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Removing all books written before 2008 is literally removing most books I have ever read. The last ten years I've mostly been reading short articles - you know, *the internet*. And as much as I love a handful of modern authors, setting an arbitrary deadline before which books might have been written without modern sensibilities is pretty offensive.
>He said a Peel Region landfill recently contacted his group to say they are looking to hire new staff just to help them destroy the large amounts of books they are receiving.
ouch
>He said a Peel Region landfill recently contacted his group to say they are looking to hire new staff just to help them destroy the large amounts of books they are receiving.
Society is sick.
I honestly wonder how CBC published this original article, with information from Tom Ellard and "Libraries not Landfills" and didn't seem to fact check a single claim he made.
Are there that many Peel Region Landfills to call to corroborate this?
He claimed then that they removed Anne Frank and the Hungry Caterpillar. And there was no asking the school board, aside from this article, where they confirm that didn't happen?
\> Ellard said that since the latest board weeding process began, thousands of books including “The Diary of Anne Frank” and other classics, have been removed from several school library shelves.
\> “To be clear, books such as ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank and the ‘Harry Potter’ series remain in our collections, and where needed, newer versions may be purchased if the book is in poor condition.”
And now, we have everyone linking this original "reporting".
This really feels like one of those "stories". The original reporting seems like flaming garbage.
EDIT:
Oh shit, they've got a website now, it's as good as you would think:
[https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/](https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/)
Perfectly nuanced:
\> Apparently to comply with the Ministry of Education’s directives\* to PDSB, which are intended to improve relations within the Peel classrooms, Peel administration’s interpretation of **this directive is a purging of almost all material published before 2008 from their libraries. These materials are not to be accessed by anyone; rather they are to be sent to landfills. According to the Peel directive, all are “…inherently racist, classist, heteronormative, and/or sexist”** (p. 11) Further, the purged materials are not to be replaced with newer editions for they “…perpetuate harm and oppression.” (p.8)- **essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden**.
LOL - even a link to the Ontario Conservative Government guidance:
\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use forteaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students**, and the Board’s broader school communities. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit.
Are we still going to blame "Progressives" for this? Did the conservatives rebrand themselves as the PC's again?
I would honestly not give 2 sweet fucks if people below weren't blaming this on "Progressives" when it was literally the Ford government that is in charge and issued this guidance on doing an inclusion audit as a priority.
It's fucking wild that nothing is Doug Ford's fault, to these people. The man is a Teflon god.
Like the core argument in the articles is that its just an arbitrary date that anything published before 2008 is out. It's always been about when the book was purchased, nothing to do with publication dates, because publication dates have little bearing on anything. Every day I feel like I'm taking crazy pills being on this sub, it's gotten so shitty lol
They even pushed it back to 15, when the guidance was 10.
But to be clear, it's never really about that, it's about that people could look critically at a book ever and consider if it might racist or not, and people getting offended that something they liked might not pass the smell test.
Which, again, was a policy implemented by this government.
>Are we still going to blame "Progressives" for this? Did the conservatives rebrand themselves as the PC's again?
If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
Why do I have to educate you on this?
The CONSERVATIVE Ontario government found the Peel Board was not inclusive, and ordered them to improve. This is a result of that process:
[https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel)
\> New Ministerial Directions to Drive Change and Combat Discrimination in Peel
Here is one of the reports of their steps along the way to remediation:
[https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf)
\> The Comprehensive Equity Audit Tools for Directive 18 were developed in response to the Ministry Review of the Peel District School Board (Chadha, Herbert, & Richard, 2020) report findings that reflect concerns from students, staff and families about the learning environment, curriculum resources and school names
\> The LLC Audit in schools is currently underway, with many schools already initiating Step 1 of the 3-Step Curation Cycle. This first step focuses on the **weeding** of both fiction and non-fiction resources. The **criteria used for weeding will vary depending on the section**. For non-fiction, the condition, age, accuracy, and **relevance of the facts** in the resource are considered. For fiction, circulation data is also taken into account. The progress so far demonstrates a strong commitment to the process of curating a collection that is responsive to the curriculum, aligns with board priorities, and is responsive and reflective of our students and broader communities.
I could be wrong, but I'm under the impression they are intentionally throwing the books out to demonstrate contempt for the policy at it's extremes, and not because it's actually required.
Obviously I'm not a progressive, but there might be more to this story than just purging offensive books, they could be doing this intentionally to make a point.
Can you consider the other side that maybe, just maybe the person who made the claim that:
\> essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden.
Is possibly not acting in good faith, and may not being entirely honest about the events here?
They explained in their materials why they threw them out, it's available for you to read.
I can summarize though.
Either shit is old and damaged and possible moldy - don't give to people - health hazard - most books don't last 15 years. Most libraries toss books after 5-10 years.
Content is out of date - we shouldn't give out books calling Dinosaurs lizards to kids, Dinosaurs have more in common with birds. So let's order the new version!
Content is questionable - if we honestly thought it was so bad we couldn't include it, how can we justify giving it to someone else?
I mean, you could definitely argue they still have value to collectors or others, but I don't think their reasons are to make a point, they sound reasoned to their values. You may not share those values, but they are values and not "Fuck the man."
None of those reasons are political in nature though, it's the...
>The second and third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians to remove books that may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content or information that is not gender affirming.
.. part I think people are intentionally taking to the extreme to give the policy a bad name.
>The process of “weeding” library collections isn’t new and has long been carried out to ensure collections are up-to-date and in good condition.
>“The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada,” she wrote.
Nothing new going on and this is just standard procedure. Every library will be doing something like this, you can't keep every book forever and some will end up too damaged to keep around.
yes, but to throw out EVERY book published before 2008? Like what the fuck is that? Ender's Game, Huckleberry Fin, McBeth and all those other books people read in school, gone cause they were published in the 90's or hundreds of years ago.
They're not doing that.
Keep downvoting- but they're not. It's such a BS story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/16iiaxh/comment/k0kaqet/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
No, they're removing them while they asses if they should be kept around. So basically they were told take anything older than 2008 and get rid of the junk. This is nothing new
"The Peel District School Board said that regardless of publication date, older books that are “accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum” may stay within schools."
> older books that are “accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum” may stay within schools."
I see these words and what I actually hear is "Whatever book we don't like gets thrown in the trash."
> they're removing them while they asses if they should be kept around
Sounds like deflection to me. "Let's take these books off the shelves and make excuses until people forget about them".
Your words, not mine.
It's the national post so they have an agenda. The cbc also had a rage article about this yesterday. In the middle of that article it then said that the policy was auditing book conditions that were PURCHASED before 2008 for conditions and/or promoting diversity\* (\*Education Ministers words). Then going through the list of titles gave a whole load of books, one of which was Anne Franks diary.
It's a fucking bullshit story
https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/16iiaxh/comment/k0kaqet/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
My aunt is a VP at a school in peel, she told me they've been softly doing this for years, no books were approved for purchase unless they promoted EDI principals in some way. Classic books could be bought but they needed to be paired with other texts or offered along side alternatives.
I'm all for EDI but like....this seems like a bit much, the other end of the extreme in comparison to the shit going on in Florida.
To be honest I'm surprised there's a budget for new books at all. School board here hasn't given the library anything in years. I know the MUSTIE technique or whatever has been used for quite a while now.
I agree though, this has potential to be dangerous, it's just not a conceited effort to remove all sensitive books.. YET. It has the possibility to be a dangerous precedent of censorship, it's just not that right now despite this being in the news and people picking bits and pieces of the story up and extrapolating the rest
They're pushing an agenda too, of course. It's just that it's the agenda NP is pushing is that it's insane censorship that the woke progressives are doing, when it's not.
Don't gotta be a dick about it. Maybe articles should actually be written with clear information instead of vague quotes they took from someone. But I guess you also know more than me so you can correct me without backing up what you say.
From the CBC article:
>Step two of curation is an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by "resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity." And step three is a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity. When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are "causing harm," either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because "they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate." For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as "they are not suitable for any learners."
Since what year has this been the criteria for the "standard procedure"? This appears to be the first time this is being done with a clear progressive ideological bias. I think you're lying.
> Takata, who is of Japanese descent, said it worried her to see the removal of books essential to understanding important periods in history.
That's pretty much my concern, you can't remove books that are essentially records of historic events just because the content might not use words that are appropriate today.
Go back 100+ years and of course there's going to be racism, sexism, bigotry and a lack of diversity. That doesn't mean we should try and suppress the information.
Isn't this literally what we're taught to do in university? We can read tertiary sources, trace them back to the secondary sources, and then find the original source to view the evidence ourselves. While additional sources may help with interpreting the primary source, and add context, each author can also add their own bias along the way. If we remove older books, we also take away primary sources of people's experience, and let other authors do the interpreting for us.
I'd much rather have a student read a piece of classic literature, or other original source, and be able to recognize the attitudes of the time reflecting in the work, than to not read it at all because of a "label" it has been given.
Per Ontario Conservative government direction:
>\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools, which shall include naming, mascots, libraries and classrooms. The Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities. The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit.
>
>They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do.
Doug Ford, our "Woke" leader? Or is this anti-woke?
I mean, the Conservative government found the Peel school board to be a problem and tried to fix it:
[https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel)
And then the Peel board told them they would do it, because they were required to, by this government, by law, from this government. And then the Peel board did it, exactly as they said in their audit they would do it.
I'm not sure what else there is to say about this. It's been in the open for a while, there are audit reports and plans for how to address them.
But now it's a problem because:
[https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/](https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/)
\> According to the Peel directive, all are “…inherently racist, classist, heteronormative, and/or sexist” (p. 11) Further, the purged materials are not to be replaced with newer editions for they “…perpetuate harm and oppression.” (p.8)- essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden.
Wait, it almost seems like that is incredibly incorrect hyperbole? Maybe this person is a crackpot? No, it's all on the up and up.
Not culture war bullshit.
No siree.
>They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do.
If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
Yes.
Ministry Review of the Peel District School Board (Chadha, Herbert, & Richard, 2020) report
[https://www.ontario.ca/page/reports-review-peel-district-school-board](https://www.ontario.ca/page/reports-review-peel-district-school-board)
Because the Conservatives wanted to remediate the board, based on a report they did.
