Let's meet the kids where they are

This is a letter I still may publish in the paper: I'm incensed about this attitude. I'm posting it here to get it off my chest but we'll see..

I am an Alberta author with a newly released novel entitled Body Trade.  Please be assured this letter is not to promote my work. The novel deals with some hard issues: disappeared aboriginal women, sexual exploitation, class, teenagers getting in over their heads, luring, casual sexual relationships, imperialism and the consumption and erosion of culture. In a word, the book is about hard moral choices young people are forced to make. The female protagonists in the book are seventeen and twenty-two years old respectively

Yesterday I was invited to a small rural community to speak about my work to high school students. Imagine my dismay when I was pointedly asked not to say too much about my new novel, nor, indeed my previous book, which deals with identity, institutional manipulation, abortion and domestic violence. “Keep it safe,” was the message I received. “These are high school students. The school board has boundries.” In the next breath the person overseeing the author visit told me her community had the highest levels of STDs, teen pregnancy, cutting (self mutilation) and crack cocaine in the province.

I put it to you, and to anyone who cares about students and literature and telling the truth about the world we live in, is it not safer to learn about the world of choice through books (that one is free to put down) than by acting out in the ways described above?  God help us, if we do not address the needs of our young people with stories they can relate to and talk about among themselves.  An ostrich with its head in the sand is the stuff of Dr. Seuss. Perhaps the Alberta public education systems need to think about the reality of young Albertans when Seuss says, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”