The news this week that some works of bestselling children’s author Roald Dahl will be edited to remove language deemed offensive – and the eventual decision to keep the original versions in print – has sparked global debate about editing classic texts to reflect contemporary values.

Gone under the changes are descriptions such as “fat” for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Augustus Gloop, replaced by “enormous”, prompting a furious reaction and accusations of “absurd censorship”.

In Australia, the industry has long wrestled with how to handle books deemed to be outdated, with high schools decolonising their collections, audiobook producers editing classics and booksellers arguing for content warnings.

Professor of Education at the University of Technology Sydney Rosemary Johnston said Australia had a history of editing children’s books – most notably the Billabong books by Mary Grant Bruce, which were changed to remove controversial depictions of Aboriginal people, and Chinese and Irish immigrants.

“They reflected the racist attitudes of their time,” Johnston said. “In England, Enid Blyton was also censored because of various attitudes in those.”

Johnston said the question of whether older books should be edited was not easy to answer.

“It’s really nuanced,” she said. “We want that freedom of expression and to maintain the integrity, but we don’t want to publish anything dangerous that would impact a child’s life.”

The other issue was trying to preserve relevance – many books just fade away if they lose pertinence to social expectations, she said.

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Sarah Bacaller runs the audiobook production company Voices of Today and said they will look at a text on a case-by-case basis.

“What we often do is put a disclaimer at the start saying some of the ideas from this book don’t fit with contemporary sensibilities. That’s one way of treating it,” Bacaller said.

“Sometimes we omit parts, but we put in the description that it has been edited for contemporary sensibilities.”

Recordings of Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner, My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, and a short story by Dorothy Wall, who wrote Blinky Bill, were all edited because of their portrayal of First Nation Australians, she said.

“If it doesn’t impact the overall narrative, we would certainly seek to edit things out,” Bacaller said. “If someone is going to listen to it, if they are upset or offended, we don’t want it to have that effect.”

At Melbourne’s beloved bookstore Readings, children’s book choices suggested they were often savvy to “outdated” values.

Kids shop manager at the store, Dani Solomon, said one girl she spoke to recently was “fervent” about not wanting to read any books where girls didn’t do anything fun.

“While there is a lot said about keeping derogatory language in children’s books to preserve our history and teach children today about our wrongs of the past, I think people are not considering that the targets of the derogatory language may also be reading the books and there are other ways to teach those lessons,” Solomon said.

Solomon said she considered debate over editing small changes to be a relatively modern one.

“When you consider that hundreds of years ago, stories were told orally and were constantly changing and adapting to suit their audience. In the broader picture, insisting stories stay frozen in time, never evolving, is an unusual concept,” she said.

Books that are deemed outdated can be used as helpful tools, but should include warnings on them, she said.

“I think a nice compromise for books that aren’t changed could be a disclaimer at the start of books, similar to the ones Warner Bros use at the start of some of their cartoons, one that explains to the audience that the attitudes and language are a reflection of their time and are not OK now.”

In Victoria, several schools including Northcote High and Aitken College, have decolonised their collections, chief executive of the School Librarian Association of Victoria Susan La Marca said.

This has resulted in some nonfiction texts that depict colonisation as peaceful, for example, being removed, but La Marca said it was not about book banning.

“There’s a difference between collection development and censorship,” La Marca said.

“We’re conscious of designing a collection that’s appropriate for the community it serves, in light with current standards.”

Libraries tried to keep updated nonfiction books but were often restricted by funding, she said.

“Our role is not to collect one of everything or provide a diverse collection because we can’t – there’s not enough funding, time or space. Our main role is to respond to the curriculum.”

President of the Australian School Library Association Natalie Otten said there was a big debate on how to teach context on controversial titles without offending.

“Considering the context of the time in which the material was first published can support learners to think about the content and its relevance in today’s world,” Otten said.

“Rather than ‘banning’ books that are outdated, they can be used as rich conversation tools with learners to highlight different perspectives and thinking over time.”