Alberta Prime Minister Danielle Smith criticized the Edmonton Public School Board on Friday morning for its list of forbidden books, which has more than 200 titles.
The distributed list internally, which CBC News obtained on Thursday, was in response to a provincial government directive to identify books that are not appropriate for age and eliminate them from the school library.
But the list included titles such as The history of women, purple color, godfather and jaws. Books of authors such as George Rr Martin, Sarah J. Maas and Maya Angelou are also on the list.
“Edmonton’s public is clearly fulfilling a bit about what the address is,” Smith said during an unrelated press conference.
The objective of this work is to maintain graphic and sexually explicit content outside the primary schools, he said.
“If you need to keep your hand in the process to identify what type of materials are appropriate … we will work more than happily with them to work on their list, one by one, so that we can be very clear about what we are trying to do,” said Smith.
The School Board confirmed Friday morning that the CBC News list obtained is precise. A spokesman said Thursday night that the Board shares concerns raised by the public about the library policy, and recognized that “several excellent books” will be taken out of the shelves this fall.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who wrote The history of the sirenHe refused to talk to CBC News, but pointed out in a social media post on Friday that his novel was prohibited in Edmonton.
“Don’t read it, your hair will catch fire!
Hello children .. #Handmaidstale (The book does not the series!) It has just been prohibited in #Edmonton… Don’t read it, your hair will catch fire! Get one now before they have public book burns.
The Minister of Education and Care of Children, Demetrios Nicolaides, announced in spring that the new rules would reach school libraries, after the parents raised concerns to the Government about four graphic novels of the age of majority, most of which show naked and sexual content 2SLGBT+, found in circulation in the public schools of Edmonton and Calgary.
Nicolaides signed a Ministerial Orderdated July 4, establishing the standards for school library materials and included definitions.
Among other things, the order establishes that school boards cannot allow explicit sexual content, which defines as clear representations of a sexual act, such as masturbation, penetrating sex and the use of sex toys. But it has warnings for representations in religious texts and non -explicit sexual content: representation of a sexual act that is not detailed or clear.
In the list of Edmonton’s public schools, for example, The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald was marked for non -explicit sexual content. The list says that only students in grades 10 to 12 could access the book, if it is “appropriate for development.”
During an unrelated press conference on Friday morning, Nicolaides told reporters that he would talk to Edmonton’s public schools about his list, noting that he has some questions about prominent titles.
“Our main interest with the ministerial order is to ensure that books containing graphic representations of sexual acts are provided to children in an appropriate way for age,” he said.
“I want to understand how these books were selected and what mechanisms and methods have used Edmonton’s public schools,” he said, added that he hopes to obtain more information from the school board soon.
Read the Edmonton Public School Board Complete book list below:
Edmonton’s public school personnel spent summer, making sure that “only books that directly comply with the criteria of the ministerial order” were added to the school board list, the spokesman of the school board said Thursday.
CBC News approaches other school boards on their lists. Fort McMurray’s public schools are discovering their next steps according to the ministerial order, said a spokesman, but from Friday afternoon, the four graphic novels marked in spring are the only ones so far that guarantees that it will not be in their libraries.
During his press conference, Smith said that Public Red Deer schools can publish their list on Friday. But a school board spokesman told CBC News not to be the case.
He is also working to meet the requirements established by the Government and will meet before October 1, they said.
The Calgary Education Board of the City Board of Public Schools will share more with the staff and families once the details of its list are confirmed, said a spokesman, and added that he is reviewing more than 500,000 titles and aligning the library policies with the new regulations.
