The Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) is criticizing the provincial government for launching a broad engagement on school library materials before consulting with school boards and teachers.
“We are concerned that the selection process the government has initiated has the potential to prioritize special interest groups arriving at their own predetermined agendas and further target diverse communities,” said ATA president Jason Schilling.
The province announced a survey on May 26 asking people to define “appropriate sexual content” in the context of school library materials, who should decide what materials are age-appropriate and the age at which sexually explicit materials should be available to students.
“The standards that we're looking at will relate specifically to books that contain graphic sexual images or graphic depictions. That's what our concern is,” said education minister Demetrios Nicolaides. “So this is not related to any kind of particular subject area.”
The four books cited by the province as examples for why provincial standards are needed are Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato. All four are graphic novels featuring LGBTQ characters and sexually explicit storylines.
“Our big concern is around the graphic depiction of molestation, sexual acts and self-harm,” said Nicolaides. “We still have to work on developing these policies and exactly where the lines will be drawn.”
Schilling’s teaching background is in high school English, where he said he often uses graphic novels because it was “a way for them to engage with the text in a way that was meaningful to them.”
“Texts need to be age and grade appropriate, but we also know that students have questions about things, and sometimes literature is one of the ways that we can answer those questions,” said Schilling.
Schilling said the announcement really underscores the need for adequate funding of school libraries and specifically teacher-librarians, “who can help identify and develop guiding principles for the selection of appropriate materials.”
“Librarians have been cut so bad over the course of the last couple of years that we don't have that relationship,” said Schilling.
Earlier this month, the ATA rejected the mediator’s recommendations for the next collective agreement with the province. According to Schilling, they are currently in the process of a strike authorization vote by the membership.
“I'm worried that by the government releasing this information and saying that schools are doing this, that they might try to pit teachers and school boards against parents, and that's something that we can't fall for,” said Schilling.
