More Manitoba school divisions debate book bans

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This article was published 15/06/2023 (870 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another wave of book-banning discussions is hitting school divisions across the province.

Parents in Prairie Rose School Division, which represents 2,300 students across 14 schools in the Pembina Valley area and includes the communities of Carman, Miami and Roland, are bracing for conflict after a petition “to request the removal of pornographic books and other material,” namely the non-fiction work This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, is set to be presented in a school board meeting June 19.

“Due to apparent negligence, pornographic material was made available to minors through the (Carman) Collegiate library,” reads the description of the online petition, which has just over 200 signatures. Dawson’s book is described as a guide to navigating gender and sexual identity and was one of the American Library Association’s 10 most challenged books in 2022.

Parents who want to see the book, and other content that is open about health and sexuality for LGBTTQ+ youth, remain in the school library have created Pembina Valley Amplified, a social media group organizing people opposing the book ban conversation.

“We feel like we wanted to kind of get ahead of it and make a call to action to be able to have people who are present and can attend to provide opposition to proposed book bans, and really have people there who have a vested interest in the best interests for children and making sure that they can get access to information and books,” said one organizer, a parent who asked to remain anonymous.

A source told the Free Press that Monday’s meeting has been moved from the board office to a larger space at Carman Collegiate’s lecture theatre because of the volume of public interest.

The parent said the group already had several people planning to attend the board meeting in a show of opposition to the petition.

“There’s undertones of hate and bigotry when books that are covering (LGBTTQ+) themes happen and when they’re called into question, people seem to want them removed, and just the way that they go about it, it seems really in bad faith,” she said.

“There’s misinformation regarding things, and some of the information is very much cherry-picked… it begs the question, if books are banned, are we going to see things as extreme as what we see in the United States or Florida?

“And does that mean that they’re going to take it further to where we would not be able to access books on, say, topics like residential schools in Canada? It’s just something that’s really, really important.”

Prairie Road School Division board of trustees chair Elaine Owen refused to comment.

In Dauphin, Mountain View School Division discussed the topic Monday after receiving multiple letters from residents concerned that a proposal in Brandon to create a committee to review books allowed in schools (which was ultimately rejected) and calls to ban books could show up in their community.

In a video of the board meeting, trustees’ views vary.

Ward 3 trustee Jason Gryba suggests “sexually explicit books” should be removed from libraries used by youth under 18.

“To use the argument that they’re going to be exposed to it anyway, is… fairly ignorant. They’re going to be exposed to drug use, well, we don’t provide books showing them how to shoot up heroin,” he told the meeting.

“Children need to be protected, they don’t need to be exposed to everything at a young age.”

Ward 2 trustee Charlene Gulak opposed any calls for book bans.

“I think we have extremely professional and competent library services and professionals that administer our library services to our students, and we want to ensure that that’s maintained and inclusive for all,” she said.

Mountain View School Division chair Floyd Martens said the conversation happened because they had received multiple letters calling on them not to ban any books, but they had yet to receive a formal request for any to be removed.

“We do have a process for someone who may have a concern about whatever may be in schools, as far as resources that they need to follow and go through and you see where it goes from there,” he said.

One parent in the Mountain View school division who wrote a letter says what she heard in that trustee meeting left her worried what happened in Brandon would be coming to Dauphin.

“We assumed they would just discuss the letters they received (at the meeting) and come up with a response to those letters and we hoped that they would confirm — like we requested in the letters — that no, they won’t entertain the idea of banning any books, based on what happened in Brandon and Louis Riel (school divisions),” the parent said. “Instead, trustees talked about how these books don’t belong in our libraries.”

Manitoba Teachers’ Society president Nathan Martindale criticized “hateful behaviour” in a statement about book banning discussions across Manitoba.

“All individuals have the right to participate in and access information that affects their lives and well-being. Parents have every right to make determinations about their own child’s reading material. But they do not have the right to determine that for others,” he said in an email.

“Schools must be safe places for all students and school libraries are especially important.”

— With files from Maggie Macintosh

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

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