Danielle Smith and the UCP’s book ban is censorship, poorly dressed as concern.
On July 4th, Alberta’s Education Minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, signed an order to remove all “materials containing explicit sexual content” from school libraries. As a result, many modern classics were removed from school shelves, including Margaret Atwods’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Atwood responded to the order, publishing a satirical short story criticizing Alberta’s Premier, Danielle Smith.
The order was paused on Sept 2, Nicolaides citing concerns over specificity. However, Smith says the pause will be short-lived. Restricting access to books in schools signals troubling government overreach and a direct assault on education. Seventeen-year-old high school students don’t need a sanitized version of reality; a meaningful and well-rounded education demands exposure to issues like patriarchy, authoritarianism, and women’s reproductive rights—all central themes in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Atwood underscores this point in her satirical short story shared on social media, using exaggeratedly “perfect” children to reveal the dangers of shielding teens from life’s realities.
The short story featured two “very, very good children” who “never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits,” a satirical reminder that imperfection is central to being human. Shielding teens from reality prevents them from fostering a multifaceted world view, and from critical lessons on authoritarianism, rebellion, and sexual health, only breeds ignorance and fuels unsafe practices.
Voted by the United Conservative Party of Alberta in 2022 to replace former Premier, Jason Kenny, Smith is the perfect example of what happens when democracy breaks down. Without being elected by the province, Smith has managed to require students to get parental consent to change their pronouns, remove gender identity and sexual orientation from the curriculum, and prohibit youth under sixteen from seeking gender affirming care.
Smith’s decision to strip influential literature from classrooms marks yet another step in an unsettling shift towards authoritarianism. What began south of the border has now spread north, with tens of thousands of titles pulled from school shelves across North America.
This wave of censorship is marked by both its reach and ambiguity.
The order was vague, offering no clear definition of what qualifies as sexually explicit content, leaving the door open for political agendas to shape what children can read. Notably, right-leaning yet equally explicit works like The Fountainhead (1943) didn’t make the ban.
Book bans aren’t about protecting students—they’re about ideological control and the suppression of diverse perspectives. The ban shouldn’t come as a surprise to followers of Alberta politics, where Smith continues to push a right-leaning authoritarian agenda.
Alberta’s attempt to strip classrooms of a diverse curriculum is only the latest in a concerning trend of government overreach, limiting students’ abilities to think critically and gain a well-rounded perspective. Education should teach students about the complexities of the world, not shield them from it.
Let’s face it—Alberta’s book ban isn’t about protecting kids; it’s about forcing a right-wing ideology on children. Smith frames the ban—though she might not call it that—as a safeguard for innocence and family values, but it’s ultimately a cooptation of the education system and a step down the path towards authoritarianism.
Tags
Alberta, books, Censorship, Literature, Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale
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