The Coddling of the American Mind

July 1, 2018
Overprotecting children hinders them from confronting physical, emotional, and intellectual challenges.Noting a rise of anxiety and depression among teenagers and threats to free speech on many college campuses, Lukianoff (Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, 2012), an attorney and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and social psychologist Haidt (Ethical Leadership/New York Univ.; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012, etc.) offer an incisive analysis of the causes of these problems and a measured prescription for change. The authors assert that many parents, teachers, professors, and university administrators have been teaching young people to see themselves as fragile and in need of protection: "to exaggerate danger" (even from words), "amplify their first emotional responses," and see the world as a battle between good and evil. Particularly regrettable is "the creep of the word 'unsafe' to encompass 'uncomfortable, ' " as students seek to institute trigger warnings on course curricula and to lobby for "safe spaces" where they feel sheltered from ideas they deem emotionally or intellectually difficult to confront. "We teach children to monitor themselves for the degree to which they feel 'unsafe' and then talk about how unsafe they feel," the authors write, and to interpret unpleasant emotions as dangerous. The authors present detailed accounts of the "meltdown into anarchy" on college campuses when "political diversity is reduced to very low levels, when the school's leadership is weak and easily intimidated," and when professors and administrators fail to uphold free speech and academic freedom. "Many professors," write the authors, "say they now teach and speak more cautiously, because one slip or one simple misunderstanding could lead to vilification and even threats from any number of sources." Social media outlets have inflamed these attacks. The authors offer practical suggestions for parents (allow children independence and nurture self-reliance) and teachers (cultivate intellectual virtues and teach debate skills) to guide children into adulthood.An important examination of dismaying social and cultural trends.

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July 9, 2018
In this expansion of their 2015 piece for the Atlantic, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that the urge to insulate oneself against offensive ideas has had deleterious consequences, making students less resilient, more prone to undesirable “emotional reasoning,” less capable of engaging critically with others’ viewpoints, and more likely to cultivate an “us-versus-them” mentality. They identify the cause in a growing obsession with protecting college students, rooted in the cult of “safetyism”—the idea that all adverse experiences, from falling out of a tree as a child to experiencing a racial microaggression as a college sophomore, are equally dangerous and should be avoided entirely. They condemn these attitudes as likely to foment anguish and leave students ill-prepared for postcollege life, and they endorse the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy as a better approach. At times, the authors’ limited perspectives become apparent—for instance, their dismissal of microaggressions as simple misunderstandings that should be corrected with good grace is naïve and lacking in compassion, and their use of exaggerated hypothetical dialogues to illustrate the worldviews of those with whom they disagree can seem in bad faith. Yet the path they advocate—take on challenges, cultivate resilience, and try to reflect rather than responding based solely on initial emotional responses—deserves consideration.

March 1, 2018

First Amendment expert Lukianoff and social psychologist Haidt argue that child-centered social attitudes dating back to the 1980s have convinced young people that their feelings are always right, and this leads not just to failure (as the subtitle has it) but free speech issues on campus and the rising polarization in politics. Bound to stir up talk.

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