On Monday, the Alberta government fulfilled its promise to modify the ban on school books, stating that written descriptions of sex are now acceptable, but images and illustrations of sex are not. According to Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, the government’s primary concern had always been visual representations. When asked by reporters why the government wasn’t concerned with written descriptions of explicit sexual material, he said, “An image can be understood and conveyed at any grade level with any degree of comprehension.
“Whereas, of course, vocabulary and understanding progresses and develops throughout the school year.”
And he said the revised order ensures that literary classics, some of which include sexual content, will stay on school library shelves.
To comply with the initial ministerial order issued in July, Edmonton’s public school board compiled a list of more than 200 titles it planned to remove from schools. Among these titles were classics like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Banning classics in Alberta drew international attention. The government’s initial policy had put a number of famous books on the chopping block, with Edmonton Public also listing Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as titles that would need to be stripped from libraries in order to comply with directives to limit explicit sexual content. It even led Atwood herself to mock Premier Danielle Smith and her government by crafting a short story for social media about a boy and girl who lived happily ever after Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander series and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones novels Martin, which were both made into award-winning television series, were also on the EPSB list. The previous week, Smith accused the Edmonton public board of deliberately misinterpreting the government’s intent and being excessive with the books it planned to remove from shelves. At the time, Smith stated that the government was primarily concerned about illustrations and images with explicit sexual content and promised a revised ministerial order to clarify that. From the beginning, the government has connected the regulations to four graphic novels that officials discovered in school libraries and contained explicit sexually explicit images.
Alberta revises school book ban policy to focus on sexual images