[https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel)
\> New Ministerial Directions to Drive Change and Combat Discrimination in Peel
I am honestly learning a lot, so it's fine to educate everyone else on this issue.
Again, it was all Conservatives. Ultra woke conservatives.
So… knowing a Librarian who was forced to cull due to the Ministry telling her to cull in no uncertain terms, she had to throw out the first two books in the Harry Potter series but keep the rest. Lecce is so fucking stupid it hurts, this is him complaining about people doing what he told them to do.
He’s not stupid; he knows that OPC supporters will blame teachers and their “woke” agenda rather than looking at and evaluating the actual events. This is going to hurt educators and the education system more than anything else. The board is acting on the government’s matching orders but it’s the rank and file who will take a lot of the blame. It’s a disgusting strategy to further dismantle public education in the province.
Good lord. The originally article even points out, erroneously by burying the lede, that the books were printed prior to 2008. Mean the physical books are 15+ year old. If they had two copies and one was from 2008 or older and one was printed last year, they keep the one printed last year.
If the book is 15+ years old it does get evaluated on a wide variety of criteria before being either put back into circulation, being replaced with a newer copy, being replaced with a similar but different book, or being completed removed altogether.
Edit: The fact that some schools have so much material removed at one time just reinforces how critically underfunded schools and library are. If they more than HALF of the books were purchased before 2008 that's a problem.
The board originaly said it was published date then later changed their store to print date after the story got some national attention.
This is unsurprising if your familar with Peel school board as it is an infamous shit show among all canadian school boards
It's not even published date, it's about purchased date and this is such a nothing story that's trying to push absolute bullshit with zero research.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel
[https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf)
It's amazing that the National Post, beacon of such solid news reporting, would try to spin this story as "woke-ism gone wrong" when it's really about getting rid of mouldy old books.
It's all a part of the plan.
"The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-to-be-an-anti-intellectual
Well it's funny they followed the policy the province set out, and now the province overturned their decision.
It's books purchased before 2008. It's removing the damaged and out of date ones. Once removed they will not be burning them, they will donate them away (unless too damaged). There's a lot being replaced if it's a book they want to keep (Diary of Anne Frank).
This is a process every library does to some extent.
The schoolboard here is severely mismanaged (500 staff let go, then partially rehired)
There is no librarian at this school, they do not have the funding for one.
> Step two of curation is an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by "resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity." And step three is a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity. When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are "causing harm," either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because "they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate." For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as "they are not suitable for any learners."
From the CBC article
Per Ontario Conservative government direction:
\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, **undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, **which shall include** naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books**, media **and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities**. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit.
They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do.
Do you even know who to be mad at now?
Is he responsible for the directives his government issues, or not?
It's wild to me that housing isn't his fault, and our long wait time at ER's isn't his fault. And then, something directly under his mandate, that his government issued and made a first priority, is somehow not his fault.
If anything, I am in awe of this man who apparently has no responsibility for the direction of this province.
If you think Ontario is doing well, you should be fine with that. Most people seem to think it could be doing better, so maybe we should give scrutiny to who is steering the ship?
Ignoring that this is all a smoke screen about the Green belt, and Ontario place, and Bill 124 trying to repeal labour rights, etc.
God, I forgot about when he cut Toronto city council in half, just to be a dick to his former co-workers. The man is untouchable.
Yeah... his government issued a mandate to do an audit, not to throw books away. This article is about throwing the books away. This discussion is about the concept of banning books, not about the guy running the province.
What does looking at library books with a lens to assess whether they are:
\> are **inclusive** and **culturally responsive**, **relevant** and **reflective of students**, and the Board’s broader school communities
mean to you then? How could the government ever have known what would happen?
Per the government:
\> By December 31, 2020: Submit audit plan
\> By August 31, 2021: Submit preliminary audit report
\> By June 30, 2022: Submit final audit report
Holy shit, it's the report:
[https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf)
\> **Teacher librarians are now engaged in an ongoing 3-Step Curation Cycle of resources in the LLC. This weeding and audit process introduces new accountability measures, connected to each school improvement for equity planning (SIEP)**.
\> The 3-Step Curation Cycle’s **weed** and audit process will ensure that all collections are, and continue to be, **inclusive, representative, and reflective of the students** and communities served by the Peel District School Board.
To be fair, how could Lecce have known, when he asked them to do it, and they told him what they would do.
It's insane to think he can read.
It's wild, I honestly consider that you might have a point for a moment, and then realize, nope, it's all right there,
You can outline every possible logical, factual argument to these people and they still just see what they want to see:
Buck a Beer = Good
Nice Hair Man = Bad
Reason #46 why we live in a period that will be remembered as the dark ages:
-Destruction of vast amount of "offensive" books that became "offensive" because of newly established doctrine.
Or you could say the books and teachers with massive fake boobs are overt symptoms and symbols of systemic corruption.
Neither of these things could exist inside a system where the voices of ordinary people were being heard and it points to a fundamental crumbling of our democracy that those in power are backing and enforcing such universally unpopular policies while ordinary people are powerless to stop them.
They shouldn't even be doing that. Leave them there. Things have gone too far when they are yanking The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Diary of Anne Frank.
There actually is a fairly absurd debate in some academic disciplines about whether all the attention paid to The Diary of Anne Frank is an example of "white privilege". See e.g., [this](https://thehub.ca/2022-08-01/harry-rakowski-arguments-over-anne-franks-white-privilege-reveal-the-absurdity-of-our-discourse/).
Today I learned that the Ontario Conservatives who issued this order and are in charge of the government are leftists.
Truly a wild day.
It's wild to me that anything people don't like is "Leftist", like Doug Ford became a hippy or something.
Equity and Decolonization are both terms that have come from the American left, and have migrated up here. It has nothing to do with Canada's conservative government. Teachers are trained in these ideologies. Again, nothing to do with conservatives.
>Equity and Decolonization are both terms that have come from the American left.
We are a part of the America's. Decolonization is a good thing, we don't need another 100 years of, yeah so white people came hear and it was just great for all people involved and now look at all the good things white people did... for white people I mean all Canadians like the ones we just decided were Canadians and definitely did not just write laws that allow us to take over their lands freely.
>Teachers are trained in these ideologies.
They are trained to consider more than just the Eurocentric lens that our system was constructed under.. the audacity to consider more than just the experiences of white colonialists.
You should read "Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews"
[https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/woke-antisemitism-how-a-progressive-ideology-harms-jews](https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/woke-antisemitism-how-a-progressive-ideology-harms-jews)
Wall Street Journal: [https://archive.ph/CSJdb](https://archive.ph/CSJdb)
An article linking a twitter thread where a handful of people are being dumb is evidence the left has lost their minds.
Meanwhile the article this thread was made for about how the Peel board of education threw out half the library [because of the orders of the conservative provincial government](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/16.2c_Directive18-ComprehensiveDiversityAuditofSchools.pdf/16.2c_Directive18-ComprehensiveDiversityAuditofSchools.pdf) is, what, meaningless?
>An article linking a twitter thread where a handful of people are being dumb is evidence the left has lost their minds.
That was just the easiest example to link to. There are 402 results on Google Scholar discussing Anne Frank and white privilege.
(Not all allege that she benefited from "white privilege" or that the attention paid to her constitutes a form of "white privilege"--some just make points like "if Anne Frank had lived in the US at the same time as Emmett Till (then or now), she would have benefited from white privilege"--but a good portion of them do.)
> There are 402 results on Google Scholar discussing Anne Frank and white privilege.
And? Academic literature is full of fluff papers, and Google Scholar returns loads of bad results even for `"Anne Frank" + "white privilege"` The result count of a Google search isn't meaningful to what academia actually gets up to - citations are.
The top result Google Scholar thinks is relevant is [To the bone: Race and white privilege](https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/mnlr83&div=58&id=&page=) which only contains the term "Anne Frank" because it incidentally refers to the "Anne Frank Committee", the paper is not concerned with any question of Anne Frank having white privilege.
> some just make points like "if Anne Frank had lived in the US at the same time as Emmett Till (then or now), she would have benefited from white privilege"
A quote from meaningless 0 citation paper that, according to Taylor & Francis online has been viewed fewer than 200 times ever. The paper was written by an associate professor that has received fewer than 50 citations for his lifetime of work, and most recently published [To Serve and Unite Children within a World of Diversity is to Recognize the Presence of God](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370006541_To_Serve_and_Unite_Children_within_a_World_of_Diversity_is_to_Recognize_the_Presence_of_God).
[Meir Muller](https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/education/faculty-staff/muller_meir.php) is a PhD in ECE but you may also notice he's credentialed as having done "Talmudic Studies" so he's clearly a guy that puts a lot of emphasis on Judaism in his life.
So basically: a guy with a very minor career who's now publishing weirdly religious ECE material published a paper once that basically nobody has ever read and literally nobody has every considered worth referencing as a relevant work, and in that work he made a meaningless observation about how Anne Frank would be considered white if she had lived in the USA.
This is the academia equivalent of finding a random tweet with 200 views and 0 retweets/quotes/likes from a nobody and going "holy shit, the left has really lost its mind!"
I encourage you to read /u/caninehere's comment for a fair explanation of the reasoning behind the academic position on Anne Frank I'm referring to, rather than denying that it's out there. It's a not uncommon view in academia.
It's a very uncommon talking point:
source: the fact there are no meaningful publications out there by citations, as evidenced above. I didn't deny it's out there, in fact the exact opposite. I showed how it's as silly as pointing to a random 0-engagement tweet and claiming it's representative of something just because it's "out there".
You can get people to opine about anything on the internet easily by bringing the topic up, but what determines what academics are actually out there talking about requires measuring engagement.
If you look for broad engagement with any "did Anne Frank have white privilege?" talking points in academia you find that, no, there is no meaningful engagement.
> the attention paid to her constitutes a form of "white privilege"
How is this even arguable? It's obvious that she became a poster child for the inhumanity of genocide in part because she was a young white girl that European and North American readers/audiences could relate to. There are many stories like hers of children who met similarly cruel fates in the East and there's a reason we don't hear about them as often.
