Are Americans falling in love with censorship?http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/07/are-americans-falling-in-love-with-censorshipClassifying books according to their suitability for different age ranges would be ill-advised, unworkable and would raise serious concerns about censorship, American free-speech campaigners have said, in the wake of a poll claiming that more than seven in 10 US adults believe a rating system similar to that used for films should be applied to books. The Harris poll of 2,244 US adults was released in July, revealing that, in the space of four years, the percentage of Americans believing that some books should be completely banned has increased by more than half. In 2011, 18% of those surveyed wanted some books banned; in 2015, 28% agreed with the assertion. Just under a half, 48%, said that no books should be banned, compared with 56% in 2011. Republicans, the poll found, are nearly twice as likely as Democrats to believe some books should be banned, with 42% agreeing with the claim compared with 23% of Democrats.
In recent months, parents in Idaho have asked for John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men to be removed from classrooms, concerned over profanities such as "bastard" and "God damn", while in Florida, parents have tried to ban two children's books respectively set in Afghanistan and Iraq, citing violent content and their inclusion of religions other than Christianity.
Almost two-thirds (60%) of Americans, according to the poll, felt children should not be able to borrow books containing explicit language from libraries, with 33% feeling they should. Forty-eight per cent wanted to block children's school-library access to books containing reference to violence, while 45% felt children should be able to access such books. A third said the Koran should not be in school libraries, but 55% felt it should; 26% were against school libraries featuring books "that question the existence of a divine being or beings", but 66% felt such book they should be available.
The idea of rating books – raised in the UK in 2008 to overwhelming opposition from authors including Philip Pullman and JK Rowling – was supported by more than two-thirds of Americans, according to the poll, with 71% agreeing with the statement that "there should be a rating system for books (as there are for films, TV shows, and video games)".
But Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said that age-ratings systems for books are ill-advised and unworkable, because they are based on highly subjective judgments that seek to reduce complex works to a few letters or numbers, and that assume that age is all that matters in determining what reading matter is suitable for any given person.
Source: The Guardian
