Who's still Afraid of Harry Potter?

So I am taking a two week Applied Writing class to bring my GPA up a bit and it is taught by a pretty liberal teacher. There is always a slight tension in the class as about 3/4 of the class seems pretty conservative. Recently the class has turned from conservative in my mind to downright ignorant. Usually I am not so judgmental, and I really believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I cannot understand when people defend their opinion with "just because" or "that's just how I feel" or "I don't think that's right". The topic came up about Harry Potter. The teacher simply asked a) if anyone has read it, b) is it any good? The response was "Man I don't think it's right that kids read that stuff", "A fifth grader reading a 900 page book is just not healthy", "I would never let my kids read that stuff with witchcraft in it".

...

On the outside I was like

But on the INSIDE I was like

Yeaaahh, that's the stuff :) I never meant to have this blog be so opinionated, and I really would like to hear a reasonable explanation as to why a Harry Potter book should be kept from kids. I think the best answer to to the above statements was when the teacher asked "So what about Cinderella and other fairy tales?" and the response was "Well those are OK". Nice.