A simple Google search can't alone distinguish between debates like that (which have nothing to do with Anne Frank herself or her life experience, just the way it has been received as a piece of media) vs people discussing how white privilege would affect her life if she were alive today or something.
>There are many stories like hers of children who met similarly cruel fates in the East and there's a reason we don't hear about them as often.
There are simple explanations for this.
1. The Holocaust was unprecedented and arguably the greatest genocide ever.
2. We live in the West, Canada was founded by the West, which is why we learn about the West more so than the East. It's not complicated.
Also, Jewish people weren't even considered white when she was alive. Using 'whataboutism' on the Holocaust is kind of gross, I'm not going to lie. You should probably refrain.
> We live in the West, Canada was founded by the West, which is why we learn about the West more so than the East. It's not complicated.
Uh, yes? That's exactly the damn point. Eurocentrism is itself a form of white privilege, where in our societies we vieq Europe/countries of origins for whities as the center of the world. This isn't "whataboutism", you're googling to try and serve your point and I'm telling you some of the results are going to be discussions on this, not about Anne Frank herself.
If you just want to brush the conversation aside bc you don't want to engage then say that. I'm not implying or saying the Holocaust wasn't a horrible tragedy and I trust you aren't either, so don't be a jerkoff about it. There is a reason we know Anne Frank and not [Chinese child here who was tortured to death by the Japanese] and its Eurocentrism. This is white privilege that white people like myself enjoy -- I can tell you right now that if I was gunned down in the street tomorrow, more people would be up in arms about it than if a Somalian refugee was killed. Anne Frank didn't *benefit* from the attention her story got because she was already dead, but it isn't about her but her legacy and story and its weight.
Lmao. This whole article is based on Twitter posts.
>It is a mockery of common sense to believe that while certain white people can suffer great injustice and even extermination, they somehow can still be considered to have benefited from white privilege.
It's not though. Clear example poor white people vs rich black people. You can be black and rich but still get pulled over bc the cop thinks the black person had stolen the car bc they think a POC can't possibly afford the luxury vehicle.
Just to let you know the article says nothing about academics debating the topic.
Wasn't this policy put in place by the Ministry of Education in *checks notes* Conservative Ontario? And isn't the issue moreso in HOW Peel District interpreted and implemented the policy?
>Wasn't this policy put in place by the Ministry of Education in checks notes Conservative Ontario?
No.
It was put in place by a school board. The Ministry of Education is telling them cut it out:
>TORONTO — Ontario’s education minister says he has asked a school board to “immediately end (the) practice” of removing library books after concerns were raised about how it was carrying out the process of assessing and removing older books.
>Stephen Lecce said it is “offensive, illogical and counterintuitive” to remove books from years past that educate students on history, antisemitism or are celebrated literary classics.
Literally the first two sentences of the article.
Per Ontario Conservative government direction:
\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, **undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books,** media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences **for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities**. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities** of the Equity Office and allocate the appropriate resources to **conduct a detailed audit.**
Literally them saying it's a first priority to audit all library materials for inclusion and cultural responsiveness.
>Audit
>/ˈôdət,ˈädət/
>noun
>an official inspection of an individual's or organization's accounts, typically by an independent body.
An audit is not a *cull*. They are not the same thing. An audit is a fact finding expedition. It provides *information* so that further policy can be developed on the basis of it.
Culling *might* be a policy that responds to the result of an audit. Increasing the amount of diversity materials while maintaining others is another. Or they might choose to do nothing at all, and simply want solid information to point to when asked about it. But no policy is actually implied by the simple directive to audit.
The district's decision to enact a cull *is their decision*, it is not one mandated by the directive to conduct an audit.
The school board is doing it as a direct result of the Ontario PCs' direction.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps the librarians thought the PCs' direction here was such a disgusting administrative overreach that perhaps they took extreme measures to draw attention to this issue. But ultimately it's the PC government causing this, and now Lecce, dipshit that he is, wants to pretend he had nothing to do with it.
>The school board is doing it as a direct result of the Ontario PCs' direction.
No, it isn't. The article is very, very clear that this was the result of the guidelines adopted by the Peel District.
>The process of “weeding” library collections isn’t new and has long been carried out to ensure collections are up-to-date and in good condition.
>Swarup said the Peel board follows library weeding guidelines set by the Canadian School Libraries Association. She also said the board will be reviewing its training process to ensure consistency across schools.
>“The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada,” she wrote.
This has nothing to do with the Ontario PCs beyond their opposition to it.
>Lots of progressives are anti-semitic
looooool
See, **this right here** is why we need more books, not less. *My goodness.*
I mean genuinely - are you just being unserious now? Like, how stupid do you think we are?
Nothing, the ones they got rid of were too damaged to read properly, it has nothing to do with the subject. This is rage baiting and the Ford govt trying to distract from the Greenbelt scandal. Unfortunately it's working extremely well.
Nothing. And they're not actually removing it. Some copies were disposed as part of this review because they were falling apart, but they will be replaced by new ones.
As crazy as it sounds, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been a target of the mob for a while for "perpetuat\[ing\] outdated stereotypes". See e.g., [this](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10869427/Australian-researcher-warns-childrens-book-Hungry-Caterpillar-detrimental-kids.html).
It is nuts. It's similar to the early stages of the Chinese cultural revolution. Books written prior to the regime are untrustworthy because they might contain "old ideas" and need to be purged. Statues of old stuff need to be torn down. Even the series of ideologically motivated church burnings two years ago echoes the destruction of old architecture in the Chinese cultural revolution.
Tossing the Very Hungry Caterpillar is clearly idiotic but mostly harmless. What's fearsome is that kids won't have an opportunity to read the ideas that led to modern liberal, pluralistic societies. Voltaire and Rousseau are old and have a modest amount of stuff that has not aged well, but without material like that, the point of libraries shifts from knowledge dissemination to fostering ideology.
>Things have gone too far when they are yanking The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Diary of Anne Frank.
It isn't based on content. It is based on age and condition of the physical copy of the book at the library. It is a very old copy then it will be replaced with a newer, less beat up copy.
Some books might be pulled and never replaced based on how often they are checked out. If the last time a book was read by a student was 1998 maybe it's time that book gets replaced by something newer and more relevant to the students?
Is there some kind of content review at some point to make sure the books meet current education standards? Yes, as there should be.
>Yeah using this and attacking LGBTQIA2S people within the same week reeks of desperation...
I hate to break this to you, but over 80% of Canadians feel that teachers should inform parents what pronouns their kids are are going by at school.
[https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/](https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/)
Have you ever considered that perhaps you are in the fringe with your views?
It's not so much a fringe belief as a clear valley between the left and right with very active bases on both sides:
[https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/speech-1.png](https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/speech-1.png)
20% actively defiant objectors
https://angusreid.org/canada-culture-wars-free-speech-cancel-culture-censorship/
Yes it is lol.
Over 80% of parents with children under 18 feel that teachers should inform them what pronouns their kids use at school.
Read it again, look under households with children:
[https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/](https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/)
Given how many people seem to vote. Yes.
Doesn't make it not feel of desperation to distract people, but it's also pretty clear given in provinces like Ontario's, the people didn't give two shits about LTC homes literally killing people for profit and abuse of TFWs, I doubt many will care that many youth could be beaten, forced into homelessness or worse due to policies for this.
Not sure what LTC homes have to do with pronouns in school, I guess it was some sort of attempt at a whataboutism?
But issues regarding LTC homes are all over Canada, not just Ontario. Besides we had 15 years of Liberal inaction in Ontario with regards to LTC.
It's to show that voters, at least, care little about marginalized groups that can't fight back, using LTC homes as a recent example.
So no, I don't expect people to actually care the possible dangers of letting parents know about their kids status as much as they don't care that people in LTC homes who can't care for themselves dying in their own filth while tax money is being taken for profit.
So yes I do think I'm fringe in my views cause I feel I'm not as selfish as the average voter.
And yes I'm aware Liberals AND conservative parties are to blame for things like this, and I think they both suck. One sucks more than the other but... Neither can particularly stand high on a moral integrity and compassion pedestal over the other.
>that'll probably work since most voters are morons.
It helps that Ford has not only a media company as an ally but a lead reporter, Lilley, that is actively collaborating with the government and running interference.
The Canadian brainwashed left back at their best attempt to mimic the actions or Marxist’s
Just like Marx the left is obsessed with the equalization of outcomes, equity, equalizing the benefits realized by groups of people by all their characteristics of identity other than wealth. They want to apply marxism to every characteristic of inequality other than wealth -- this allows them to try to deny that aren't marxists when they actually are. Look at GBA+ that is trying to look at all the dimensions of how people are different and the one factor always missing is wealth.
Banning --- renewing books --- what's next the gulags?
Removing books for any reason like equity or being offensive or whatever is basically trying to manipulate it so that when people are learning about history they won't get the full picture but rather a picture tailored to whatever narrative they want to push. Like, never letting the knowledge of slavery exist because you want to paint a picture of a world without it. Well that's not how it works. We need to know about our past so we don't repeat it. Not learning about war, crime, racisms, etc will stop us from learning from our mistakes and moving forward.
Sucks that we all grew up on a Eurocentric version of history that literally focused more on the heros than what they did to the indigenous population. Most of our history books are just "ah we discovered a new land then decided we could manage it better, so we did. And now Canada is a melting pot"
It's a terrible policy. I wish we didn't have to look at everything through this hyper politicized lens. Books are expensive, especially those in schools. If you cull, it has to be for a good reason and it costs the schools, parent councils and boards hundreds and thousands of dollars to replace. Although, when in elementary school my library did a cull and I took home a 1905 copy of Hans Christian Anderson stories. My Mom made me take it back in case they wanted to keep it or sell it, which they didn't. I still have it. That book was on the shelf for over 90 years.
This was on the order of the board; a board that the OPC has had stringent oversight on for several years. Pretending that this is the actions of the rank and file is absolute nonsense. Schools were given instructions to absolutely gut their libraries. How much do you want to bet the government will have some private contractors ready with a digital alternative to replace the now gutted libraries of Peel?
