"Treat this as a teachable moment," my colleague on the racial justice advisory committee for the United Church of Canada said. A whole new perspective on mistakes and ideas we want to challenge opened for me.

I offer this in the context of the decision of the Dr Seuss foundation to pull six of his books, and the strange conversation that is raging about censorship and allowing people of the past to have their prejudices.

First, let me say that a piece by Grace Lin on PBS.org says this even better than I can. She speaks as a bi-racial woman about her experience of realizing that a book and story she loved expressed ideas that bothered her. You can check it out here.

Now, let me go back to the experience that taught me. In the committee meeting, we were looking at a United Church publication and an article that included a quote that expressed latent racism. It touched close to home, bringing my colleague to tears. One of us said, "They should not have used that quote." My colleague pushed aside her emotion and said, "No. Treat this as a teachable moment. Let the quote stand, but the editor can put in brackets the questions and problems the statement raises."

For me, this was an awakening. Expunge racist (or sexist or homophobic) statements, and the thoughts remain but are hidden. The people for whom these feel like natural thoughts will never be challenged. Let them go without comment, and people will assume that the thoughts are acceptable. In between these options, we find the place where we can discuss the attitudes and ideas that exist in our society and talk about why they are problematic.

I remember reading L. M. Montgomery, and I forget if it was the Anne or Emily series, but at one point, a young "french boy" is hired to help with basic farm chores. The implication was that the "french" couldn't do more than pile wood or load hay, though help with those chores was useful. I know that I did not notice this on my first reads, but later, I found it jarring. It revealed one of the prejudices alive in white anglo Nova Scotia.

On one of our family trips abroad, we brought only a few books, and my daughter made her father read Jane Eyre, a favourite of hers and mine. At some point, he began to rail against the book because it assumed the colonial project of Britain. We were shocked that he did not appreciate the characters Bronte had written, but he raised for us the fact that Brontë assumed that Britain's colonialism was natural, even heroic. I have a better understanding of the novel now that I am aware of the social assumptions in it.

With these favourite authors, I note the ideas I disagree with and the assumptions that I want to question while appreciating the story. Handing them to younger people, I would want to point out the ideas that they might question rather than simply accepting them as natural and inevitable.

I think that is the point about the books we read to children. The child we read to will assume that the words we speak are to be absorbed, the ideas accepted. If we hope to raise children who are open and accepting, we need to read diverse stories. And when an old favorite has difficult images and ideas, we can talk about why they are difficult.

When we recommend literature to teens, we want to encourage diversity in the choices and give them the tools to uncover bias. A friend dealing with cancer railed that in every book her teenage daughter read about a mother who got cancer, the mother died in the second chapter. My friend did not intend to die, has not died. When she could not find a story where the family dealt with cancer together, she had to talk with her daughter about the problems of the plot lines in the stories.

We are learning to read social media with eyes open to the algorithms and biases. It is helpful to read old (and new) stories alert to the prejudices and biases built into them. The presence of these prejudices can become a teachable moment. Opening an engaged conversation about problematic ideas is what builds change.  

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway