The Alberta Government has revised its controversial book ban ministerial order after a public uproar last week…
It’s only the second week of school, but the Alberta Government has already resubmitted its latest assignment. Yesterday, on World Literacy Day, the government shared its updated ministerial order regarding its book ban. The revision comes after widespread criticism of a leaked book list from the Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) that suggested the removal of over 220 titles. This included classics like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
“We’re not interested in seeing a new book list published every single day that is purposely misunderstanding what it is we’re trying to do,” premier Danielle Smith said last week as to why she was pausing the order.
The updated guidelines are meant to clarify which books can stay and which have to go by early January.
What are the new guidelines in the ministerial order?
Under the revised order, books containing explicit images of sexual acts will need to be removed from school shelves. “We want to ensure that material that has extremely graphic and explicit visual depictions of sexual activities [is] not made available at school libraries,” Alberta’s minister of education and childcare Demetrios Nicolaides said yesterday.
The government defines “visual depiction” to include drawings, paintings, illustrations, photographs, digital images and video files. However, any content containing visual depictions of bodies in a non-sexualized nature, such as anatomy books, are exempt.
The previous guidelines included books with written descriptions of sexual acts. This stipulation is what led to the over 220 titles featured on the EPSB’s removal list. When pressed by reporters as to why there was no concern for written descriptions of explicit sexual acts, Nicolaides pointed to reading comprehension levels. “An image can be understood and conveyed at any grade level with any degree of comprehension,” he said, noting vocabulary and understanding varies at different grade levels.
At various media engagements, the Alberta Government has used examples of texts such as Flamer by Mike Curato and Blankets by Craig Thompson as the type of content they are targeting.
According to a document obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), through a freedom-of-information request, the Ministry of Education drew inspiration for its list from the United States. The IJF found the government consulted book lists submitted by Moms for Liberty and “parental rights” groups. Many of the challenged books targeted 2SLGBTQI+ and BIPOC authors.
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