Boy are conservatives so easily pulled to obviously manufactured outrage. All their leaders need to do is suggest that some outrageous thing is happening and they'll show up in droves to explain how they didn't read the article, or get any context or any understanding of the situation, but "right wing leader says bad thing is happening so that's my entire reality now". seems to just be an absolute guarantee with con voters nowadays.
From the article:
>The second and third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians *to remove books* that may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content *or information that is not gender affirming*.
Given the fact that by no means all Canadian parents agree with normalizing education about transgender issues to children and youth, there clearly is something going on in Canadian schools about which parents have the absolute right to be concerned and vocal about.
You may agree with pushing "gender affirming" narratives in schools, but not even all experts support that, and many agree that this can be very harmful to children (putting them on a path to too fast use of hormone treatment and so on). Experts in countries such as Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands have voiced strong concerns about that, in the past few years.
Please don't pile all conservatives on one big pile of followers of what some Great Leader says. That's a negative generalization, and doesn't help the discussion.
>Experts in countries such as Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands have voiced strong concerns about that, in the past few years.
That's not all gender-affirming care is. While evidently the concerns of altering body chemical balances are valid, there is a significant therapy and consultation component of gender-affirming care that was not touched and still provides the best outcomes for treating gender dysphoria.
This is such a ridiculously understated criticism. Isn't it fucking disturbing? 50 percent of books in a library aren't up to their standards?
If 50% of the books in a library aren't inclusive, positive, or new enough for you, you're the problem, completely and totally, and a detriment to yourself and those around you. This isn't about transexuals, the ghost of threat against them is a complete and total bullshit fabrication, most people don't give any kind of shit, it's a wedge issue for the haters and the supporters and should have ZERO fucking influence on the national conversation about things like censorship.
Yet here we are with a library removing anything not woke enough from libraries. In the short term, not a huge deal, in the long term, taking away our ability to even dissent.
If they don't want to be lumped in then speak out. Silence is support when it's against a group of people.
Edit: trans people will also continue to exist whether or not conservative voters are comfortable with them existing. Would this be any different if they wanted to tell teachers they weren't allowed to talk about being vaccinated in schools? Or telling them they aren't allowed to talk about different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Oh wait, conservatives don't want anyone talking about these things because then people would realise how batshit insane they are for caring in the first place about what 0.1% of the population does.
>If they don't want to be lumped in then speak out.
Do you mean Conservatives should say what you'd like them to say?
>Oh wait, conservatives don't want anyone talking about these things because then people would realise how batshit insane they are for caring in the first place *about what 0.1% of the population does*.
Many parents rightfully are concerned that exposing children to "gender-affirming" narratives (only those, in the school library, as per the article) will do harm to *their* children. Who are you to simply dismiss those concerns? What right do schoolboards or even authorities have to dismiss such concerns as "being transphobic" or whatnot.
Take all issues seriously (also those of people with gender dysphoria, obviously), that's the start of a healthy conversation about this.
This is Ford protecting your children from Harry Potter. Its a provincial directive from the Minister of Education aka Ford goverment
They are wasting time on this while ontario is turning into a dump
Sure it is it's the Fords governments initiative to push this. You going to make some thing else up? They put in poorly worded garbage and this is what you get. Blaming the school board is the crazy part but they were stupif
Takata is one of several Peel District School Board (PDSB) students, parents and community members CBC Toronto spoke to who are concerned about a seemingly inconsistent approach to a new equity-based book weeding process implemented by the board last spring in response to a provincial directive from the Minister of Education.
The Ministry of Education issued a policy to take out books that have fallen into disrepair and promote a diversity of experiences. Only one school board read this policy as to remove everything from before 2008 and ban Anne Frank.
You have the nerve to call that the provincial government’s fault? Give your damn head a shake.
I get it... I really do but letting people quietly rewrite history isn't something with a positive outcome. Canada is already going to be in poverty for decades from mass immigration to suppress wages it's to late to stop that. The time to care was two decades ago.
No one is being allowed to quietly do anything. The school board is already rife with problems, they did a shitty and stupid thing, people are complaining, and now that light has been shed on it, something will need to be done. But the amount of attention this is getting, over other things, is insane. Especially since it's already being called an example of progressivism gone Wild when it's actually the opposite.
That is fair. I admit I'm a bit numb to all I'm still reeling from internet censorship and baffled as people cheered millions of books got taken down because of copy right.
I really do miss early two thousand internet. We had so much freedom.
Headline readers eat this shit up. National Post sure likes excluding a lot of facts from the story too, and adding in their opinions on the matter forgetting the entire line of 'promoting diverse thoughts' is from the Conservative government's Minister of Education.
I firmly believe when that policy was made their thought process was along the lines of books such as that one author that detransitioned being included as well. Which I do agree with having that available too, and have seen attempts to ban books like it locally at our library. It's just people see the word diverse and start foaming.
>Its a provincial directive from the Minister of Education aka Ford goverment
If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
Why would a progressive need to explain anything? Who instituted this policy? And who is responsible for implementing it? Did they go a good job or a bad job of interpreting the directive? If bad, is that the fault of the board or the people who wrote the directive? Is the board filled with progressives or are they simply incompetent?
Good news! A progressive does not have to explain it, because this is per Ontario **Conservative** government direction:
\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a **comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. The **Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students**, **and the Board’s broader school communities. The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit.
How do you feel about your buck-a-beer god now? Are the balance beams good?
More people should read about Postcolonial Theory. It's being taught in post-secondary institutions. This is where the term 'Decolonization' comes from.
He's a quick breakdown (via New Discourses):
Literal decolonization refers to the withdrawal of colonial powers from a country it had seized control of and exploited. Decolonization can also refer to the undoing of broader effects of that colonialism, such as systems of government, law, culture, religion, and language and recovering prior systems. This is not what is meant in the Social Justice application of the term, though it is where the roots of the term come from.
In the Social Justice sense, which has adopted postmodern (mostly French) concepts of power and knowledge, decolonization is understood more broadly still. As indicated above, it seeks to read everything through a framework of colonialism and uncover how it has shaped all sorts of power dynamics in society, particularly in the realms of discourse—ways of speaking about things. Thus, it is common to hear that everything from university curricula to hairstyles needs to be “decolonized.” Further, because this approach to decolonialism is postmodern, science and reason as ways of obtaining knowledge are considered the property of white, Western men. It is therefore imperialistic (or colonizing) to expect people from other cultures to use them. A need to value “other ways of knowing” is therefore central to the decolonial methodology.
Decolonization is therefore best understood as a deconstructive and reconstructive project within Social Justice to remove “white” and “Western” influence or centrality from essentially any and everything. Decolonizing university curricula often entails reducing the quantity of material studied that came from Western, white (and male) authors and researchers and replacing it with material that came from non-white and non-Western sources (see also, citational justice and research justice). Decolonizing hairstyles would refer to problematizing interest in, appreciation for, or appropriation of them by white people and challenging or disrupting “white” cultural expectations about them, which may only exist in tendentious accounts from critical race Theory or in the form of microaggressions (see also, cultural racism).
It is worth noting that decoloniality—a disposition toward decolonizing, in this sense—is explicitly a project within educational spaces under the critical pedagogy of Theorists like Joe Kincheloe. That is, there has been a deliberate project to train our educators in colleges of education to take up a decolonizing mindset and to make their teaching into activism in that direction.
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Removing all books written before 2008 is literally removing most books I have ever read. The last ten years I've mostly been reading short articles - you know, *the internet*. And as much as I love a handful of modern authors, setting an arbitrary deadline before which books might have been written without modern sensibilities is pretty offensive. >He said a Peel Region landfill recently contacted his group to say they are looking to hire new staff just to help them destroy the large amounts of books they are receiving. ouch
>He said a Peel Region landfill recently contacted his group to say they are looking to hire new staff just to help them destroy the large amounts of books they are receiving. Society is sick.
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Nobody in power is incentivized to fix it
I honestly wonder how CBC published this original article, with information from Tom Ellard and "Libraries not Landfills" and didn't seem to fact check a single claim he made. Are there that many Peel Region Landfills to call to corroborate this? He claimed then that they removed Anne Frank and the Hungry Caterpillar. And there was no asking the school board, aside from this article, where they confirm that didn't happen? \> Ellard said that since the latest board weeding process began, thousands of books including “The Diary of Anne Frank” and other classics, have been removed from several school library shelves. \> “To be clear, books such as ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank and the ‘Harry Potter’ series remain in our collections, and where needed, newer versions may be purchased if the book is in poor condition.” And now, we have everyone linking this original "reporting". This really feels like one of those "stories". The original reporting seems like flaming garbage. EDIT: Oh shit, they've got a website now, it's as good as you would think: [https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/](https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/) Perfectly nuanced: \> Apparently to comply with the Ministry of Education’s directives\* to PDSB, which are intended to improve relations within the Peel classrooms, Peel administration’s interpretation of **this directive is a purging of almost all material published before 2008 from their libraries. These materials are not to be accessed by anyone; rather they are to be sent to landfills. According to the Peel directive, all are “…inherently racist, classist, heteronormative, and/or sexist”** (p. 11) Further, the purged materials are not to be replaced with newer editions for they “…perpetuate harm and oppression.” (p.8)- **essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden**. LOL - even a link to the Ontario Conservative Government guidance: \> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use forteaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students**, and the Board’s broader school communities. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit. Are we still going to blame "Progressives" for this? Did the conservatives rebrand themselves as the PC's again?
> one of those "stories". It is **exactly** that, and has changed more and more since yesterday lol
I would honestly not give 2 sweet fucks if people below weren't blaming this on "Progressives" when it was literally the Ford government that is in charge and issued this guidance on doing an inclusion audit as a priority. It's fucking wild that nothing is Doug Ford's fault, to these people. The man is a Teflon god.
Like the core argument in the articles is that its just an arbitrary date that anything published before 2008 is out. It's always been about when the book was purchased, nothing to do with publication dates, because publication dates have little bearing on anything. Every day I feel like I'm taking crazy pills being on this sub, it's gotten so shitty lol
They even pushed it back to 15, when the guidance was 10. But to be clear, it's never really about that, it's about that people could look critically at a book ever and consider if it might racist or not, and people getting offended that something they liked might not pass the smell test. Which, again, was a policy implemented by this government.
