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A majority of Americans worry more about children losing access to books that could teach them something about the world than they do about children being exposed to potentially inappropriate material.
And most trust teachers and school librarians to make good choices about the books they stock at school.
But they also think age appropriateness is a legitimate reason to restrict book access, especially for elementary students. And there are big differences on the issue between liberals and conservatives, between LGBTQ adults and others, and between parents and non-parents.
That’s all according to new polling from the Knight Foundation that examines public attitudes toward book restrictions in public schools. Knight talked to more than 4,500 adults, including 1,413 parents of children aged 18 or younger, and oversampled parents of color to better capture their perspectives.
The picture that emerges is “nuanced,” said Kyla Gabriel, director of learning and impact for the Knight Foundation, which has done research on free expression issues for decades.
For example, 88% of parents of public school children say they feel confident that their local public schools choose appropriate books, compared with 76% of non-parents. But more public school parents say they support some efforts to restrict book access than do non-parents — 40% to 32%. And more than half of parents whose children don’t attend public school support efforts to restrict book access, reflecting the greater representation of religious conservatives among private school and homeschooling parents.
“This is much more complex than ‘a majority of adults oppose book restrictions’,” Gabriel said.
“When they have a child in the public school system, they are not necessarily supportive of book restrictions, but they might see some reasons to restrict books.”
Reflecting similarly conflicted views, a survey last year by the Every Library Institute found that large majorities of parents trust librarians and believe their children are safe using the school library — even as smaller majorities supported the idea of restricting book access in some cases, requiring parents to sign permission slips for library use, and allowing parents to opt their child out of using the school library.
And an Ipsos poll found that Democrats had more concerns about book bans,
… but voters of both parties said they would be less likely to support a candidate who supported restricting book access.
The issue continues to resonate politically: In a July speech shortly after she became the likely Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris contrasted her party with Republicans: “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”
Uncertainty over who should decide on appropriate books
Courtesy of Laura Kopec
A February 2023 protest against the Pinellas County Schools’ ban of “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Toni Morrison that was removed from their shelves after a parent complaint.
In the Knight survey results released Wednesday, majorities of conservatives, Republicans, and white evangelical Protestants support restricting books in public schools.
But even some conservative respondents worried that works considered classics could be banned in liberal communities because they touch on ideas or use language now considered outmoded or offensive.
[Related: US book ban push draws students, parents and librarians into national fight]
“Books like ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Catcher in the Rye’ all need to be made available to students,” one respondent told Knight. “Just because the far-left liberals think all things not woke need to be banned, the students will miss out on learning about the culture and history of this country.”
“They just better not restrict access to the Bible,” said another.
While most Hispanic respondents did not support restricting books, they were more likely to support some restrictions than other ethnic or racial groups, while Black respondents were the least likely ethnic or racial group to support restrictions.
Just 12% of LGBTQ adults told Knight they support book restrictions in school.
Many LGBTQ youth report feeling unsafe at school even as many states have adopted restrictions on talking about gender and sexuality and some schools have removed books that mention LGBTQ topics.
[Related: School library book bans are seen as targeting LGBTQ content]
Large majorities said students should have access to books that might contradict their parents’ political, religious, or moral beliefs. Some respondents cast efforts to restrict book access as “censorship.”
“These efforts sound like the actions of right-wing extremists who want to restrict education and access to information in order to inhibit students’ critical thinking so they will more easily conform to the extremist ideology,” one respondent said.
Jefferee Woo/Tampa Bay Times via AP
Books are displayed at the Banned Book Library at American Stage in St. Petersburg, Fla., Feb. 18, 2023. In Florida, some schools have covered or removed books under a new law that requires an evaluation of reading materials and for districts to publish a searchable list of books where individuals can then challenge specific titles.
Still, 61% said age appropriateness would be a legitimate reason to restrict access to certain books, with some comparing this to TV and movie ratings systems.
There was less consensus about who should decide whether books were appropriate. About half said they trusted librarians and teachers to make the call, but those school professionals scored higher than other groups.
Fewer than a third said the school board should decide.
And just 21% said the state government or non-parents in the community could be trusted with the decision.
While a majority of respondents said books that portray or discuss racism should be available to all students …
fewer than half thought elementary school students should have access to books that mention sexual orientation or the existence of non-traditional gender identities.
This aligns with other polls about people’s comfort levels with discussions of race and American history at school versus discussions of sexuality or gender in the classroom.
[Related: Why is a book about love the latest casualty in the book ban culture wars?]
In contrast, 70% of LGBTQ respondents — many of whom were once LGBTQ students themselves — said that books touching on sexuality and gender identity should be available even to elementary students. Many advocates say seeing themselves represented in books and other media is valuable for LGBTQ children who may feel isolated or unsafe in their schools.
Awareness and involvement
Nearly a quarter of respondents were aware of efforts to restrict books in their community, and of those, more than half said the efforts had been successful. One in five respondents from the South said they were aware of successful efforts to restrict books in their community, compared with 6% of respondents in the Northeast.
While six in 10 respondents said the issue of book access was important, just 3% said they had gotten involved personally — 2% to prevent a book from being restricted and 1% to restrict a book.
A large majority of respondents said that parents should be able to raise concerns about particular books, but far fewer thought that community members who didn’t have children in the schools should be able to raise concerns.
Respondents also thought that books should not be removed or restricted based on a single complaint.
Studies by PEN America have found that most book bans are instigated by a relatively small number of people. Florida — where a large share of book challenges occur — adopted a law this year that limits people who don’t have children in the school system to one challenge per month.
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Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado, where she also covers the legislature and statewide education issues.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.
