBTQ community said in May: this is nothing more than a ban on 2SLGBTQ representation. In fact, her protestation that somehow the school boards weren't understanding the guidelines is confirmation of that very point. The government was hoping that teachers and school boards would quietly comply with the unstated portion of the policy, and then got upset when the boards didn't do that.
Let me be abundantly clear - book bans are a stupid idea in the first place. The blunt reality in today's world is that kids have access to stuff on the internet that makes a few "sex scenes" in a book look pretty tame. This has always been why we hire librarians to curate the libraries and guide students towards material that is appropriate for them. Yes, I know the UCP has cut education funding to the point that we have nowhere near enough librarians - that doesn't make the government's policy valid.
Decades ago, when I was in grade 2 or so, I ran out of books in the "little kids" section of the school library - there simply wasn't anything in there that I wanted to read - and I was reading much more "complicated" stuff at home. I wandered into the rest of the library looking for a book I wanted to read, only to find the librarian shooing me back to where "I was supposed to be". I told my mother about this when I got home, and it took her calling the school and saying "let me read whatever I want". Nobody was upset about this, and the librarian was acting quite appropriately. I was a very advanced reader, and had been reading way beyond "normal" for grade 1-3 for years - it was never a big deal.
If the government wants to worry about "age appropriate" books, it needs to recognize that different readers develop at different rates. What's appropriate for one reader is completely inappropriate for another. This is why we need librarians who actively assist students with finding material that is appropriate. Banning material because it makes a lobby group uncomfortable is the wrong answer to the issue.
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