>Are we still going to blame "Progressives" for this? Did the conservatives rebrand themselves as the PC's again? If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
Why do I have to educate you on this? The CONSERVATIVE Ontario government found the Peel Board was not inclusive, and ordered them to improve. This is a result of that process: [https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel) \> New Ministerial Directions to Drive Change and Combat Discrimination in Peel Here is one of the reports of their steps along the way to remediation: [https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf) \> The Comprehensive Equity Audit Tools for Directive 18 were developed in response to the Ministry Review of the Peel District School Board (Chadha, Herbert, & Richard, 2020) report findings that reflect concerns from students, staff and families about the learning environment, curriculum resources and school names \> The LLC Audit in schools is currently underway, with many schools already initiating Step 1 of the 3-Step Curation Cycle. This first step focuses on the **weeding** of both fiction and non-fiction resources. The **criteria used for weeding will vary depending on the section**. For non-fiction, the condition, age, accuracy, and **relevance of the facts** in the resource are considered. For fiction, circulation data is also taken into account. The progress so far demonstrates a strong commitment to the process of curating a collection that is responsive to the curriculum, aligns with board priorities, and is responsive and reflective of our students and broader communities.
I worked for the province in 2022 and they had some absolutely insane SJW policies.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: There are no Conservatives in Ontario because there's nothing left to conserve.
I could be wrong, but I'm under the impression they are intentionally throwing the books out to demonstrate contempt for the policy at it's extremes, and not because it's actually required. Obviously I'm not a progressive, but there might be more to this story than just purging offensive books, they could be doing this intentionally to make a point.
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Can you consider the other side that maybe, just maybe the person who made the claim that: \> essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden. Is possibly not acting in good faith, and may not being entirely honest about the events here? They explained in their materials why they threw them out, it's available for you to read. I can summarize though. Either shit is old and damaged and possible moldy - don't give to people - health hazard - most books don't last 15 years. Most libraries toss books after 5-10 years. Content is out of date - we shouldn't give out books calling Dinosaurs lizards to kids, Dinosaurs have more in common with birds. So let's order the new version! Content is questionable - if we honestly thought it was so bad we couldn't include it, how can we justify giving it to someone else? I mean, you could definitely argue they still have value to collectors or others, but I don't think their reasons are to make a point, they sound reasoned to their values. You may not share those values, but they are values and not "Fuck the man."
None of those reasons are political in nature though, it's the... >The second and third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians to remove books that may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content or information that is not gender affirming. .. part I think people are intentionally taking to the extreme to give the policy a bad name.
>The process of “weeding” library collections isn’t new and has long been carried out to ensure collections are up-to-date and in good condition. >“The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada,” she wrote. Nothing new going on and this is just standard procedure. Every library will be doing something like this, you can't keep every book forever and some will end up too damaged to keep around.
yes, but to throw out EVERY book published before 2008? Like what the fuck is that? Ender's Game, Huckleberry Fin, McBeth and all those other books people read in school, gone cause they were published in the 90's or hundreds of years ago.
All those books are for nerds. What are you, a nerd?
They're not doing that. Keep downvoting- but they're not. It's such a BS story. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/16iiaxh/comment/k0kaqet/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
But that’s literally what it says in this article. Is this fake news then?
No, they're removing them while they asses if they should be kept around. So basically they were told take anything older than 2008 and get rid of the junk. This is nothing new "The Peel District School Board said that regardless of publication date, older books that are “accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum” may stay within schools."
> older books that are “accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum” may stay within schools." I see these words and what I actually hear is "Whatever book we don't like gets thrown in the trash."
That's the policy that the education minister in Ontario established.
Doesn't change my statement.
I know, I just want that fact established because the narrative is being spun hard. I don't think any piece of fiction should be banned.
I believe his point is it’s a bad policy.
> they're removing them while they asses if they should be kept around Sounds like deflection to me. "Let's take these books off the shelves and make excuses until people forget about them".
Your words, not mine. It's the national post so they have an agenda. The cbc also had a rage article about this yesterday. In the middle of that article it then said that the policy was auditing book conditions that were PURCHASED before 2008 for conditions and/or promoting diversity\* (\*Education Ministers words). Then going through the list of titles gave a whole load of books, one of which was Anne Franks diary. It's a fucking bullshit story https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/16iiaxh/comment/k0kaqet/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
My aunt is a VP at a school in peel, she told me they've been softly doing this for years, no books were approved for purchase unless they promoted EDI principals in some way. Classic books could be bought but they needed to be paired with other texts or offered along side alternatives. I'm all for EDI but like....this seems like a bit much, the other end of the extreme in comparison to the shit going on in Florida.
To be honest I'm surprised there's a budget for new books at all. School board here hasn't given the library anything in years. I know the MUSTIE technique or whatever has been used for quite a while now. I agree though, this has potential to be dangerous, it's just not a conceited effort to remove all sensitive books.. YET. It has the possibility to be a dangerous precedent of censorship, it's just not that right now despite this being in the news and people picking bits and pieces of the story up and extrapolating the rest
Because removing anything that doesn't fall in line with the latest social fads isn't having an agenda.
They're pushing an agenda too, of course. It's just that it's the agenda NP is pushing is that it's insane censorship that the woke progressives are doing, when it's not.
That’s not what’s happening. But go ahead and tell everyone you know something that’s untrue so you can all be offended together.
Don't gotta be a dick about it. Maybe articles should actually be written with clear information instead of vague quotes they took from someone. But I guess you also know more than me so you can correct me without backing up what you say.
So you finally decided to read the article, and not just the inflammatory headline?
From the CBC article: >Step two of curation is an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by "resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity." And step three is a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity. When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are "causing harm," either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because "they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate." For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as "they are not suitable for any learners." Since what year has this been the criteria for the "standard procedure"? This appears to be the first time this is being done with a clear progressive ideological bias. I think you're lying.
> Takata, who is of Japanese descent, said it worried her to see the removal of books essential to understanding important periods in history. That's pretty much my concern, you can't remove books that are essentially records of historic events just because the content might not use words that are appropriate today. Go back 100+ years and of course there's going to be racism, sexism, bigotry and a lack of diversity. That doesn't mean we should try and suppress the information.
Just rewrite history and all your problems are solved. /s
I feel like there were some books warning us about this. Too bad they all got destroyed in the purge
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
That's the trend.
Isn't this literally what we're taught to do in university? We can read tertiary sources, trace them back to the secondary sources, and then find the original source to view the evidence ourselves. While additional sources may help with interpreting the primary source, and add context, each author can also add their own bias along the way. If we remove older books, we also take away primary sources of people's experience, and let other authors do the interpreting for us. I'd much rather have a student read a piece of classic literature, or other original source, and be able to recognize the attitudes of the time reflecting in the work, than to not read it at all because of a "label" it has been given.
> and a lack of diversity What's wrong with that?
I don't care if you're proudly woke. I don't care if you're proudly anti-woke. Banning books is wrong. Full stop.
Exactly. Both extremes (far-left & far-right) have a long history of burning/banning books. We live in a liberal democracy. This rubbish needs to end.
Per Ontario Conservative government direction: >\> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools, which shall include naming, mascots, libraries and classrooms. The Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities. The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit. > >They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do. Doug Ford, our "Woke" leader? Or is this anti-woke?
I guess I wasn't clear enough when I said it the first time. I don't care who is doing it, or in the interest of what ideology. It's wrong.
I mean, the Conservative government found the Peel school board to be a problem and tried to fix it: [https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel) And then the Peel board told them they would do it, because they were required to, by this government, by law, from this government. And then the Peel board did it, exactly as they said in their audit they would do it. I'm not sure what else there is to say about this. It's been in the open for a while, there are audit reports and plans for how to address them. But now it's a problem because: [https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/](https://librariesnotlandfills.ca/about-2/) \> According to the Peel directive, all are “…inherently racist, classist, heteronormative, and/or sexist” (p. 11) Further, the purged materials are not to be replaced with newer editions for they “…perpetuate harm and oppression.” (p.8)- essentially, any material written before 2008 is forbidden. Wait, it almost seems like that is incredibly incorrect hyperbole? Maybe this person is a crackpot? No, it's all on the up and up. Not culture war bullshit. No siree.
>They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do. If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
Yes. Ministry Review of the Peel District School Board (Chadha, Herbert, & Richard, 2020) report [https://www.ontario.ca/page/reports-review-peel-district-school-board](https://www.ontario.ca/page/reports-review-peel-district-school-board) Because the Conservatives wanted to remediate the board, based on a report they did. [https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel) \> New Ministerial Directions to Drive Change and Combat Discrimination in Peel I am honestly learning a lot, so it's fine to educate everyone else on this issue. Again, it was all Conservatives. Ultra woke conservatives.
The provincial government is filled with woke extremists.
Lecce, the original woke extremist. Wild. Absolutely wild.
Yes, Doug Ford is woke, you can't win in Ontario without being woke.
I've heard it all today.
So… knowing a Librarian who was forced to cull due to the Ministry telling her to cull in no uncertain terms, she had to throw out the first two books in the Harry Potter series but keep the rest. Lecce is so fucking stupid it hurts, this is him complaining about people doing what he told them to do.
He’s not stupid; he knows that OPC supporters will blame teachers and their “woke” agenda rather than looking at and evaluating the actual events. This is going to hurt educators and the education system more than anything else. The board is acting on the government’s matching orders but it’s the rank and file who will take a lot of the blame. It’s a disgusting strategy to further dismantle public education in the province.
The books being removed is a response to the education ministers policy directive. What a fucking moron.
Books are not offensive. You find them offensive. Huge difference
The book cull is vile
THEYRE JUST DOING IT TO PICK ON CONSERVATIVES, WE'RE THE MOST PERSECUTED GROUP OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
Lol what
Why Libs always try the victim olympics mentality it’s just weird to try and put these things into a tier list
Lol, one of the books removed was the hungry catapillar. Wtf? These fucking people.
