Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
Those are all examples of books Reina Takata says she can no longer find in her public high school library in Mississauga, Ont., which she visits on her lunch hour most days.
In May, Takata says the shelves at Erindale Secondary School were full of books, but she noticed that they had gradually started to disappear. When she returned to school this fall, things were more stark.
“This year, I came into my school library and there are rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books,” said Takata, who started Grade 10 last week.
She estimates more than 50 per cent of her school’s library books are gone.
In the spring, Takata says students were told by staff that “if the shelves look emptier right now it’s because we have to remove all books [published] prior to 2008.”
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.
They say the new process, intended to ensure library books are inclusive, appears to have led some schools to remove thousands of books solely because they were published in 2008 or earlier.
Only new, woke books will be permitted. Because inclusion! And in retrospect, it does look like leftists took 2008 as Year Zero, doesn’t it?
Related (From Ed): 2008, you say? As James Lileks writes:
Why, once upon a time, everyone talked about the Johnny Carson monologue at the water cooler, often reclining in nylon-webbing lawn chairs. The good days!
This argument found no purchase. If you start with the assumption that the marvelous present began around 2008, when the Lightworker descended unto us in mortal form, smoking a Marlboro, then the past is a moral and cultural abattoir best regarded at arm’s length. In the near future, history courses in high school will consist entirely of the teacher saying, “Ah, there’s the bell; for tomorrow, tear out pages 43 through 57 of your texts and burn them. Class dismissed.”
I’m pretty sure the arrival of the Lightworker was meant to be a warning, not a how to guide for the Ministry of Truth.
In any case: Bomb Canada, The Case for War.