The Coddling of the American Mind

Twenty to twenty-five years ago, my university experience presented me with a chance to learn about a variety of different subjects in both general education classes, electives, and my major classes.  I probably found the electives to be the most interesting.  In any case, some classes presented me with ideas that I disagreed with, usually from a political standpoint.  I don’t remember anyone on either side of an issue ever being bothered or offended that someone brought up a countering viewpoint or argument.  It actually seemed like it was expected.  It was also expected that people be able to back up their statements.  An introductory economics class was one that featured more intense discussion than most.  Some students were of a more socialist persuasion than the professor, and I found the discussions to be kind of interesting, as did others in the class.  Since then, it seems that most college students and many people have decided that, somehow, ideas and words are violence, and opposing viewpoints must not be argued and parlayed with facts and reason, but simply shouted down and suppressed.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-7352-2489-6) takes a look at how American children and young adults are being set up by the education system and modern parenting for what the authors believe is a more difficult path through life, maybe even often including failure.  They believe that there are three “great untruths” being fed to young people in modern America: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good people and evil people.  They discuss what they term “safetyism,” meaning the idea that kids must be protected from every possible harm, both physical and psychological.  They note that there are many acceptable risks and that for someone to grow up mentally and physically strong, one must take risks.  Helicopter parenting and safetyism don’t allow for much, if any, risk-taking, thereby stunting development.  The authors reject the idea that feelings trump truth.  They believe that truth trumps feelings and that to arrive at the truth, one must be exposed to ideas that one might not necessarily agree with.  They’re not arguing for purposefully offending people, but have little patience of the concept of micro-aggressions, preferring to use cognitive techniques that tend to assume good intentions and a less adversarial view of the world.  That leads to their third point, in which they argue that the world is not good people against bad people.  There may be good and bad ideas, but that should be hashed out in a free exchange of ideas, and one should not assume that someone purveying what one believes to be a bad idea is a bad person.  After making their case, they suggest solutions to the problems.  Their solutions embrace free speech, personal responsibility in how one reacts to ideas one perceives as negative, and an education system and parenting milieu that encourages taking acceptable risks instead of avoiding all risk whatsoever. 

The book is an interesting one that lays out an idea that I found convincing, both in the description of the problem and in some of the suggested prescriptions.  The authors believe in limited social media for children (and adults, really), more chances for kids to be outside and exploring instead of inside behind a screen, and in letting them hash out minor differences without adult intervention.  In high school and college, the authors want students to exchange ideas and be exposed to various ideas.  They decry the fact that colleges in the U.S. are skewed strongly to the left among both the faculty and the student body.  They wonder how those individuals can ever expand their minds if they hear only things they agree with.  If the reader is a conservative, the book can present some cringy moments when the authors lay out their support for various liberal ideas, including some that most view as woke, but it only seems right that they present those views in a book that challenges ideas about how one thinks.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.