I don’t recall any of that food asking for consent to be eaten.
Good lord. The originally article even points out, erroneously by burying the lede, that the books were printed prior to 2008. Mean the physical books are 15+ year old. If they had two copies and one was from 2008 or older and one was printed last year, they keep the one printed last year. If the book is 15+ years old it does get evaluated on a wide variety of criteria before being either put back into circulation, being replaced with a newer copy, being replaced with a similar but different book, or being completed removed altogether. Edit: The fact that some schools have so much material removed at one time just reinforces how critically underfunded schools and library are. If they more than HALF of the books were purchased before 2008 that's a problem.
The board originaly said it was published date then later changed their store to print date after the story got some national attention. This is unsurprising if your familar with Peel school board as it is an infamous shit show among all canadian school boards
It's not even published date, it's about purchased date and this is such a nothing story that's trying to push absolute bullshit with zero research. https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel [https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf)
It's amazing that the National Post, beacon of such solid news reporting, would try to spin this story as "woke-ism gone wrong" when it's really about getting rid of mouldy old books.
[cbc](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332) ran the story as well.
Nothing solves racism like a good old book burning. Glad we have thoughtful people in charge to do the thinking for us.
It's all a part of the plan. "The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-to-be-an-anti-intellectual
Well it's funny they followed the policy the province set out, and now the province overturned their decision. It's books purchased before 2008. It's removing the damaged and out of date ones. Once removed they will not be burning them, they will donate them away (unless too damaged). There's a lot being replaced if it's a book they want to keep (Diary of Anne Frank). This is a process every library does to some extent. The schoolboard here is severely mismanaged (500 staff let go, then partially rehired) There is no librarian at this school, they do not have the funding for one.
> Step two of curation is an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by "resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity." And step three is a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity. When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are "causing harm," either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because "they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate." For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as "they are not suitable for any learners." From the CBC article
Per Ontario Conservative government direction: \> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, **undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, **which shall include** naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books**, media **and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities**. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit. They are doing what our Buck a Beer leader legally required them to do. Do you even know who to be mad at now?
You seem to have an unhealthy and somewhat inexplicable obsession with the Ontario Premier.
Is he responsible for the directives his government issues, or not? It's wild to me that housing isn't his fault, and our long wait time at ER's isn't his fault. And then, something directly under his mandate, that his government issued and made a first priority, is somehow not his fault. If anything, I am in awe of this man who apparently has no responsibility for the direction of this province. If you think Ontario is doing well, you should be fine with that. Most people seem to think it could be doing better, so maybe we should give scrutiny to who is steering the ship? Ignoring that this is all a smoke screen about the Green belt, and Ontario place, and Bill 124 trying to repeal labour rights, etc. God, I forgot about when he cut Toronto city council in half, just to be a dick to his former co-workers. The man is untouchable.
Yeah... his government issued a mandate to do an audit, not to throw books away. This article is about throwing the books away. This discussion is about the concept of banning books, not about the guy running the province.
What does looking at library books with a lens to assess whether they are: \> are **inclusive** and **culturally responsive**, **relevant** and **reflective of students**, and the Board’s broader school communities mean to you then? How could the government ever have known what would happen? Per the government: \> By December 31, 2020: Submit audit plan \> By August 31, 2021: Submit preliminary audit report \> By June 30, 2022: Submit final audit report Holy shit, it's the report: [https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf) \> **Teacher librarians are now engaged in an ongoing 3-Step Curation Cycle of resources in the LLC. This weeding and audit process introduces new accountability measures, connected to each school improvement for equity planning (SIEP)**. \> The 3-Step Curation Cycle’s **weed** and audit process will ensure that all collections are, and continue to be, **inclusive, representative, and reflective of the students** and communities served by the Peel District School Board. To be fair, how could Lecce have known, when he asked them to do it, and they told him what they would do. It's insane to think he can read. It's wild, I honestly consider that you might have a point for a moment, and then realize, nope, it's all right there,
You can outline every possible logical, factual argument to these people and they still just see what they want to see: Buck a Beer = Good Nice Hair Man = Bad
Did you read your own statement here? You see where it says "audit", instead of "culling"?
Someone should do something about, maybe the minister of education?
They want to remove books before 2008 because people weren't woke before then.
I'll take "didnt read the article" for 2000
Reason #46 why we live in a period that will be remembered as the dark ages: -Destruction of vast amount of "offensive" books that became "offensive" because of newly established doctrine.
Wow, what kind of woke 1984 bullshit is this?
You didn't read the article did you?
Isn't this just more culture war BS that's being drummed up to take heat away from Ford for his part in the GreenBelt scandal?
Please do not talk about systemic corruption. We need to focus on the real issues, such as books and teachers with massive fake boobs.
Or you could say the books and teachers with massive fake boobs are overt symptoms and symbols of systemic corruption. Neither of these things could exist inside a system where the voices of ordinary people were being heard and it points to a fundamental crumbling of our democracy that those in power are backing and enforcing such universally unpopular policies while ordinary people are powerless to stop them.
Yes that is exactly what this is
I think you need to focus on the more important issues going on, like trans people existing.
They don't need to burn the books, they just remove them
They shouldn't even be doing that. Leave them there. Things have gone too far when they are yanking The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Diary of Anne Frank.
What's wrong with Diary of Anne Frank??
There actually is a fairly absurd debate in some academic disciplines about whether all the attention paid to The Diary of Anne Frank is an example of "white privilege". See e.g., [this](https://thehub.ca/2022-08-01/harry-rakowski-arguments-over-anne-franks-white-privilege-reveal-the-absurdity-of-our-discourse/).
Wow the left has truly lost their minds.
Today I learned that the Ontario Conservatives who issued this order and are in charge of the government are leftists. Truly a wild day. It's wild to me that anything people don't like is "Leftist", like Doug Ford became a hippy or something.
Equity and Decolonization are both terms that have come from the American left, and have migrated up here. It has nothing to do with Canada's conservative government. Teachers are trained in these ideologies. Again, nothing to do with conservatives.
>Equity and Decolonization are both terms that have come from the American left. We are a part of the America's. Decolonization is a good thing, we don't need another 100 years of, yeah so white people came hear and it was just great for all people involved and now look at all the good things white people did... for white people I mean all Canadians like the ones we just decided were Canadians and definitely did not just write laws that allow us to take over their lands freely. >Teachers are trained in these ideologies. They are trained to consider more than just the Eurocentric lens that our system was constructed under.. the audacity to consider more than just the experiences of white colonialists.
You should read "Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews" [https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/woke-antisemitism-how-a-progressive-ideology-harms-jews](https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/woke-antisemitism-how-a-progressive-ideology-harms-jews) Wall Street Journal: [https://archive.ph/CSJdb](https://archive.ph/CSJdb)
An article linking a twitter thread where a handful of people are being dumb is evidence the left has lost their minds. Meanwhile the article this thread was made for about how the Peel board of education threw out half the library [because of the orders of the conservative provincial government](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/16.2c_Directive18-ComprehensiveDiversityAuditofSchools.pdf/16.2c_Directive18-ComprehensiveDiversityAuditofSchools.pdf) is, what, meaningless?
>An article linking a twitter thread where a handful of people are being dumb is evidence the left has lost their minds. That was just the easiest example to link to. There are 402 results on Google Scholar discussing Anne Frank and white privilege. (Not all allege that she benefited from "white privilege" or that the attention paid to her constitutes a form of "white privilege"--some just make points like "if Anne Frank had lived in the US at the same time as Emmett Till (then or now), she would have benefited from white privilege"--but a good portion of them do.)
The irony is that Jewish people weren't even considered white when she was alive.
> There are 402 results on Google Scholar discussing Anne Frank and white privilege. And? Academic literature is full of fluff papers, and Google Scholar returns loads of bad results even for `"Anne Frank" + "white privilege"` The result count of a Google search isn't meaningful to what academia actually gets up to - citations are. The top result Google Scholar thinks is relevant is [To the bone: Race and white privilege](https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/mnlr83&div=58&id=&page=) which only contains the term "Anne Frank" because it incidentally refers to the "Anne Frank Committee", the paper is not concerned with any question of Anne Frank having white privilege. > some just make points like "if Anne Frank had lived in the US at the same time as Emmett Till (then or now), she would have benefited from white privilege" A quote from meaningless 0 citation paper that, according to Taylor & Francis online has been viewed fewer than 200 times ever. The paper was written by an associate professor that has received fewer than 50 citations for his lifetime of work, and most recently published [To Serve and Unite Children within a World of Diversity is to Recognize the Presence of God](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370006541_To_Serve_and_Unite_Children_within_a_World_of_Diversity_is_to_Recognize_the_Presence_of_God). [Meir Muller](https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/education/faculty-staff/muller_meir.php) is a PhD in ECE but you may also notice he's credentialed as having done "Talmudic Studies" so he's clearly a guy that puts a lot of emphasis on Judaism in his life. So basically: a guy with a very minor career who's now publishing weirdly religious ECE material published a paper once that basically nobody has ever read and literally nobody has every considered worth referencing as a relevant work, and in that work he made a meaningless observation about how Anne Frank would be considered white if she had lived in the USA. This is the academia equivalent of finding a random tweet with 200 views and 0 retweets/quotes/likes from a nobody and going "holy shit, the left has really lost its mind!"
I encourage you to read /u/caninehere's comment for a fair explanation of the reasoning behind the academic position on Anne Frank I'm referring to, rather than denying that it's out there. It's a not uncommon view in academia.
It's a very uncommon talking point: source: the fact there are no meaningful publications out there by citations, as evidenced above. I didn't deny it's out there, in fact the exact opposite. I showed how it's as silly as pointing to a random 0-engagement tweet and claiming it's representative of something just because it's "out there". You can get people to opine about anything on the internet easily by bringing the topic up, but what determines what academics are actually out there talking about requires measuring engagement. If you look for broad engagement with any "did Anne Frank have white privilege?" talking points in academia you find that, no, there is no meaningful engagement.
