Should books with outdated views be re-written ?

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History needs to be taught, and discussed, with an eye towards teaching ethics and civics.

You and I both know that what passes for "ethics" among schoolchildren leaves much to be desired.

The Bible is in the fiction section here in libraries and book stores. Something that is considered fiction doesn't *have* to be accurate.

Unless it's an educational textbook, which should be updated as the subject develops, books are a time capsule, they should be preserved as written by the author. If the material is offensive, such as Mein Kampf, print a warning on the outside, but keep the contents intact.

Factual books? Yes. Science, understanding, and discoveries of new things and realisation of mistaken interpretations of old things should be corrected to present the current snapshot of knowledge.

Fiction books (edit: and autobiographical/opinion books)? No. They are a product of their time, they reflect the values of the people who wrote them, at the time they wrote them, and they are a part of history. Collectively they represent the state of social values at a given point in history and to attempt to erase or "fix" that is to prevent the opportunity to understand how things were and why. Might some people find them uncomfortable to read? Probably, but they should be consumed with the caveat that they may not represent the current environment, nor the opinions of the people who wrote them, as things move on and peoples' attitudes change.

The sciences of psychology, sociology, genetics, anatomy, and even medicine have been used to "justify" bigotry, too.

Sure, so future revisions of them, as we learn that things are not as they were previously presented, should be corrected. Don't use 80 year old reference books in schools which say "Asbestos is the best thing in the world because it prevents fires!", right?

But the old ones shouldn't necessarily be erased from history, they are the path to the current understanding, they demonstrate the mistakes we made as cultures to get where we are now (and will hopefully continue to move onto in the future).

Agrees with Isabellas , thoughts , but find myself in a position to remind people , of the history of what the
National Socialist party did in the middle to late 1930s , Hitler s. Brown shirts , organized a huge book burnings , for books whose ideas that were not in falling in line with his Parties ideals . And the USA has its very own list of banned books already in existence . I had learned of these in grade school , but where not given lists of the books , as they were banned . And sure Russia probably has its own list . In the early days of the internet , you could access others countries search engines , which you could look up these sort of things . It is my belief now that accessing other countries search engines are probably abrogated by the powers that be . Chinas society is heavily regulated
In this matter I believe .

So maybe when a book's copyright runs out, instead of defaulting to the public domain, it defaults for another 70 years into an "Archival" copyright -- one in which the book is reprinted only for academic use and issued only to public, governmental, and collegiate libraries ... ?

"You see, it's... it's no good, Montag. We've all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal." Quote from Fahrenheit 451, 1966 film.

That's a very slippery slope: who is to chose the criteria? Who's view of morality, hopefully not from the Christian bible, Quran, or the Torah: all religions have their own agendas. How many wars have there been over someone's interpretation of "the word of god"

Yes, people say very stupid things in books, but how else are we going to learn if our history has been edited? How else would we know about an utter ass like Francis Galton:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton

DIVAIR

Then whoever said this first had the best idea: Teach children critical-thinking skills and how to find out the truth for themselves.  The only drawback would be parents could no longer use religious "guilt trips" to keep their kids in line.

I see no need for that, as anybody capable of looking up information in a book should be capable of checking the publication date and whether there are more recent revisions. They can just continue to exist anywhere you might find books (peoples' homes, bookshops, libraries, archives) and just be historical records of what people used to believe was true. (Edit: If you mean reprints of the old versions, that's probably not necessary either, as long as we continue to preserve old works.)

I'm going to guess that anybody not willing to do a few seconds research into whether an 80 year old book contains information still considered current probably isn't going to be the kind of person that's terribly bothered about factual accuracy anyway...

It does get a little muddy when books are only maybe a few years old but discoveries have been made since, it might not be old enough to be considered likely outdated, but that's a side-effect of printed media. Once it's printed, it can't be updated on the fly (you could add in notes pages with corrections, but that's not something that's going to happen en masse), so there is always a risk with that kind of media that what you're reading may not be up to date.

That's why books have editors who provide a preface or analysis of the work. I wish more people read them, instead of skipping to Page 1 of the text.

It's also important for people to read multiple sources on a topic, and use their reasoning when deciding which is most credible or informed. I doubt anyone would read an 80 year old science text without comparing it to modern research.

Public domain is fine, within the right framework of context. Otherwise we're looking at censorship for future generations, which I believe is against the goals of learning, and democratic principles. Information scaffolds over time. We can't pull one piece from the bottom of the tower, and hope the remainder will suffice.

Looks like I will have to say this again, so nobody else argues needlessly against my "Archival Copyright" idea.  Whoever said this first said it best: Teach children critical-thinking skills and how to find out the truth for themselves.  The only drawback would be parents could no longer use religious "guilt trips" to keep their kids in line.

Indeed. I think you can, to a certain extent, in that the current revision of a scientific text may state something which we currently believe about an illness or a chemical is fact and, to the best of our knowledge, we consider it to be true. If all you need to know is whether we presently believe asbestos to be a good or a bad substance to employ, a modern reference might tell you that it does have fire-preventing properties, but that it's also hazardous to human health.

But without acknowledgement that we may previously have thought an illness to be the presence of an evil spirit, or that chemical to be greatly beneficial before it turned out to be very dangerous (leaded makeup, as another example), that contextless information fails to present the spirit of scientific principle and the progression of the understanding we derive from it and which caused us to arrive at the present state of the art.

If your purpose is to restrict availability of books in order to prevent outdated misinformation, what of the existing copies of the books you would have restricted? They will still exist, unless you intend to recall them all and either destroy them or hide them away until social attitudes have changed or the misbelief you think is damaging has died out.

Besides, as Isabella said, there is a democratic element too. Should the historical context of this information, incorrect though we now understand it to have been, be the specific reserve of the academic and governmental library? I don't believe so.

Regardless, parents don't need books to keep children in line. How many parents have used "if you don't behave, Santa won't bring you any toys, because you've been a bad person" before?