Sixty-five percent of Americans oppose efforts to restrict books in public schools, and 62 percent oppose state laws on unacceptable content, a new national poll finds.
A majority of respondents, 78 percent, said they are very or somewhat confident that their local public schools select appropriate books for students, said the results, released Aug. 21 by the Knight Foundation, an organization that advocates for free speech.
Langer Research Associates conducted the nationally representative poll of 4,500 adults between Feb. 29 to March 10, providing new, nuanced data about how Americans of different political ideologies and backgrounds, including parents and non-parents, view the ongoing debate.
The results show that the public “sees a bigger risk in depriving students of access to books with educational value than in giving them access to books that are inappropriate,” a Knight Foundation report on the findings said. “Fears about a chilling effect in book selection are substantial. Yet there are complexities in these views.”
Most Americans’ views, in fact, fall between diametrically opposed poles. Most are uncomfortable with book restrictions overall but see instances in which content should be restricted, and actual book challenges are being fueled by a very small number of people.
The findings come at a time of heightened debate over how schools select library books and classroom materials and how districts respond to calls to remove books about subjects like race and sexuality from their collections. They also come as 17 states impose bans or restrictions on teaching and materials about “divisive concepts,” like critical race theory, and as other laws target LGBTQ+ identity and use of pronouns.
Here are four key findings.
1. Opposition to school book restrictions varies by background and political ideology
The poll asked respondents if they support or oppose efforts to restrict books in schools. If respondents said they weren’t sure, pollsters asked them if they leaned toward opposing or supporting such measures.
Sixty-five percent of respondents said they oppose or lean toward opposing restrictions. Those most likely to support restrictions where those who identified themselves as conservatives, white evangelical protestants, and private school parents. Those least likely to support restrictions identified as liberals and LGBTQ+ adults.
2. Most respondents trust local public schools to select appropriate books for students
Most respondents, 61 percent, said concerns about age-appropriateness are a legitimate reason to consider book restrictions. They were less likely to view the following as legitimate concerns: contradictions of parents’ moral values, 35 percent; contradictions of parents’ religious beliefs, 28 percent; and contradiction of parents’ political beliefs, 12 percent.
Respondents were most likely to support restrictions for books that portray racism, sexual intercourse, and sexual orientation for students at the elementary level and far more likely to support access to such books for children in older grades.
Most respondents said they were very or somewhat confident in their local schools’ ability to select appropriate books for children. Respondents who identified as liberal were the most likely to agree, at 90 percent, while just 63 percent of conservative respondents agreed. Public school parents were more likely to say they trusted schools with book selection than respondents as a whole.
3. Respondents are least likely to trust government, non-parents to decide which books are age-appropriate for students
Asked who they trusted to determine which books are age-appropriate for students, respondents were most likely to say librarians, teachers, and principals. They were least likely to say they trusted their state government, adults in their community who are not parents, and their local school boards.
Disputes over library books and classroom materials have become a flashpoint for many local school boards in recent years, sometimes dominating emotional and packed public hearings and driving costly political campaigns.
Karen Smith, the president of the Central Bucks County, Pa., school board, took her oath on a stack of contested library books in 2023 as a repudiation of a policy to review and restrict library books with “sexualized content.”
“This is America,” Smith told Education Week at the time. “We were founded on principles of freedom: the freedom to express ourselves, the freedom of ideas. Students have rights, and our community values that. They also respect the professionalism of our librarians.”
4. Few respondents participated in local book debates
Two percent of respondents said they’d been involved in efforts to try to help maintain students access to contested books, and 1 percent said they’d sought to restrict access.
Just 7 percent of parents reported that their child has read a book from their school that they felt was inappropriate for their age. Respondents as a whole were more likely to be concerned that the “chilling effect” of book debates would lead removal of academically valuable materials than to be concerned that permissive policies would lead children to be exposed to inappropriate materials.
Nine of 10 respondents agreed that any public school parent should be able to submit a complaint about a book to their district, and three quarters said schools should only investigate after they receive multiple complaints about the same book.
“The schools are trying to take the parents’ place,” one respondent told pollsters.
Others disagreed.
“Once you start banning books, where will it stop?” another respondent said.
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