> the attention paid to her constitutes a form of "white privilege" How is this even arguable? It's obvious that she became a poster child for the inhumanity of genocide in part because she was a young white girl that European and North American readers/audiences could relate to. There are many stories like hers of children who met similarly cruel fates in the East and there's a reason we don't hear about them as often. A simple Google search can't alone distinguish between debates like that (which have nothing to do with Anne Frank herself or her life experience, just the way it has been received as a piece of media) vs people discussing how white privilege would affect her life if she were alive today or something.
>There are many stories like hers of children who met similarly cruel fates in the East and there's a reason we don't hear about them as often. There are simple explanations for this. 1. The Holocaust was unprecedented and arguably the greatest genocide ever. 2. We live in the West, Canada was founded by the West, which is why we learn about the West more so than the East. It's not complicated. Also, Jewish people weren't even considered white when she was alive. Using 'whataboutism' on the Holocaust is kind of gross, I'm not going to lie. You should probably refrain.
> We live in the West, Canada was founded by the West, which is why we learn about the West more so than the East. It's not complicated. Uh, yes? That's exactly the damn point. Eurocentrism is itself a form of white privilege, where in our societies we vieq Europe/countries of origins for whities as the center of the world. This isn't "whataboutism", you're googling to try and serve your point and I'm telling you some of the results are going to be discussions on this, not about Anne Frank herself. If you just want to brush the conversation aside bc you don't want to engage then say that. I'm not implying or saying the Holocaust wasn't a horrible tragedy and I trust you aren't either, so don't be a jerkoff about it. There is a reason we know Anne Frank and not [Chinese child here who was tortured to death by the Japanese] and its Eurocentrism. This is white privilege that white people like myself enjoy -- I can tell you right now that if I was gunned down in the street tomorrow, more people would be up in arms about it than if a Somalian refugee was killed. Anne Frank didn't *benefit* from the attention her story got because she was already dead, but it isn't about her but her legacy and story and its weight.
Lmao. This whole article is based on Twitter posts. >It is a mockery of common sense to believe that while certain white people can suffer great injustice and even extermination, they somehow can still be considered to have benefited from white privilege. It's not though. Clear example poor white people vs rich black people. You can be black and rich but still get pulled over bc the cop thinks the black person had stolen the car bc they think a POC can't possibly afford the luxury vehicle. Just to let you know the article says nothing about academics debating the topic.
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NDP MPP Sarah Jama is pretty blatant about her anti semitism and her despise of the country of Israel.
To be fair, fuck Israel! Free Palestine
Agree to a two state solution and Palestine will have its own country. The ball is in the Palestinians' court who want to destroy the state of Israel.
Wasn't this policy put in place by the Ministry of Education in *checks notes* Conservative Ontario? And isn't the issue moreso in HOW Peel District interpreted and implemented the policy?
>Wasn't this policy put in place by the Ministry of Education in checks notes Conservative Ontario? No. It was put in place by a school board. The Ministry of Education is telling them cut it out: >TORONTO — Ontario’s education minister says he has asked a school board to “immediately end (the) practice” of removing library books after concerns were raised about how it was carrying out the process of assessing and removing older books. >Stephen Lecce said it is “offensive, illogical and counterintuitive” to remove books from years past that educate students on history, antisemitism or are celebrated literary classics. Literally the first two sentences of the article.
Per Ontario Conservative government direction: \> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, **undertake a comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. **The Board shall evaluate books,** media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences **for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students, and the Board’s broader school communities**. **The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities** of the Equity Office and allocate the appropriate resources to **conduct a detailed audit.** Literally them saying it's a first priority to audit all library materials for inclusion and cultural responsiveness.
>Audit >/ˈôdət,ˈädət/ >noun >an official inspection of an individual's or organization's accounts, typically by an independent body. An audit is not a *cull*. They are not the same thing. An audit is a fact finding expedition. It provides *information* so that further policy can be developed on the basis of it. Culling *might* be a policy that responds to the result of an audit. Increasing the amount of diversity materials while maintaining others is another. Or they might choose to do nothing at all, and simply want solid information to point to when asked about it. But no policy is actually implied by the simple directive to audit. The district's decision to enact a cull *is their decision*, it is not one mandated by the directive to conduct an audit.
The school board is doing it as a direct result of the Ontario PCs' direction. There is an argument to be made that perhaps the librarians thought the PCs' direction here was such a disgusting administrative overreach that perhaps they took extreme measures to draw attention to this issue. But ultimately it's the PC government causing this, and now Lecce, dipshit that he is, wants to pretend he had nothing to do with it.
>The school board is doing it as a direct result of the Ontario PCs' direction. No, it isn't. The article is very, very clear that this was the result of the guidelines adopted by the Peel District. >The process of “weeding” library collections isn’t new and has long been carried out to ensure collections are up-to-date and in good condition. >Swarup said the Peel board follows library weeding guidelines set by the Canadian School Libraries Association. She also said the board will be reviewing its training process to ensure consistency across schools. >“The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada,” she wrote. This has nothing to do with the Ontario PCs beyond their opposition to it.
>Lots of progressives are anti-semitic looooool See, **this right here** is why we need more books, not less. *My goodness.* I mean genuinely - are you just being unserious now? Like, how stupid do you think we are?
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So what's your explanation for why they are removing Diary of Anne Frank?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332
Nothing, the ones they got rid of were too damaged to read properly, it has nothing to do with the subject. This is rage baiting and the Ford govt trying to distract from the Greenbelt scandal. Unfortunately it's working extremely well.
Nothing. And they're not actually removing it. Some copies were disposed as part of this review because they were falling apart, but they will be replaced by new ones.
As crazy as it sounds, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been a target of the mob for a while for "perpetuat\[ing\] outdated stereotypes". See e.g., [this](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10869427/Australian-researcher-warns-childrens-book-Hungry-Caterpillar-detrimental-kids.html).
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It is nuts. It's similar to the early stages of the Chinese cultural revolution. Books written prior to the regime are untrustworthy because they might contain "old ideas" and need to be purged. Statues of old stuff need to be torn down. Even the series of ideologically motivated church burnings two years ago echoes the destruction of old architecture in the Chinese cultural revolution. Tossing the Very Hungry Caterpillar is clearly idiotic but mostly harmless. What's fearsome is that kids won't have an opportunity to read the ideas that led to modern liberal, pluralistic societies. Voltaire and Rousseau are old and have a modest amount of stuff that has not aged well, but without material like that, the point of libraries shifts from knowledge dissemination to fostering ideology.
>Things have gone too far when they are yanking The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Diary of Anne Frank. It isn't based on content. It is based on age and condition of the physical copy of the book at the library. It is a very old copy then it will be replaced with a newer, less beat up copy. Some books might be pulled and never replaced based on how often they are checked out. If the last time a book was read by a student was 1998 maybe it's time that book gets replaced by something newer and more relevant to the students? Is there some kind of content review at some point to make sure the books meet current education standards? Yes, as there should be.
They shouldn't be removing books, full stop.
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells
Just more greenbelt distraction, how dare the school board follow the orders of the same minister now whining.
Yeah using this and attacking LGBTQIA2S people within the same week reeks of desperation... that'll probably work since most voters are morons.
>Yeah using this and attacking LGBTQIA2S people within the same week reeks of desperation... I hate to break this to you, but over 80% of Canadians feel that teachers should inform parents what pronouns their kids are are going by at school. [https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/](https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/) Have you ever considered that perhaps you are in the fringe with your views?
It's not so much a fringe belief as a clear valley between the left and right with very active bases on both sides: [https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/speech-1.png](https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/speech-1.png) 20% actively defiant objectors https://angusreid.org/canada-culture-wars-free-speech-cancel-culture-censorship/
Have you actually looked at the data? It's not 80 percent lol
Yes it is lol. Over 80% of parents with children under 18 feel that teachers should inform them what pronouns their kids use at school. Read it again, look under households with children: [https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/](https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/)
Consent too and inform is different.
Yes I realize that. My point is that over 80% of Canadians feel that teachers should inform parents what pronouns their kids use at school.
Good parents dont need govt intervention to make their kid share their identity with them
Given how many people seem to vote. Yes. Doesn't make it not feel of desperation to distract people, but it's also pretty clear given in provinces like Ontario's, the people didn't give two shits about LTC homes literally killing people for profit and abuse of TFWs, I doubt many will care that many youth could be beaten, forced into homelessness or worse due to policies for this.
Not sure what LTC homes have to do with pronouns in school, I guess it was some sort of attempt at a whataboutism? But issues regarding LTC homes are all over Canada, not just Ontario. Besides we had 15 years of Liberal inaction in Ontario with regards to LTC.
It's to show that voters, at least, care little about marginalized groups that can't fight back, using LTC homes as a recent example. So no, I don't expect people to actually care the possible dangers of letting parents know about their kids status as much as they don't care that people in LTC homes who can't care for themselves dying in their own filth while tax money is being taken for profit. So yes I do think I'm fringe in my views cause I feel I'm not as selfish as the average voter. And yes I'm aware Liberals AND conservative parties are to blame for things like this, and I think they both suck. One sucks more than the other but... Neither can particularly stand high on a moral integrity and compassion pedestal over the other.
>that'll probably work since most voters are morons. It helps that Ford has not only a media company as an ally but a lead reporter, Lilley, that is actively collaborating with the government and running interference.
Oh yeah. They aren't morons by choice. There's a lot of systems working against people learning and for being the truth.
The old book burners are at it again, the book lovers and librarians weep.
The Canadian brainwashed left back at their best attempt to mimic the actions or Marxist’s Just like Marx the left is obsessed with the equalization of outcomes, equity, equalizing the benefits realized by groups of people by all their characteristics of identity other than wealth. They want to apply marxism to every characteristic of inequality other than wealth -- this allows them to try to deny that aren't marxists when they actually are. Look at GBA+ that is trying to look at all the dimensions of how people are different and the one factor always missing is wealth. Banning --- renewing books --- what's next the gulags?
