Indicator V-15	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-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 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.

Figure V-15b, Full Size Supporting Data

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%.

Figure V-15c, Full Size Supporting Data

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.

Indicator V-16	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%.

Figure V-16a, Full Size Supporting Data

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).