By the book: Alberta schools pull at least 160 titles from shelves to meet provincial order
CBC
Alberta school divisions complying with a provincial order have removed dozens of graphic novels from their shelves, from illustrated versions of literary classics to coming-of-age memoirs and dramatic retellings of mythology, access to information request results show.
Now boxed away in storage in some Edmonton and Calgary-area schools are graphic novel versions of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984 — both dystopian stories about government control.
Staff at every Alberta school had to review their library and classroom collections last fall when Alberta’s education minister ordered schools to remove any material containing any explicit depiction of a sexual act out of student access.
Most Alberta school divisions at first refused to reveal which materials staff had removed to comply with provincial rules.
Access to information requests filed separately by CBC News and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression (CFE) show that schools removed at least 166 titles, most of them graphic novels, from shelves.
A provincial Education ministry spokesperson told CBC the order protects kids from graphic imagery.
CFE director James Turk says the blanket restrictions on material available to all students, from as young as four to as old as 19 in Alberta, falsely assumes teenagers haven’t been exposed to graphic imagery on their cellphones or through other mediums.
“It's a very puritanical way of dealing with young people and of infantilizing them,” Turk said in an interview. “These are real issues in the lives of most 13, 14, 15 year-olds. And it's better they're reading about and getting some sense of it.”
In January, CBC News filed six access to information requests — one to the provincial Ministry of Education, and one to each of the province’s five most populous school boards. The request asked for all information schools sent to the province to fulfil the ministerial order.
The province had demanded records last October from all provincially funded authorities, including public, Catholic, francophone, independent and charter schools.
Alberta Education has not yet provided any records in response to the access request, saying it has to consult with affected third parties first.
Edmonton Public, Edmonton Catholic, Rocky View schools and the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) provided lists. Calgary Catholic Schools says it did not remove any material.
In response to follow-up questions, school divisions said none of the material removed was found in schools that exclusively house elementary-age students.
Although many titles appeared on multiple lists, some divisions made conflicting judgment calls.
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