Search

In this study, one current and three former British Columbia (BC) offshore school principals were interviewed to seek their insights on how they contended with being compelled to censor material and disallow topics of conversation while administering a Canadian curriculum in an international context. Using a research design consistent with an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodological framework, the data were interpreted using three reduction cycles to generate five categories: disillusionment, anger, struggle, expedience, and subversion. The participants' responses were synthesized through the five categories in light of the phenomenon of moral distress, which occurs when a person is hindered from following a course of action consonant with their own moral judgement. Participants' reflections on leading Canadian high schools outside of Canada offered meaningful insights into their lived experiences abroad and provided a basis for a more robust consideration of how principals make sense of morally distressing situations in their schools.

What do attacks on 'unpalatable' research reveal about academic freedom? When academic work is curtailed, this cherished yet misunderstood concept is undermined. Silencing based on moral objection -- rather than wrongdoing -- suggests academic freedom is more constrained than we believe. On paper, academic freedom is rule-bound, yet 'dangerous' ideas produce overwhelmingly visceral reactions. It was these emotional responses I examined to explore the difference between what we believe academic freedom to be, and how it manifests in contentious fields. I conducted qualitative interviews with 18 researchers whose work elicited condemnation or constraint beyond 'legitimate' scholarly critique. I used mixed-methods data analysis to determine shared themes and characteristics. While academic institutions uphold their commitment to unfettered enquiry, 'academic freedom' is highly contingent and subject to the values of players in a range of disciplinary and institutional fields that together yield a generalised field of 'academic research'. This research challenges assumptions about 'freedom' by identifying parameters that bound the notion. I argue the concept is indeed bounded, and that academics become aware of those bounds when they bump up -- often unexpectedly -- against them.

Like schools, curricula are socially constructed and constituted within broader social, political, and historical relations of power, powerfully shaping students' beliefs and attitudes about themselves and their relationship toward the world. In light of this, the importance of literature selection cannot be overstated. School-sanctioned texts often provide the core curriculum, and secondary school English teachers rely on them heavily. The self-regulatory practices a teacher engages in will shape not only how the teacher begins to understand the self, but also works to construct an "appropriate" teacher identity. Using a Foucauldian theoretical lens, this paper draws upon findings from a synthesis of school board policies and interviews with English teachers and department heads in Ontario, Canada, to explore the discursive practices that shape literary text selection.

This article explores some of the legal and law-related challenges educators face in designing, implementing, and sustaining globally networked learning environments (GNLEs) in the context of conflicting international laws on intellectual property and censorship/free speech. By discussing cases and areas involving such legal issues, the article makes visible some of the issues educators may want to consider as they design courses and curricula. First, using the Pakistani-US case of "Axact v. Student Network Resources", the author examines issues of authorship and the related issues of copyright law and plagiarism. The author then addresses questions, moral rights, and authorship using the French case of "Turner v. Huston". Next, the author explores issues of free speech/censorship and defamation as they have arisen globally in the blogosphere. The author describes several specific instances where such issues have resulted in legal consequences for the digital writer involved. The author then develops a possible solution to some of these legal issues arising in GNLEs by way of the idea of "the commons". In this area of the discussion, the author also examines Creative Commons licensing as well as problems with protecting the appropriation and exploitation of traditional knowledge, and the politics of defining "the commons". The author draws on discussions around the global repatriation debate to inform her exploration in this section. Finally, the article concludes with some recommendations, taking into account the legal and law-related issues of copyright, plagiarism, censorship, defamation, and defining "the commons" as these issues arise in GNLEs. (Contains 2 notes.)

