The Little Red Schoolbook

The Little Red Schoolbook

Cover of the first edition
Author	Søren Hansen, Jesper Jensen
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Subject	education
Publication date	1969

The Little Red Schoolbook (Danish: Den Lille Røde Bog For Skoleelever; English: The Little Red Book For School Pupils) is a book written by two Danish schoolteachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen which was published in 1969, which was controversial upon its publication. The book was translated into many languages in the early 1970s. Beatrice Faust contributed to the Australian edition of The Little Red Schoolbook.

The book encourages young people to question societal norms and instructs them in how to do this. Out of 200 pages, it includes 20 pages on sex and 30 on drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. Other topics included adults as "paper tigers", the duties of teachers, discipline, examinations, intelligence, and different schools.

As a result of its subject matter and its targeted audience of schoolchildren, a number of politicians in many countries criticised the book, fearing that the book would erode the moral fabric of society and be an invitation for anarchy in schools. The LRSB was banned in France, Italy and New Zealand.

In Switzerland, the Bernese cantonal politician Hans Martin Sutermeister led a campaign against the book. He was successful in temporarily blocking the introduction of the book into the country. The subsequent controversy, however, ended his political career, costing him his job as director of the schools of the Swiss capital and contributed to a split in his party, the Ring of Independents, which led to its mid-term decline.

In the UK, the book was the subject of a successful prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act, a decision that was upheld by the Appeal Court and subsequently by the European Court of Human Rights in the case known as Handyside v United Kingdom. The government however allowed a second, censored edition to be published, in which some of the passages criticised in court were amended or cut.