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In a quest to be more “inclusive,” a Canadian school board in Mississauga, Ontario has decided to purge its library of all books published before the year 2008.
Erindale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, ‘burned’ roughly 50% of its library book, including Harry Potter and the Hunger Games series, as part of a new “equity-based book weeding” implemented by the Peel District School Board earlier this year, according to the CBC.
The board insists it was following a wider directive from the Minister of Education to make learning resources more inclusive and reflective of the community.
Yes, a library with empty shelves sounds very inclusive…
Also purged were classics like “The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank” and iconic children’s books like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
When asked WTF, the school board has been notably evasive, refusing to address whether books are being removed solely based on their publication date. Their statement, which claims books are removed if they are “damaged, inaccurate, or not checked out often,” doesn’t check out whatsoever.
10th-grade student of Japanese descent Reina Takata worries that significant portions of her heritage could vanish with this book purge.
“Authors who wrote about Japanese internment camps are going to be erased,” she warned.
Official Backpedaling
Given the mounting backlash, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce finally weighed in, condemning the practice as “offensive, illogical, and counterintuitive.” He has since ordered the board to cease the book removals immediately.
The larger issue here is the increasing trend of over-correction in the name of “wokeness,” often leading to the vanishing of history, culture, and nuanced discourse. At what point does the push for equity turn into a frenzy of historical whitewashing? Erindale Secondary School may have given us the answer: when you arbitrarily remove 50% of your library in the name of inclusivity, you’re probably doing it wrong.
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Featured image is by Reina Takata/Zero Hedge