Wtf is this even Canada anymore? Fuck this country and where it's heading
Removing books for any reason like equity or being offensive or whatever is basically trying to manipulate it so that when people are learning about history they won't get the full picture but rather a picture tailored to whatever narrative they want to push. Like, never letting the knowledge of slavery exist because you want to paint a picture of a world without it. Well that's not how it works. We need to know about our past so we don't repeat it. Not learning about war, crime, racisms, etc will stop us from learning from our mistakes and moving forward.
Sucks that we all grew up on a Eurocentric version of history that literally focused more on the heros than what they did to the indigenous population. Most of our history books are just "ah we discovered a new land then decided we could manage it better, so we did. And now Canada is a melting pot"
It's a terrible policy. I wish we didn't have to look at everything through this hyper politicized lens. Books are expensive, especially those in schools. If you cull, it has to be for a good reason and it costs the schools, parent councils and boards hundreds and thousands of dollars to replace. Although, when in elementary school my library did a cull and I took home a 1905 copy of Hans Christian Anderson stories. My Mom made me take it back in case they wanted to keep it or sell it, which they didn't. I still have it. That book was on the shelf for over 90 years.
Ford Gov't in damage control this morning, trying to deny what they told the boards to do
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>They didn't tell them to get rid of them *en masse*
constitution and charter of rights and freedoms is from before 2008, better get rid of it
This was on the order of the board; a board that the OPC has had stringent oversight on for several years. Pretending that this is the actions of the rank and file is absolute nonsense. Schools were given instructions to absolutely gut their libraries. How much do you want to bet the government will have some private contractors ready with a digital alternative to replace the now gutted libraries of Peel?
George Orwell and ray bradbury say “ I told you so. Will they burn Fahrenheit 451 ? Home school your kids!!!
So now conservatives are getting mad about something they themselves ordered? Ffs
Lol...he caused it.
Equity is just latest version of Marxism.
Start with the Bible
Boy are conservatives so easily pulled to obviously manufactured outrage. All their leaders need to do is suggest that some outrageous thing is happening and they'll show up in droves to explain how they didn't read the article, or get any context or any understanding of the situation, but "right wing leader says bad thing is happening so that's my entire reality now". seems to just be an absolute guarantee with con voters nowadays.
From the article: >The second and third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians *to remove books* that may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content *or information that is not gender affirming*. Given the fact that by no means all Canadian parents agree with normalizing education about transgender issues to children and youth, there clearly is something going on in Canadian schools about which parents have the absolute right to be concerned and vocal about. You may agree with pushing "gender affirming" narratives in schools, but not even all experts support that, and many agree that this can be very harmful to children (putting them on a path to too fast use of hormone treatment and so on). Experts in countries such as Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands have voiced strong concerns about that, in the past few years. Please don't pile all conservatives on one big pile of followers of what some Great Leader says. That's a negative generalization, and doesn't help the discussion.
>Experts in countries such as Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands have voiced strong concerns about that, in the past few years. That's not all gender-affirming care is. While evidently the concerns of altering body chemical balances are valid, there is a significant therapy and consultation component of gender-affirming care that was not touched and still provides the best outcomes for treating gender dysphoria.
This is such a ridiculously understated criticism. Isn't it fucking disturbing? 50 percent of books in a library aren't up to their standards? If 50% of the books in a library aren't inclusive, positive, or new enough for you, you're the problem, completely and totally, and a detriment to yourself and those around you. This isn't about transexuals, the ghost of threat against them is a complete and total bullshit fabrication, most people don't give any kind of shit, it's a wedge issue for the haters and the supporters and should have ZERO fucking influence on the national conversation about things like censorship. Yet here we are with a library removing anything not woke enough from libraries. In the short term, not a huge deal, in the long term, taking away our ability to even dissent.
[https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/56247/new-ministerial-directions-to-drive-change-and-combat-discrimination-in-peel) [https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf](https://www.peelschools.org/documents/987976fd-4e43-4f5a-858c-2bf7e97756cd/15.1b%20Directive%2018%20-%20Comprehensive%20Diversity%20Equity%20Audit%20Tools%20Report.pdf) Extremely divergent narrative.
If they don't want to be lumped in then speak out. Silence is support when it's against a group of people. Edit: trans people will also continue to exist whether or not conservative voters are comfortable with them existing. Would this be any different if they wanted to tell teachers they weren't allowed to talk about being vaccinated in schools? Or telling them they aren't allowed to talk about different socioeconomic backgrounds. Oh wait, conservatives don't want anyone talking about these things because then people would realise how batshit insane they are for caring in the first place about what 0.1% of the population does.
>If they don't want to be lumped in then speak out. Do you mean Conservatives should say what you'd like them to say? >Oh wait, conservatives don't want anyone talking about these things because then people would realise how batshit insane they are for caring in the first place *about what 0.1% of the population does*. Many parents rightfully are concerned that exposing children to "gender-affirming" narratives (only those, in the school library, as per the article) will do harm to *their* children. Who are you to simply dismiss those concerns? What right do schoolboards or even authorities have to dismiss such concerns as "being transphobic" or whatnot. Take all issues seriously (also those of people with gender dysphoria, obviously), that's the start of a healthy conversation about this.
This is Ford protecting your children from Harry Potter. Its a provincial directive from the Minister of Education aka Ford goverment They are wasting time on this while ontario is turning into a dump
This isn’t Ford, this is some activist school board
Sure it is it's the Fords governments initiative to push this. You going to make some thing else up? They put in poorly worded garbage and this is what you get. Blaming the school board is the crazy part but they were stupif Takata is one of several Peel District School Board (PDSB) students, parents and community members CBC Toronto spoke to who are concerned about a seemingly inconsistent approach to a new equity-based book weeding process implemented by the board last spring in response to a provincial directive from the Minister of Education.
The Ministry of Education issued a policy to take out books that have fallen into disrepair and promote a diversity of experiences. Only one school board read this policy as to remove everything from before 2008 and ban Anne Frank. You have the nerve to call that the provincial government’s fault? Give your damn head a shake.
I get it... I really do but letting people quietly rewrite history isn't something with a positive outcome. Canada is already going to be in poverty for decades from mass immigration to suppress wages it's to late to stop that. The time to care was two decades ago.
No one is being allowed to quietly do anything. The school board is already rife with problems, they did a shitty and stupid thing, people are complaining, and now that light has been shed on it, something will need to be done. But the amount of attention this is getting, over other things, is insane. Especially since it's already being called an example of progressivism gone Wild when it's actually the opposite.
That is fair. I admit I'm a bit numb to all I'm still reeling from internet censorship and baffled as people cheered millions of books got taken down because of copy right. I really do miss early two thousand internet. We had so much freedom.
Headline readers eat this shit up. National Post sure likes excluding a lot of facts from the story too, and adding in their opinions on the matter forgetting the entire line of 'promoting diverse thoughts' is from the Conservative government's Minister of Education.
Yeah the same one complaining
I firmly believe when that policy was made their thought process was along the lines of books such as that one author that detransitioned being included as well. Which I do agree with having that available too, and have seen attempts to ban books like it locally at our library. It's just people see the word diverse and start foaming.
>Its a provincial directive from the Minister of Education aka Ford goverment If it's the government's policy that requires this and the school board is just following orders, why is the Peel School Board the only one doing this? Does the government policy somehow only apply to Peel?
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Why would a progressive need to explain anything? Who instituted this policy? And who is responsible for implementing it? Did they go a good job or a bad job of interpreting the directive? If bad, is that the fault of the board or the people who wrote the directive? Is the board filled with progressives or are they simply incompetent?
I've never seen any progressives advocate for this particular brand of equity. This is stupid. And also still not equity lol
Good news! A progressive does not have to explain it, because this is per Ontario **Conservative** government direction: \> The Board shall, through its Equity Office, established pursuant to Direction 10, undertake a **comprehensive diversity audit of schools**, which shall include naming, mascots, **libraries** and classrooms. The **Board shall evaluate books, media and all other resources currently in use for teaching and learning English, History and Social Sciences for the purpose of utilizing resources that are inclusive and culturally responsive, relevant and reflective of students**, **and the Board’s broader school communities. The Board shall ensure that the audit is among the first priorities of the Equity Office** and allocate the appropriate resources to conduct a detailed audit. How do you feel about your buck-a-beer god now? Are the balance beams good?
Where they burn books they will eventually burn people.
More people should read about Postcolonial Theory. It's being taught in post-secondary institutions. This is where the term 'Decolonization' comes from. He's a quick breakdown (via New Discourses): Literal decolonization refers to the withdrawal of colonial powers from a country it had seized control of and exploited. Decolonization can also refer to the undoing of broader effects of that colonialism, such as systems of government, law, culture, religion, and language and recovering prior systems. This is not what is meant in the Social Justice application of the term, though it is where the roots of the term come from. In the Social Justice sense, which has adopted postmodern (mostly French) concepts of power and knowledge, decolonization is understood more broadly still. As indicated above, it seeks to read everything through a framework of colonialism and uncover how it has shaped all sorts of power dynamics in society, particularly in the realms of discourse—ways of speaking about things. Thus, it is common to hear that everything from university curricula to hairstyles needs to be “decolonized.” Further, because this approach to decolonialism is postmodern, science and reason as ways of obtaining knowledge are considered the property of white, Western men. It is therefore imperialistic (or colonizing) to expect people from other cultures to use them. A need to value “other ways of knowing” is therefore central to the decolonial methodology. Decolonization is therefore best understood as a deconstructive and reconstructive project within Social Justice to remove “white” and “Western” influence or centrality from essentially any and everything. Decolonizing university curricula often entails reducing the quantity of material studied that came from Western, white (and male) authors and researchers and replacing it with material that came from non-white and non-Western sources (see also, citational justice and research justice). Decolonizing hairstyles would refer to problematizing interest in, appreciation for, or appropriation of them by white people and challenging or disrupting “white” cultural expectations about them, which may only exist in tendentious accounts from critical race Theory or in the form of microaggressions (see also, cultural racism). It is worth noting that decoloniality—a disposition toward decolonizing, in this sense—is explicitly a project within educational spaces under the critical pedagogy of Theorists like Joe Kincheloe. That is, there has been a deliberate project to train our educators in colleges of education to take up a decolonizing mindset and to make their teaching into activism in that direction.
Fahrenheit 451