This indicator addresses questions concerning Americans’ view of the value and influence of literature by presenting responses to four items that were included in the GSS at various times, beginning in 1972. The extent of the data varies by item. One item, concerning the suppression of texts, appeared regularly from 1972 to 2008, but others appeared only once or twice during this period.

The first item gauges Americans’ belief that the sorts of texts on which much humanities education focuses are valuable and contribute to young people’s ability to function in contemporary society. The results of the survey show that in 1993, 38% of Americans agreed with the statement “High schools and colleges make students spend too much time reading ‘classics’ that have little relevance in today’s world” (Figure V-15a). Whether fewer or more Americans feel this way today and whether events of the past two decades, including the rise of the Internet and electronic media, have influenced opinions of the value of the “classics” is, unfortunately, unknown.

Figure V-15a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure V-15b presents another perspective on Americans’ ideas about literature, this time focused on the extent to which ethnic and cultural differences were felt to be salient to literary meaning and value. In 1993, over three-quarters of American adults believed that certain works could be considered universal in their appeal, capturing elements of the human experience that transcend ethnic or cultural differences. Regrettably, without data for a more current year, it is not possible to gauge the extent to which this perception has changed in light of the debate about social as well as literary values that has taken place in the United States over the last two decades.

Figure V-15b, Full Size Supporting Data

The next item, concerning Americans’ confidence in humanities educators’ judgment as to which texts young people ought to read, is more informative insofar as it appeared twice on the GSS, in 1993 and 1998 (Figure V-15c). In 1993, 63% of Americans reported that they trusted high school and college teachers to select readings for their students. Five years later, however, distrust had intensified, with the percentage of Americans indicating strong disagreement increasing from 5% to slightly more than 8%.

Figure V-15c, Full Size Supporting Data

The weighing of conflicting points of view to arrive at reasoned conclusions is a key humanistic competency, and Americans’ willingness to permit the public dissemination of texts that they may find personally objectionable is one topic for which the GSS provides long-term trend data. In the 36 years between the first administration of the survey and 2008, survey respondents were regularly asked whether they would favor the removal of books espousing particular beliefs if some people in their community suggested that such books be taken out of the public library. Figure V-15d indicates that in 2008 Americans were less supportive of suppressing most types of texts than they were in the early 1970s, although a nonnegligible minority of Americans still supported censorship of this kind. The greatest decline, 22 percentage points, was in the share of Americans willing to suppress books advocating homosexuality.

The exception to this trend concerns books asserting the inferiority of African Americans, toward which there has been a relatively consistent level of disapproval over time. In 2008, the percentage of American adults favoring the removal of such books from public libraries was only three percentage points lower than it had been in 1976 (the first year in which data on this type of book were collected). Further indication of Americans’ continuing discomfort with this sort of material is the fact that in nine of the ten rounds of the GSS administered over the 1991–2008 time period, racist texts were those that the greatest percentage of Americans indicated they would be willing to see removed from a public library.