BARRHEAD – Brett Cooper, superintendent of the Pembina Hills School Division, provided his comments on the provincial government announced they will be launching a survey on school library materials on June 6.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said Monday (May 26) there are sexual acts depicted in books in some school libraries and provincial standards need to be put into place.
“My number one priority in all of this content monitoring is that all of our students have a voice and have an identity in books and stories,” said Cooper.
“One of my concerns with the survey is the potential for some students' voices to be silenced by an overreaction to content that is informative but harmless.”
Cooper went on to say there is no disagreement that the examples shared by the government are inappropriate. He suggested those books be taken off the shelves of libraries.
But he cautioned against censoring students that struggle to find an identity in their most vulnerable stages of development.
Pembina Hills School Division board chair David Truckey agreed with Cooper’s comments.
Nicolaides’s goal is to have school boards have a policy in place regarding school library materials.
He said public libraries located in schools would not be affected by the initiative.
The books highlighted were Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato.
These four graphic novels include LGBTQ characters and feature content that are sexually explicit, Nicolaides said.
