Date: 7 April 2010
To: Principals and Teacher Librarians
From: Melanie Parrack, Executive Superintendent – Student Success
Lloyd McKell, Executive Officer – Student and Community Equity
Subject : The Shepherd’s Granddaughter
As you may be aware, concerns have been expressed by some individuals
and groups to the TDSB about the use of the novel The Shepherd's
Granddaughter in our school libraries and classrooms. This book is one
of the Red Maple Program selections. This fictional work sets its
narrative within the context of the Middle East conflict. Those
concerned about this novel have interpreted its content to be highly
one-sided, and communicates an unfairly biased characterization of one
specific group of people in relation to the other. It should be
noted, however that other readers have expressed a different opinion
about the book, pointing to the fact that The Shepherd’s Granddaughter
has received the Canadian Library Association’s, Children’s Book of the
Year Award.
One of the goals of the Red Maple Program is to encourage the love of
reading and to enhance students’ skills in critical literacy and
critical thinking. We share that goal. It is important that
teachers continue to provide appropriate guidance to students when they
read this novel and other similar materials that contain controversial
and sensitive issues.
The TDSB document, A Teaching Resource for Dealing with Controversial
and Sensitive Issues, in its section “Teaching Strategy”, sets out a
clear process for a critical thinking approach for guiding students in
dealing with controversial content. It provides the following direction
to teachers:
"Students need to:
- identify the nature of bias and the means by which it is developed and revealed
- be alert to biases that are represented or excluded, and explore why these biases exist
- determine whether bias is positive or negative ascertain the appropriate actions or responses to biases detected in any text
Teachers are encouraged to use that the above framework (along with the
appropriate critical literacy questions) in the process for student
preparation prior to reading controversial material, in guiding the
reading activity itself, and in guiding student discussion after
reading the material.
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