‘Crazy Decision’: Eby Speaks Out After School Board Pulls ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Due to ‘Equity’ Priorities

Eby Voices Concerns Over School Board’s Removal of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in the Name of ‘Equity’

March 1, 2024 TruthUSA

B.C. Premier David Eby has criticized the decision of the Surrey school board to remove “To Kill a Mockingbird” due to “equity” concerns.

“It’s a profoundly anti-racist book,” Mr. Eby stated on Feb. 29. “I think those advocating for its ban should actually read it to understand its power.”

The Surrey School District has eliminated several books from its curriculum reading list, including Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which addresses racism and prejudice through the story of a young girl, her lawyer father, and a falsely accused black man.

“If you take for example ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ that’s not from the experience of a black man,” said Surrey school board’s associate director of communications Ratinder Matthew in a statement to CBC. “This is the equity lens that we owe to our students and families to use to look carefully at our curriculum.”

Ms. Matthew mentioned that the book review process started a year ago after receiving feedback from parents and caregivers about students feeling unsafe in certain classroom situations, as reported by the CBC.

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning book has been translated into over 40 languages.

Mr. Eby praised “To Kill A Mockingbird” as a “beautiful book” and urged the board to reconsider its decision.

“It seems like a misguided choice,” he remarked.

Other removed books include “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “In the Heat of the Night” by John Ball, and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, as per reports from the CBC.

The Epoch Times attempted to contact the school board for comment but received no response by the time of publication.

B.C. Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon, leading the former BC Liberals under the new name BC United, also condemned the move.

“Saddened to see these influential authors removed from the curriculum,” Mr. Falcon expressed in a Feb. 29 social media post. “When I hear from parents about the challenges their kids face in BC it’s toxic social media, drugs, & mental health issues. Not the ‘trauma’ of impactful classic literature.”

Book Bans

A number of recent cases of schools banning books have raised concerns about freedom of speech. The issue came up during the 2021 federal election French-language leaders debate when leaders criticized an Ontario francophone school board for holding a book burning as a symbolic act of reconciliation with indigenous people.

Ontario’s Peel District School Board (PDSB) faced criticism in Sept. 2023 after reports surfaced that librarians were instructed to remove books published before 2008 due to “equity” concerns.

Two students expressed concerns after being informed that all books published before 2008 were being removed from the school libraries.

However, the board’s education director clarified that librarians were not given such instructions. The confusion arose from a PDSB manual for book “weeding,” which has a 15-year “weeding date” set at 2008.

Tara MacIsaac contributed to this report.

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