![]() ![]() Though he stated that he feels the historical facts in his book deserve to be noted by children and that the use of fire to withdraw certain books shows a "deplorable lack of judgement," he also said that he doesn't want the controversy of this event to distract from "the real scandal. "Its destruction surprises me and seems excessive," author Andre Noel said on Twitter of the burning of his book, Trafic chez les Hurons, during the ceremeony. Others are recalling the burning of "un-German" books by the Nazis during the Holocaust, the ancient Roman burning of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the burning of Harry Potter and other books about magic by church groups in the U.S. People are harkening back to pertinent quotes like "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people" from German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine and "He who destroys a good book kills reason itself" from English poet John Milton. This faux woke thing has gone way too far. Yes they had colonial depictions but that could be put in context - not burn them. ![]() Tintin and Asterix are my childhood memories. Social media is thus abuzz with residents criticizing the board and their actions - even calling them scary - with many saying that harmfully anachronistic content should be put into context and learned from, rather than eliminated. The burning of books has never been a celebrated or accepted way to attempt to destroy the thoughts and ideas held within them, as problematic as those thoughts and ideas may be. So I think we really need to change our approach to teaching our children." NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was less staunch, saying that he has "seen negative images, cartoons, and presentation that do not respect the dignity of Indigenous communities. Titles included fictional stories such as Tintin in America (which has been called out before for its racist stereotypes) and Asterix and the Indians, as well as biography and history books, as selected with the help of Aboriginal knowledge keepers and elders. In total, approximately 4,700 individual books were burnt in a "flame purification" event, the ashes then used to fertilize a tree in a symbolic act of reconciliation. Not once do you hear: "but the holocaust was bad enough to justify burning every book which references anti-Semitism!" There's a reason why those who suffered through the holocaust want us to remember it. Seuss books are famously now out of publication for similar reasons, which critics called a book burning of sorts, though no actual books were burned.)Īll knowledge is sacred, even knowledge we don't like. The Conseil scolaire catholique Providence is in charge of nearly 10,000 students across 30 schools in a district in the southwest of the province, and decided to vet its libraries for texts that it considered to have "outdated and inappropriate content" that is racist and discriminatory against Indigenous people and/or culturally appropriative. A group of schools in Ontario is facing some serious backlash this week following news that they held a book burning ceremony in which thousands of texts were destroyed. ![]()
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