Rules for explicit books in Alberta schools on the way: education minister
Alberta Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides expects to have a ministerial order ready by the end of the month or early July, giving school boards broad guidelines for graphic and sexual materials in school libraries.
The parameters would still leave room for independence, so schools and school divisions can manage their libraries in ways that work for them, Nicolaides told CBC News Thursday. But the goal is to ensure explicit content is inaccessible to elementary school students.
"There's consensus and understanding that some material, that we should be cautious of what age it's available," Nicolaides said.
"We do this in society in so many different ways that we have ratings for movies … based on sexual content, violence, all this other kind of stuff. So it's not an entirely foreign concept to how we govern our society."
The minister spoke with CBC News about two weeks after a public online survey about school library materials closed. It was offered by the provincial government.
The survey results, which were released Friday, suggest respondents were divided on multiple questions, including whether the government should set "consistent requirements" for school boards regarding how they select and manage school library materials.
Respondents who identified as educators, librarians and as an "interested Albertan" are firmly against, data suggests. Parents, either with or without school-aged children, were more divided.
Of the nearly 37,000 survey respondents identified as parents of K-12 students, almost half are cold to potential consistent requirements, data suggests. But 43 per cent are leaning in favour, and eight per cent are unsure.
"Decisions about what goes in libraries need to be made by trained librarians and educators," said Laura Winton, past president of the Library Association of Alberta, a non-profit that advocates for public and school libraries alike.
"There are already policies and practices in place in schools and school boards across Alberta to make sure that collections are age-appropriate, and there are also processes in place to allow parents to be involved," Winton said.
"If they are concerned about material, they can request that their school reconsider that material and a dialogue will be engaged with them about that."
Respondents were also divided about what age students should be able to access sexually explicit materials in school libraries, data suggests.
Parents of school-aged children said students should be able to access such content at school libraries at some point, particularly by middle school or high school, results suggest.
Yet, about two in five of the respondents with school-aged children feel students should never get to access it in school libraries.
"That's an overwhelming consensus from parents to keep it out of elementary schools," said Jeff Park, executive director of the Alberta Parents' Union, an advocacy group. "That's a strong basis to at least start there."
Nicolaides said last month that new rules would be coming, after parents raised concerns about four coming-of-age graphic novels, most of which show nudity and sexual 2SLGBTQ+ content, found in circulation in Edmonton and Calgary public schools.
The minister also said at the time that the government isn't looking to ban books from schools, noting that it doesn't have that authority. He reiterated that while speaking with CBC News Thursday.
"I don't think it's really helpful or beneficial for government to start saying, 'This book, this book, this book, this book,' just because of any particular commentary that an individual government official might find offensive to them personally," Nicolaides said.
"What one person finds offensive, another person might find enriching. But again, I think we can agree on some really high-level parameters, which are very simple: don't show graphic sexual material to underage children."
The Alberta government will use input from the survey, plus feedback from education partners, to develop the school library standards, according to a news release issued Friday afternoon.
The government published two sets of survey results: one raw, the other cleaned up. The raw version contains nearly 197,000 responses, but the clean dataset cuts it down to about 77,000 responses.
There were signs of possible abuse, Nicolaides said, such as bots or many responses coming from one IP address in a short period.
A CBC News analysis found that, of the many exclusions, only 1,000 of the respondents who identified as parents with school-aged children were cut. Most of the exclusions affected responses from alleged school administrators, teachers and librarians.
The survey suggests further division around questions like how libraries should handle such materials, and who the authority is that determines what content is age-appropriate.
About seven in 10 respondents with school-aged kids agree that parents and guardians should have a role in reporting or challenging the availability of sexually explicit material in school libraries, the results suggest.Many respondents who identified as educators agreed as well. About half of school or public librarians agreed, data suggests.
But respondents were divided about who gets to decide what's age-appropriate, with the main responses being librarians, teachers and/or parents.
Many felt there should be some kind of restrictions for explicit content, data suggests. But nearly an equal proportion of parents with school-aged children said they want access granted based on age or grade level (35 per cent), as those who said the materials shouldn't be on the shelves at all (36 per cent).
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