Includes 21 articles that discuss collection development in Canadian school libraries. Topics include digital collections in school library media centers; print and electronic library resources; library collections; collaborative projects; print-disabled students; informing administrators of the importance of collection development; censorship; public libraries and school curriculum; networked computers; wholesalers; and selection tools. (LRW)

Discussion of controversial fiction for older children and young adults focuses on two main issues: the relocation of controversial material, and why material is challenged. Includes a list of books that were challenged in schools and public libraries in the U.S. and Canada from 1984-1999. (LRW)

Presents a brief history of the censorship of children's books, and then focuses on recent challenges. The view of literature as a socializing force is discussed, and examples of challenged books in the United States and Canada are provided, illustrating different reasons for censorship on both sides of the political and social spectrum. (AEF)

Describes a 1988 survey of Canadian public libraries that was conducted to investigate intellectual freedom and censorship pressures and practices. Relevant institutional policies are examined, age restrictions are discussed, collection challenges are described, the libraries' responses to such pressures are studied, and further research is suggested. (12 references) (LRW)

Describes a checklist survey of five major Metropolitan Toronto library systems that examined the inclusion of New Right literature in library collections. It is concluded that the presence of this literature indicates a strong commitment to intellectual freedom by Canadian librarians. The checklist used is provided. (six references) (CLB)

Reports results of survey of materials challenged in Manitoba's school and public libraries conducted between September 1982 and August 1984 to identify who challenged what, why, and the results. Findings from similar surveys in Alberta, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are also reported. Materials challenged are listed, noting complaint, complainant, and policy. (EJS)

Survey which examined censorship requests in Alberta public libraries revealed that: more than one community challenge occurs in average week; in one out of three cases, impugned book was removed from shelves; high proportion of libraries reported no written censorship policies. List of 41 challenged titles is appended. (11 references) (EJS)

Discusses the teachers' and the students' roles in the selection of literature to be taught, developing a selection policy, the place of the classics in literature curriculum, and the connection between literature and values education. (SRT)

Provides various definitions of censorship; describes a case of censorship in New Brunswick, Canada; explains what happens to materials that have been challenged; and provides a challenged materials policy and a list of books that have been challenged in Canada. (SRT)

Describes a survey which answers the questions of who challenged what, why, and with what results in the school and public libraries of Manitoba from 1982-1984. Library censorship policies, how often they are followed, the response of the news media, and the difference between selection and censorship are discussed. (EM)

Examines a high school literature censorship case, and challenges the assumption that values can be "absorbed" through emotional engagement with a "transparent" text. Concludes with guidelines for avoiding indoctrination by viewing literature as the construction of fictional worlds whose values are decoded by calculated acts of literary criticism. (JDH)

Focuses on the censorship controversy in Peterborough County, Ontario, from 1976 to 1985, and examines the attack on, defense of, and counter argument to teaching Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners." Generalizes the anticensorship stance often taken by English teachers to defend the teaching of controversial literary works. (JK)

Describes a survey of 47 postsecondary educational institutions in three prairie provinces of Canada that examined the extent of pressures to remove, relocate, or reclassify library materials between 1980 and 1985, and the effectiveness of written selection policies in dealing with such pressures. Specific censorship incidents are reported in tabular form in an appendix. (five references) (Author/CLB)

Describes suitable board procedures and policies needed to clearly define the criteria for reviewing materials with regards to censorship. (CHC)

Argues that, in order to combat violence and crime by youth, children must be taught to separate reality from the world of television and other media. Parents must be educated to become their own television censorship board. Violence in media leads to violence in reality. (Author/BEF)

Notes that Canadian journalists accepted censorship during World War I with a minimum of complaint, viewing it as a necessary sacrifice for the war effort. (FL)

Expounds on two headline articles from the "Edmonton Journal" (Canada) that prompted the columnist to reflect on the history of the textbook in social studies. The two articles refer to politically motivated editing of history texts in Hong Kong and Japan. Urges history teachers to teach history "the way it happened." (DSK)

Explores complexities of book controversies in Canadian schools. Canada lacks clear guidelines for addressing issues of schools and religion and an authoritative codification of fundamental human rights; thus Canadians fighting censorship must do so ad hoc. (WD)

