No one — conservatives, least of all — should be cheering for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s promise to introduce government standards for age-appropriate school library books.
There is zero question that the sexually explicit books found in Alberta public schools, both elementary and high schools, were not acceptable. It is also not accurate of critics to frame Smith’s move as “book banning,” since the content being removed — which includes graphic depictions of oral sex and molestation, among other things — is so grossly and evidently inappropriate for minors.
If a stash of Playboys made it into a grade school classroom, no one could reasonably frame their removal as “book banning,” and nor should we in this current situation. However, what is also not acceptable is putting the government in charge of setting moral standards, or of regulating content. And make no mistake: it’s likely that any policy or legislation that defines “age appropriateness” is going to do just that — whether intentionally or not, now or in the years to come.
Smith’s government
that it is “conducting a public engagement to collect feedback on the creation of consistent standards to ensure the age-appropriateness of materials available to students in school libraries.” An
is open until June 6. The government hasn’t announced whether the new rules will be set by legislation, or by changing regulations.
“While the province provides voluntary guidelines for learning and teaching resources, Alberta currently does not have a consistent provincewide standard for school boards when selecting age-appropriate school library materials,” reads the government’s press release. It explains that the new standards will be mandatory for the upcoming school year.
It goes without saying that this public engagement can only discover the opinions of survey respondents. No doubt the survey will also attract responses from indiscriminately disapproving puritans, roused by the prospect of having their moral austerity considered, at last, by policymakers.
We do not need this data to tell us that the already discovered sexually explicit materials are not appropriate for school-aged children. It is unclear, then, why the public’s opinion is needed at all — unless any resultant policy will be broader, or applied more restrictively, than what is required to remove
. The whole thing is suspicious.
Conservatives who favour smaller and less interventionist government should be skeptical. Whatever policy or legislation the Alberta government implements may well invite censorship by a future government, which could lead to real book bans, not just the removal of content that is pornographic, or pornography adjacent. Is it worth the risk?
Instead, the government should seek to find out who put the inappropriate books into children’s libraries in the first place, determine if those people should be teaching minors and have the schools remove the books. Any educator refusing to pull the ghastly material off the shelves would have their ability to teach children called into question.
Passing legislation, or making policy changes, shifts the focus from the most concerning aspect of this scandal: Did adults intentionally place this graphic content in school libraries for minors to read? And if so, what were their motivations? As it stands, whoever ordered these books for Alberta schoolchildren seems to be enjoying a complete lack of scrutiny.
Because the explicit materials were found in
, Smith’s announcement has, predictably, morphed into a new front of the culture war. This has enabled the improper sexual content to become secondary in the discussion.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), for instance, issued
that floats the idea that Smith might be attempting to target the LGBTQ+ community with content bans. (A better question: why is there so much sexually explicit content in LGBTQ+ books?)
As ridiculous as the ATA’s accusation is, Smith will have a difficult time defending herself from it. That’s because she is making a mistake: no government, including hers, should get involved in content regulation for its citizens. That is a slope just waiting to be slipped on. My unsolicited advice to Smith: leave this one to the librarians.
National Post