Alberta Education Minister announces K-12 library book review

I was being diplomatic.

Education Minister Demitrios Nicolaides, May 26, 2025; YouTube video

I’m not a fan of governments, or other parents, deciding what content is “age-appropriate” for my kids, or your kids, or anyone else’s kids. The notion of parental rights has somehow been incomparably twisted from deciding what your own children should have access to, to demanding a say in what should be accessible to any child.

As Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides was describing the content of four books in school libraries Monday morning — a few graphic novels which rely heavily on images to tell the story — I found myself uncertain whether he was more disturbed that the content existed or people could have access to it.

For one thing, he said that at least one of the authors of these books have stated their book was “not meant for children”. That’s fair. I’m a writer, and I have a specific audience in mind when I’m writing. With that audience in mind, I sometimes feel a well-placed F-bomb is appropriate. Since I also have little control over who sees it after it’s published, does that mean it shouldn’t be written? I’m not worried about it, personally. There are far worse things on the internet than an F-bomb.

There’s a lot of context missing, however. Min. Nicolaides noted that in four specific books, available in K-9 school libraries in Calgary and Edmonton, there was “mature content”; drawings of oral sex, sexual activity, child molestation, and self-harm, respectively.

I don’t want to point out the obvious here, but these things exist in the world around us, and are definitely the lived experience of many at ages far younger than we like to admit. Context, as in the story these books are telling, also matters.

However, I was a kid once. If this stuff existed in the library, whichever of my peers found would definitely be inviting us one-by-one to show off the “good” parts. I would be surprised to things have changed much.

I’m also a Gen-X’er. Many of us weren’t shielded from the world because we were latchkey kids and we pretty much had the run of the place until our parents got home from work. We got into everything and we snooped; a lot.

I was raised by a single mom who did not have a collection of adult movies and magazines lying around, but I did discover a lone copy of Playgirl. In her defence, I never gave much thought to learning how to cook, so, the fact that it was hidden in between cookbooks was kind of inspired. Also... the kitchen? Really?

A number of my friends also knew where their parent’s stash was and therefore, we all knew, too. Another friend brought over a 1-900 number one day and we tried it. We didn’t get past the operator because we were, like, nine. Mom grilled me pretty hard when she got the bill. I told her I found it in a National Geographic in the magazine bin at school and that we totally didn’t know what it was.

Thinking back on it, I’m pretty sure mom just really wanted to believe that because I’ve never been known for being a convincing liar.

We got into stuff all the time that wasn’t “age appropriate”. Our sex-ed was included yearly during both health and science, and also from stories our peers would tell. Older siblings were a literal wealth of information then, and still are, according to stories my daughter told me.

Does that mean I want my six-year old kids accessing this stuff? No. Nine? 12? 16? It wasn’t forced on me, so there wasn’t any trauma associated with it.

I also found a duffle bag while dumpster diving behind my babysitter’s place with some highly interesting items in it once when I was six or seven. Let’s just say I have a much better understanding of what all of that was now. As a side note, the babysitter did not let me keep it.

Kids are people

This past Mother’s Day I was reminded of a scrapbook page I made for a friend’s baby shower. The person who was planning her baby shower recommended I offer some fantastic advice to the soon-to-be mom since I already had three, who were then six, five, and two.

I thought really hard about what advice I could give her and I had nothing because they were all different. Which is what I ended up writing to her.

My first was super cautious; it was like she never “tried” anything but waited until she knew she could. And then she did. Like she just knew she could. My second was completely the opposite; he just did whatever. He had an energy to him that was much different from my cautious first — he wanted to do everything right now. His second Christmas was marred by two black eyes after he bounced from the couch face first into the coffee table. Something that never would have happened to my eldest.

The third was different still — weirdly independent for a toddler still in diapers. He wanted to explore and he took off with all the confidence of someone with zero fear of the unknown. I had to look for him a lot, and the RCMP brought him home twice before he was three. Technically, I intercepted them on their way because I was out looking for him. There was a third time when he was four. Luckily it stopped by the time he hit kindergarten.

And my fourth? He is also quite different from his siblings. He was reciting dinosaur documentaries when he was three. His sense of reasoning has always been far older than he was which was difficult for him in his early years of school. He hasn’t suffered fools since I’ve known him.

Due to the fact they’re all different, I would react differently to each of those kids getting their hands on those books at different ages.

Should those books be available for elementary school kids? Maybe not, but as I saw one person arguing, why can’t they be in a glass case that requires parental consent to check out at a K-9 school? If it’s about parental choice, then allow parents to exercise it.

If a 16-year old is mature enough to drive, and begin (according to the UCP government — not me) having a say in their medical decisions, then why couldn’t they also decide to check out a risque novel that might be of interest?

Is this really necessary?

Alberta schools are bursting at the seams, our students receive the lowest funding in Canada, and the UCP has put more funding towards charters than public education in the last few years.

We have real problems that aren’t part of the UCP’s “culture wars” but also don’t seem to be making the top of the priority list.

There are those who are looking at this supposedly “valid” government intervention with suspicion. Does it stop here or is there a book burning on the horizon? Slippery slope arguments are themselves a slippery slope but this government lost the trust of many Albertans a long time ago.

I went to a K-9 school in Alberta and my kids attended the same. The library was set up based on age. We could certainly venture into the areas with books for older kids but we were also only three feet tall at one point and it would be fairly easy to restrict our access without going so far as to remove books.

We should also ask ourselves, in an age when too many people are, ahem, “offended by everything”: why?

“A group of parents,” Min. Nicolaides said, brought these books to his attention. Neither he nor his ministry said anything to the school boards in either Calgary or Edmonton before holding the press conference.

Was it for shock value? They did shock some of the local columnists who have been around at least a decade or two more than I. That wasn’t the case for those who sounded younger than both of us. We’ll get to have our say in yet another request by the UCP to give them permission to do what they want to do by asking us to fill out a survey.

Again, I don’t like that parental rights groups have taken it upon themselves to be judge and jury of what is available in our public education system. It’s public, which means it should accommodate everyone; not just a few.

And it should not be at the mercy of those few, either.

Bluesky

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