Banning Books: Most Americans Say NO!

It may not be obvious to some but I am a big fan of books (my most recent book review) and I am really not a big fan of banning books (here, here, and here). It is for these reasons I like to stay up on how people view the banning of books from public libraries. That is why I was glad to see this poll by Harris today that says most Americans do not support the banning of books in any way.

Banning or censoring books has been debated for years. A new Harris Poll shows, however, that a majority of Americans think no books should be banned completely (56%) while fewer than one in five say there are books which should be banned (18%); a quarter are not at all sure (26%). The older and less educated people are, the more likely they are to say that there are some books which should be banned completely. Opinions on banning books are linked to political philosophy: almost three quarters of Liberals (73%) say no books should be banned, compared to six in ten Moderates (60%) but only two in five Conservatives (41%) who say no books should be banned.

This is a really positive trend in my opinion. I don't feel that we should be banning access to any books from our children or even other adults our ability to access and share facts and opinions is what allows us to understand each other and our pasts. The most interesting trend is the way people view religious and, in the case of evolution, science works.

While few Americans think that there are books which should be banned completely, opinions differ on books that should be available to children in school libraries. Strong majorities say that children should be able to get The Holy Bible (83%) and books that discuss evolution (76%) from school libraries. Majorities also say so for other religious texts such as the Torah or Talmud (59%) and the Koran (57%), but approximately a quarter say these texts should not be available (24% and 28%, respectively) to children in school libraries.

A lot of this deals with people wanting their own specific religion to be viewed but not others but I was surprised that fewer people feel evolution books should be banned than feel the Torah should be. Look if you are going to have religious texts you should probably have them all so the state schools do not appear to be supporting one religion over another. Another thing is all of these books have had major influences on western civilization, both good and bad, and they should be available for students to understand why people who believe a certain thing believe it.

I was happy to see that only 16% of the people surveyed thought we should be banning books that discuss evolution. I don't know enough about the people to say for sure why they thought that way but at the very least it looks positive and looks like we are headed in the right direction and even if they feel that way for the wrong reasons at least getting students hands on real science could potentially lead to a better understanding of the science by the general public. Anyway let me end on one final note.

Banning books is bad, mkay! (it has been in my head since I started sorry)