Satanic portals and sex-saturated books: parent complaints about English texts in NSW protestant schools

Exploring Australian school text censorship has a long pedigree in English in Australia. This article aims to contribute by observing attempts by parents to censor English texts in religious schools. A brief summary of EIA’s previous approaches is followed by an explanation of the method of my research with NSW Protestant and NSW state school teachers. A review of the published history of Australian parental school text ‘complaints’ (also termed ‘challenges’) then precedes a quantification of the impacts of parental challenges. Challenge reasons are then collated for both sectors. The higher prevalence of complaints about sexual content and depictions of the supernatural in Protestant schools is examined, and some inferences made about the perceptions of parents: their views about text, reading mechanics, spirituality and educational power.