Alvah's Books

Somehow you’d think the Canadians would be smarter than that. Below is the whole story. 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America’s Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

“The parent was concerned about some of the language in the book,” said Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Principal Kevin McGuire made the decision at the end of the school year to resolve the complaint quickly. The book, a fixture on high-school reading lists across the country, will still be available in the library, said Campbell.

“The school administration was aware of the parent’s concern and made the decision to use another board-approved resource that teaches the same concept for the coming year,” said Campbell.

“It’s not a requirement that the novel be used,” he said. “It’s an option on our list of board-approved resources, and the school can make a decision to use whatever resource (it) would feel best suits them.”

“In this case, the principal believed an alternate resource might be better suited for that community,” said Campbell.

But at a school with a significant black population, teachers say the book is a relevant and favoured tool for discussion on racism.

With the start of the school year less than one month away, teachers have yet to be told what they will teach instead of Mockingbird. McGuire could not be reached for comment.

Mockingbird has spurred numerous debates and bans since it was written in the 1960s. A Nova Scotia school board tried to ban the book in 2002 for similar concerns about language. In 1993, the principal at a Hamilton school removed the book from a Grade 10 reading list after a parent complained.

“There will always be a small number of people to take offence to words, images and ideas in books and think that the best way to protect society is to remove them,” said Franklin Carter, of the Freedom of Expression committee of the Book and Periodical Council.

“But in the long run, it is illiberal, arbitrary – and censorship usually fails. People will read what they want to read anyway,” he said.

The school board says it expects a written complaint from the parent, which would prompt a thorough review by library services, religious coordinators, trustees, parents and the superintendent.

This is not the first book controversy at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board.

In 2007, it removed the award-winning novel Snow Falling on Cedars – about Japanese American man accused of murder following World War II –  from library shelves and teaching materials after a parent complained about sexual content, but later reinstated the book.