Most Albertans believe children should be protected from accessing graphic content in their school libraries, results of a survey released Friday afternoon suggest.
More than 77,000 respondents took part in the online survey, with 42 per cent of parent participants saying explicit materials are unsafe at any age for students in kindergarten to Grade 12.
The results are buttressed by a separate public opinion poll of 1,500 adult Albertans last month that found that 94 per cent of respondents were against sexually explicit materials being allowed in elementary school libraries. And 51 per cent were against them in any library accessible to children.
Also in the poll, 75 per cent of respondents said it’s important for parents to have a say about what materials are present in school libraries.
In the online survey, only 14 per cent of parent respondents said the content is acceptable for all age groups in public schools. Those supporting high school-aged students having access made up 22 per cent of parent responses, while the percentage drops to 18 per cent for middle school and four per cent for elementary school.
Explicit depictions of sexual and other acts in four graphic novels or graphic memoirs prompted the province to announce that it’s investigating the idea of developing standards. The books were found in school libraries in Calgary and Edmonton open to children in kindergarten and up.
One way the government gauged public opinion on the issue was through the survey, which ran from May 26 to June 6. Results were made public Friday on the alberta.ca website.
The government will use the results and “ongoing feedback collected from education partners” to develop provincewide standards, the news release posted this afternoon says. “These standards will provide school boards with clear and consistent guidelines for selecting and managing age-appropriate materials in school libraries across the province,” says the release.
Strong support — 62 per cent of responses — emerged for parents and guardians having a role in reporting or challenging sexually explicit content in school libraries.
When asked who should decide what materials are age-appropriate in school libraries, the most popular responses were school librarians, teachers and parents.
NOISY DATA
Bad actors and their bots forced the Alberta government to weed through noisy data in the survey, Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides told a roundtable of rural media representatives earlier in the week.
Nicolaides said the survey generated “a high volume of responses.”
But apparently the results included “attempts to undermine the validity of the questionnaire through the submission of hundreds of responses at the same time, probably administered through bots or other types of measures. So that's a little disappointing,” he said.
At the time of the roundtable with rural media on Tuesday, the government was busy sifting through the data to arrive at its findings.
Out of an original 196,901 entries, 118,574 duplicates and 932 blank entries were removed, today’s release says. That means the results are based on 77,395 responses. Another 515 responses were received in a French language survey.
RURAL MEDIA ROUNDTABLE
Sexual depictions in the four books include masturbation, oral sex, pornography use and petting. Mentions of self-harm, sexual abuse and suicide are also present. The books were in libraries visited by students in kindergarten and higher grades, the government said.
All four are coming-of-age books written by Americans and based at least partially on their authors’ life experiences. Three of them directly reflect experiences in the LGBTQ2S+ community.
The content’s existence in libraries suggests that there’s a standards gap when it comes to explicit material that could end up in the hands of children, Nicolaides said.
“It’s almost an impossibility to be able to know the full extent of the content of the vast majority of books that are published in any environment,” said Nicolaides, the member for Calgary-Bow. “So these are ones that we do know of, of course, that were brought to our attention.”
But don’t expect the government to go through each library’s collection, said Nicolaides. “How school boards have their libraries vet or sort content will probably be left up to them.”
Many school boards already have policies around content. New standards would apply to public, separate, francophone, public charter and independent schools.
The standards would not affect materials in Alberta’s municipal public libraries — including 55 of them located in schools.
“Those could be uniquely challenging scenarios,” Nicolaides said.
He said he’s talked the issue over with Dan Williams, the new minister of municipal affairs, but not in depth.
“We have had some conversations, because he is interested in understanding a little bit more about what we're doing,” said Nicolaides.
Nicolaides doesn’t foresee a need for new legislation. Any standards the government creates will come into being through ministerial order.
How or whether the standards apply to every age or grade range hasn’t been determined.
Nicolaides said sexually graphic content can be important for some ages and groups in some situations.
“Our major concern is around age appropriateness,” he said. Explicit books “can be helpful resources to individuals who have a particular experience or have particular questions. And I don't have any concern with any kind of topic or subject being made available in school libraries.”
