New standards for school library materials will be established by ministerial order in the coming weeks, not legislation according to Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides.
“I strongly imagine that the ministerial order will say something like school boards are required to have policies around library materials, which again, many of them already do. And in those policies, we define sexual activity as X, Y and Z, and you can't have material that discusses sexual activity for this age of students. Or it must take efforts to make sure it's not available to students that are aged this to this. So I think it'll be very simple and straightforward, just again providing a degree of direction that school boards can work to comply with,” said Nicolaides.
St. Paul Education already uses the Provincial Resource Review Guide to determine which books and materials are added to their library collections, in support of curriculum and student and staff needs.
A two-week government survey regarding school library materials closed on June 6, after four graphic novel coming-of-age stories were found in some K-12 schools in Edmonton and Calgary.
The four books, which feature LGBTQ characters or sexually explicit storylines and have received numerous literary awards are not included in the collections of any school libraries in St. Paul Education or Northern Lights Public Schools. They are available through the public Northern Lights Library System.
“I do strongly support the value of having a range of different books and material available in our schools. Let's just make sure it's appropriate for the audience,” said Nicolaides. He noted that Maia Kobabe, the author of Gender Queer has been quoted as saying she does not recommend the book for children.
According to Nicolaides, “it appears as though there was also attempts to undermine the validity of the questionnaire by submitting hundreds of responses at the same time, which was probably administered through bots or other types of measures.”
According to the survey summary, of 196,901 responses, only 77,395 were included after removing duplicates and blank entries.
According to the survey results, 48 per cent of respondents were parents of school-age children. Among parents, 42 per cent said children should never be able to access sexually explicit materials in schools; 22 per cent said they should be made available for high schoolers aged 15 and up; 18 per cent said they should be available in middle school for ages 12 and up; 4 per cent said they should be available in elementary schools for ages 12 and under; and 14 per cent said they should be available for all ages.
On the whole, Albertans were not supportive of the government setting consistent standards for school boards regarding library materials. Between 41 and 64 per cent of respondent demographics: parents of K-12 students, parents whose children were not in school, teachers, school administrators, librarians, and interested Albertans were not at all supportive. Four to eight per cent were unsure.
According to the results, the open-ended responses to the survey revealed a “high degree of trust in the professional judgement of teachers, school librarians and other school leaders to select suitable school library materials for students.”
