The Halton Catholic District School Board in Canada recently banned Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy (which includes The Golden Compass).
Board chair Alice Anne LeMay said that a majority of the board voted against a committee’s request to keep the books in the library.
Here’s the money quotation:
“The board felt that because it really was in opposition of what we’re trying to teach the children, there is a lot of literature out there that is more appropriate for teaching critical thinking,” she said.
“Yes, we do want the children to be good critical thinkers but we can do it with other materials than that one.”
In other words, we’re going to teach kids how to think critically by removing a series of books that might actually challenge their preconceived notions.
We wouldn’t want that to happen…
The timing of this announcement is (coincidentally?) just before the district lets out for a two week winter vacation. So students won’t get much of an opportunity to voice any dissent at least until the second week of January. At which point the board might be hoping this just dies down…
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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