School librarians are being told to remove art books with ‘historic paintings of nudes’ in the latest censorship controversy revealed today.
The ‘insane’ trend was revealed by a delegate at the annual conference of the National Education Union (NEU), saying she had heard ‘many accounts’ of art books being cut.
It comes after a school librarian at Lowry Academy in Salford, Greater Manchester, revealed last week she had been forced to remove books deemed ‘inappropriate’ by management.
Bosses used artificial intelligence to earmark almost 200 books for removal, including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.
The school later admitted it had removed ‘a small number of books’ but said it had put most of them back, into ‘age-appropriate categories’.
The Lowry Academy case prompted the NEU to pass an urgent motion yesterday to ‘fight censorship and defend librarians’.
The union said that although the woman in the original controversy is not part of the union, it wanted to protect its own librarian members from suffering a similar fate.
Proposing the motion, Kristabelle Williams, a member from Lewisham, said: ‘We cannot ignore the issues that this case has brought up.
‘We can take action as a union now to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
She said the support of the union would give librarians the ‘confidence to not self-censor and resist the chilling effect that this case will cultivate’.
She added members fear there is now an ‘increased risk of external complaints’ and ‘hate campaigns’ about books in their libraries.
Also speaking during the debate was Laura Butterworth, a member from Tameside Greater Manchester, which is near Lowry Academy.
Hellbound and Down 