The Davis school district in Utah has reversed an earlier decision removing the Bible from middle and elementary schools. Few people thought it should be banned; the challenge to it was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum of the policies that led to the removal of other books. Unfortunately, the appeal committee and the district officials missed the point. They said that “the Bible has significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains.” Of course it does. The point is, so do many other books. Violence and vulgarity, even outright immorality, aren’t a sufficient reason to exclude books from school libraries.

The Bible is a horrible book. The Old Testament presents a sadistic, murderous God who drowns nearly the entire world population, firebombs cities, orders the extermination of every man, woman, and child in other cities, and decrees death penalties for many kinds of actions. In the New Testament, this sadist comes to us, not to beg for forgiveness for his crimes, but to say that he’ll forgive us, on the condition that we believe he turned himself into a human in order to be executed. People who don’t believe that claim will be tortured forever.

Biblical teachings and examples have provided an excuse to imprison, torture, and execute people. If believing un-Christian ideas will get you damned, then silencing them before they can spread is a humanitarian act. The doctrine of salvation by faith provides a logical basis for atrocities.

Even so, keeping people ignorant of the Bible is no solution. We need to know what it says to understand its influence. The Crusades, the Reformation, the claims of creationists, and the Christian Nationalist movement can’t be properly understood without knowing how the Bible influenced them.

The same is true of many other books, classic or contemporary, that present ideas which are are controversial or unpopular. The Communist Manifesto lays down a blueprint for tyranny. The Odyssey presents a hero who is unfaithful to his wife during his journey and then kills many men for the offense of squatting in his home. The Grimm folk tales depict many gruesome actions, and some of the stories are clearly antisemitic.

Certainly some books don’t belong in the lower grades of schools. Anything which degrades people without having any literary or historical significance should be left out. Stories intended primarily to produce sexual excitement aren’t appropriate. Reducing the criteria to a simple set of rules, though, doesn’t work well. All approaches have problems, and it’s best to err on the side of letting students read books. As long as adults are available to explain them, they can’t do as much harm as people think.

Miscellany

Here are some playlists I’ve created with the Apple Classical app. I think you need an Apple Music subscription to listen to them.

• Works by Mozart, including some relatively obscure but interesting ones.
• Works by Louis Spohr. He’s an underrated composer whom I plug as often as I can.
• German Lieder from Mozart and Haydn to Mahler. Some well-known favorites and a few surprises. “Erlkönig” is included, but it’s Spohr’s, not Schubert’s. (See above about plugging Spohr.)
• Classics for children. I’m no expert on children’s musical education, but these are pieces which appealed to me when I was small, or which I think would have.