The indicators presented in this section attempt to shed some light on Americans’ perceptions of the humanities and on their influence
on American society. How do Americans feel about the humanities and those charged with transmitting humanistic skills and knowledge to
the nation’s young people? What effect do they believe the humanities have on individuals and communities? Both questions involve
important and complex issues of value. Neither can begin to be adequately addressed through existing data.
To be sure, participation data, such as those gathered by the National Endowment for the Arts’
Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, are
suggestive with regard to the extent to which Americans value humanistic institutions such as historic sites and art museums (see
Indicator V-13, Historic Site Visits, and
Indicator V-14, Art Museum Attendance). However, more
direct measures of public attitudes are needed not only in order to help explain why Americans utilize these institutions to the extent they do,
but also because such measures are critical to an understanding of the place of the humanities in American life.
Nonetheless, a comprehensive, ongoing data collection program that can provide such information does not currently exist. Consequently,
the indicators in this section rely on the limited data on the topic obtained through the General Social Survey (GSS), a survey of American values that has been fielded regularly since 1972 by
the National Opinion Research Center.
Although the GSS is a valuable source of information on changes in American attitudes over the last several decades, most of its items
relating to the humanities have not been part of the core survey. Instead, they have appeared only sporadically, when interested
organizations have subsidized the inclusion of specific topical modules focused on humanities-related subjects. As a result, most of
the GSS data pertaining to Americans’ attitudes toward the humanities are at least ten years old and in some cases are available for
only one year, 1993, or two years, 1993 and 1998. These data therefore offer only a very limited perspective on American attitudes
toward the humanities.
In spite of these drawbacks, the data do provide some sense of Americans' views on such issues as the suppression of
texts and the value of what have traditionally been seen as literary classics, and in this way they touch on a few of the debates that
have surrounded the humanities in the last few decades. At the same time, however, because the data are so limited, they are also a
commentary on how little is known about current attitudes toward the humanities and on the need for additional information gathering on
this complex subject.
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Indicator V-15
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Public Attitudes toward Literature
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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. Although the items followed the same format in asking respondents
to indicate their level of agreement with a particular statement about literature, not all items were included in the GSS each time it was
fielded. Thus, the extent of the data varies considerably by item, with some being limited to one year (1993) or two years (1993 and 1998).
Only one item, concerning the suppression of texts, reappeared regularly from 1972 to 2004.
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). Although this percentage is substantial, the fact that the majority of
Americans dissented is also significant. Whether this proportion changed as Americans continued to be confronted with a host
of ethical, political, and social issues of the sort that originally inspired such “classics”—but were also exposed to a wealth of alternative
perspectives through the burgeoning of the Internet and other electronic media—is unknown.
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 those surveyed expressed
the conviction that there were certain works that could be considered universal in their appeal, capturing elements of the human
experience that transcend ethnic or cultural differences. Regrettably, without additional data for a more current year, the extent
to which this perception has changed in light of the ongoing and contentious debates about social as well as literary values in the
United States in the last fifteen years cannot be determined.
The next item, concerning levels of 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). The first time, 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
somewhat, with the percentage of Americans indicating strong disagreement increasing from 5.0% to 8.3%.
Textual interpretation and the weighing of conflicting points of view to arrive at reasoned conclusions are both key
humanistic competencies, and the extent of 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 32 years between 1972, when
the survey began, and 2004, survey respondents were regularly asked whether, if some people in their community suggested that a
book that espoused particular beliefs be taken out of the public library, they would favor removing the book.
Figure V-15d indicates that in the last three decades, Americans became less supportive of the suppression of most of the texts
that may have been distasteful to them. Since the early 1970s, the number of Americans who would call for a book espousing atheism,
extreme militarism, communism, or homosexuality to be removed from a public library decreased by at least 11 percentage points.
In the case of books advocating homosexuality, the decline was a particularly significant 20 percentage points. The exception to this
trend concerns books asserting the inferiority of African Americans, toward which there was a fairly consistent level of disapproval
over time. Between 1976 (the first year in which data on this type of book were collected) and 2004, the net decline in the percentage
of those calling for the removal of such books was only 4.1 percentage points. Americans’ discomfort with this sort of material is
further shown by the fact that in every GSS since 1991, with the exception of the 1994 survey, racist texts were those that
Americans indicated they would be most willing to see removed from a public library.
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Indicator V-16
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Public Attitudes toward Fine Arts
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One challenge that the humanities have traditionally faced in the United States is the perception that they are the purview of
cultural elites, produced by and for a select few. This has been the case particularly for the fine arts, yet accurate measures
of public opinion are extremely scarce. The only reliable data comes from the GSS. The GSS data are limited, however, because the
topic of the fine arts has appeared only twice in recent years, in 1993 and 1998, and the items about art and popular culture amounted
to only three. Making meaningful generalizations about American attitudes toward the arts during those years on the basis of such
limited data is difficult, and saying anything about current attitudes is impossible. However, the results of the survey do indicate
that in the 1990s a shift occurred in the degree to which Americans felt that the fine arts were accessible. The decade also saw an
increasing appreciation for the artistic merits of popular culture.
In 1993, over 49% of Americans either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Only a few people have the knowledge and ability to
judge excellence in the arts” (Figure V-16a). By 1998, however, a significant shift had occurred toward the view that more than just
a handful of people have the
competence to assess the quality of artistic production. While there was a small increase in the number of people strongly agreeing
with the statement above, the percentage of respondents expressing basic agreement had dropped by almost 10 points at the same time
that the percentage of those who strongly disagreed had risen from 9.4% to 16.7%.
Further evidence of the fact that the American public was coming to feel less alienated from “high culture” in the 1990s was the
decrease in the proportion of Americans expressing derisive opinions toward contemporary art. Betrween 1993 and 1998,
the level of agreement with the statement, “Modern painting is just slapped on: a child could do it,” declined by
approximately 10 percentage points (Figure V-16b). Earlier in the
decade, Americans demonstrated that they did not feel that the traditional fine arts were the sole repository of beauty and
meaning, with 95% of adults asserting in 1993 that artistic excellence could also be found in popular and folk culture (Figure V-16c).
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