Record levels of materials challenges have affected libraries in both Canada and the United States in recent years, but despite the apparent swell in censorship efforts, the large majority of challenges go unreported. This study aims to identify factors contributing to the low rate of challenge reporting through a participation survey distributed to over 500 Canadian public libraries. Results indicate low awareness reporting mechanisms is likely the largest obstacle to greater participation, but obstacles related to library policy, including delegation and challenge policy structure, also exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this chapter is to familiarize readers with contemporary challenges and censorship in school libraries and learning commons in Canada. The informal narrative reflects the viewpoints of seasoned advocates for intellectual freedom and social responsibility in the Canadian library sector. Content concentrates on the main sources of challenges, four common types of challenges that can lead to censorship (content, curriculum, genre, and book leveling), an essential two step strategy and related resources for dealing with challenges and combating censorship, and a pointer for educators in library and information programs. The chapter closes with an expression of appreciation and concern for the individuals who take personal and professional risk in managing challenges and combating censorship in school libraries and learning commons in Canada and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A senior pediatric endocrinologist at a leading medical school in Canada has for years provided the introductory lecture on Disorders of Sex Development/Intersexuality (DSD/I) in the standard second-year course. In 2020/2021, two students complained to medical school administrators about six specific issues of intersex theory and care that were addressed in the lecture (Polychronakos, 2021). Subsequently, the administration replaced the professor with a different lecturer, thus effectively censoring the dissemination of intersex science. An overview of the status of the clinical literature on intersexuality shows that the students' critiques focus on concepts and facts that have been developed in extensive medical and sexological research over the past 50–60 years, as is shown for each of their points of critique. By censoring the professor's teaching, the medical school not only violated academic freedom, but also suppressed well-established scientific facts, kept medical students uninformed about the diverse points of view in this area of clinical management, and likely undermined future evidence-based medical and psychosocial care by these students for individuals with this type of medical condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over what to do about hate speech continue to rage, in contexts that range from social media to campus speech. That legal restrictions on hate speech remain controversial despite major Charter cases upholding Canada's anti-hate speech laws reflects a number of issues, including: the effectiveness of anti-hate speech laws; the evidence about, and diffuse nature of, the harms involved in hate speech that falls short of targeted harassment or incitement of violence; the high threshold the Supreme Court has drawn for identifying when hateful speech crosses the line into unlawful hate speech; and the authorities' tendency to censor or suppress speech, especially when censorship is wielded against members of oppressed groups. This article argues in favour of a "Charter values" approach to free expression that seeks to enhance the expressive freedoms of individuals and groups subjected to historical and ongoing forms of oppression. After analyzing the Court's approach to assessing Canada's hate speech laws, this article contends that debates over the legitimacy and effectiveness of hate speech laws, which apply to such a miniscule number of relevant instances of hateful speech and falsely pit free expression against equality, distract us from properly remedying one of the most pressing consequences of hate speech: the impairment of human dignity and the sense of belonging of targeted groups within our society. Instead, a Charter values approach imposes obligations on relevant institutions to take positive action to enhance and protect the expressive freedom of oppressed groups. Rather than an approach that falsely "balances" equality rights and other sections of the Charter, like section 27, against free expression, the approach advocated here seeks to strengthen all of those rights and values by ensuring that targeted groups cannot be silenced by harmful or offensive speech and that their sense of belonging and status within the community is promoted and ensured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Canada's first internet gambling website blocking scheme, which was enacted in Quebec as part of the implementation of the province's 2015 budget. Using qualitative research methods, the article illustrates the complexities of regulating online gambling. Influenced by critical sociological and anthropological studies of gambling, and taking a socio-legal, governmentality perspective, it shows how socio-legal studies can illuminate research on the regulation of gambling, and how the study of online gambling can, as a sentinel site for the regulation of online consumption, contribute to the development of socio-legal studies. Our analysis shows that the governmentality of online gambling is framed so as to exclude 1) a range of risks (e.g., related to consumer profiling and the capacity to stimulate "addictive consumption"), 2) the heterogeneity of everyday experience that connects online gambling with online