By Carol Koechlin, Anita Brooks Kirkland, and Diana Maliszewski
After the past couple of years of repeated, organized book challenges, it is hard to imagine a new wave of censorship, but it is going to be difficult to defend ourselves against the recent tsunami taking place south of the border. Within a week of President Trump’s inauguration, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across government were not only being viciously maligned, they were being wiped out. The United States Department of Education took aggressive action to eliminate “harmful” DEI initiatives, and rescinded all department guidance issued “under the theory that a school district’s removal of age-inappropriate books from its libraries may violate civil rights laws”, calling book bans a hoax. The scourge of organized censorship based on intolerance that has swept across the United States over the past few years is now officially sanctioned at the highest level.
Canada has not been immune to the trend, and given the current chaos in Canada-US relations, we have reason to expect the worst. The good news is that Canadians have become galvanized to resist economic attacks and the US president’s expressed goal to annex Canada. We can hope that an anticipated increase in attacks on freedom of expression here in Canada might also be recognized as a by-product of the officially-sanctioned intolerance being imposed on American citizens, schools, and libraries, seeping across our undefended border. Elbows up! Knowledge is power. Awareness of the issues at hand, knowledge of professional standards and practices, and insight into tactics of the censors will make us stronger as we defend the freedom to read.
You might start your knowledge journey with an article in this journal edition, Censors Are Targeting Schools: Hardly New but Deeply Troubling by James L. Turk, the Director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University and Dr. Toni Samek, Professor and former Chair of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta and Scholar-in-Residence at the Centre for Free Expression.
Dive more deeply into the resources at the Centre for Free Expression’s initiative, Promoting Libraries and Intellectual Freedom. The Centre for Free Expression, launched in 2015, is a non-partisan platform focused on freedom of expression – the human right to express one’s views, to be heard, and to participate in political, artistic, and social life.
Consider your own position by studying Anita Brooks Kirkland’s article in this edition, The Language of Censorship, and past articles Anita has prepared to help school library professionals grapple with censorship.
- Sleeping with the Elephant: Canada Deals with the Scourge of Censorship Sweeping Across America
- Balance or Indoctrination: Developing and Defending Balanced School Library Collections
- Ethical Foundations for School Library Joy
- Say NO to Censorship, Say YES to the LLC! (with Carol Koechlin)
Arm yourself with knowledge about your school district’s resource selection policies and challenge procedures, and explore OSLA’s Guide to the Selection and Deselection of School Library Resources.
Consult CSL’s Collection Diversity Toolkit and the companion resource Culturally Relevant and Responsive School Library Learning Commons as you build a collection for your school community to enable reading joy, learning, creativity and the free exploration of ideas..
Take action against censorship. See recommendations made by CSL in a 2023 statement Book Challenges and Censorship in Canada’s School Libraries.
Continue to create excellent learning experiences with students and teachers that are designed to naturally embed equity, diversity and inclusion. Demonstrate, share, and showcase the many ways the library learning commons leads the way for intellectual freedom in your school community.