addictive consumption more generally, and 3) a range of possibilities for governing online gambling otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Length-biased data are often encountered in cross-sectional surveys and prevalent-cohort studies on disease durations. Under length-biased sampling subjects with longer disease durations have greater chance to be observed. As a result, covariate values linked to the longer survivors are favored by the sampling mechanism. When the sampled durations are also subject to right censoring, the censoring is informative. Modeling dependence structure without adjusting for these issues leads to biased results. In this article, we consider copulas for modeling dependence when the collected data are length-biased and account for both informative censoring and covariate bias that are naturally linked to length-biased sampling. We address nonparametric estimation of the bivariate distribution, copula function and its density, and Kendall and Spearman measures for right-censored length-biased data. The proposed estimator for the bivariate cdf is a Hadamard-differentiable functional of two MLEs (Kaplan–Meier and empirical cdf) and inherits their efficiency. Based on this estimator, we devise two estimators for copula function and a local-polynomial estimator for copula density that accounts for boundary bias. The limiting processes of the estimators are established by deriving their iid representations. As a by-product, we establish the oscillation behavior of the bivariate cdf estimator. In addition, we introduce estimators for Kendall and Spearman measures and study their weak convergence. The proposed method is applied to analyze a set of right-censored length-biased data on survival with dementia, collected as part of a nationwide study in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the worst trade agreement ever, and threatened to rip it up, it seemed that the very foundations of the North American economy were about to be shaken up. Nor did it help matters that Trump pulled out of the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP), withdrew from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and topped all that off by using aggressive trade tactics against major U.S. trade partners like Canada, Mexico and China. Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened, and the final, revised agreement, recently ratified by Canada, will make incremental rather than earth-shattering changes to free trade flows between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Its biggest contribution to the economy is that it puts an end to the uncertainty around the investment climate caused by Trump's actions. The new NAFTA -- referred to in Canada as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) -- turned out not to be a game-changer. The old NAFTA, which came into force in 1994, needed updating and its successor improves upon it incrementally. Its economic impact is likely to be a modest one, but its benefits for Western Canada are especially worth noting. The year 2019 saw the four Prairie Provinces and B.C. carry out nearly C$230 billion in trade with the U.S. and Mexico, with slightly more than C$8 billion of that arising from trade with Mexico alone. In terms of GDP, CUSMA's influence is also expected to be small; however, the certainty it lends to the North American investment climate will have a salutary effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we are concerned with nonparametric estimation of the distribution function when the data are possibly censored and satisfy the α -mixing condition, also called strong mixing. Among various mixing conditions used in the literature, α -mixing is reasonably weak and has many practical applications as it is fulfilled by many stochastic processes including some time series models. In practice the observed data can be complete or subject to censorship, so we deal with these different cases. More precisely, the rate of the almost complete convergence is established, under the α -mixing condition, for complete, singly censored and twice censored data. To lend further support to our theoretical results, a simulation study is carried out to illustrate the good accuracy of the studied method, for relatively small sample sizes. Finally, an application to censored dependent data is provided via the analysis of Chromium concentrations collected from two stations of the Niagara River in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the Influence: Book Challenges in Canada Canada has not been immune to populist censorship tactics. PEN America has led the charge with its report, Banned in the USA: The growing movement to censor books in schools. In May 2023 CSL issued a statement on book challenges and censorship in Canada's school libraries. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of L'Année Rabelaisienne is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates censorship challenges to Canadian picturebooks as documented in interviews with 136 Canadian authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers conducted for the Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books in English Project. Overt challenges to access to books and other material for children in Canadian classrooms and public and school libraries have been reported in surveys and the media; the personal challenges experienced by creators and publishers, including pre-publication pressures, have been ignored. Qualitative content analysis of the interviews yields data on themes, patterns, and categories of the challenges. In identifying the challenges, conflicting ideologies in Canadian society are brought to light. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]