The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

“This is a book about wisdom and its opposite,” write Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind. “It is a book about three psychological principles and about what happens to young people when parents and educators—acting with the best of intentions—implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles.” In my opinion, it is also a book every American concerned with the future of our nation’s public discourse and democratic culture should read.And yes, I am serious about that.The Coddling of the American Mind grew out of the increased support among college students for censorship of controversial opinions, a trend that Lukianoff began to notice in the fall of 2013. Lukianoff is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a leading advocate for free speech on college and university campuses. In his experience, until that time, the leading advocates for censorship had been college administrators. What was driving the rapid rise of support for censorship among students?For much of his life, Lukianoff had suffered clinical depression, even contemplating suicide in late 2007. In 2008, he underwent cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of psychotherapy that identifies distorted patterns of thinking that often underlie depression and anxiety, and this helped him tremendously. As Lukianoff interacted with students, he noticed that the way they reasoned about controversial issues often mirrored the same cognitive distortions CBT teaches people to control.This insight led to a conversation with Haidt, a social psychologist, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. That conversation led to a feature story in the September 2015 issue of The Atlantic. The book builds out the article’s core thesis.Lukianoff and Haidt unfold their argument in three parts: Part I, “Three Bad Ideas,” looks at “three Great Untruths”:1. The Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battled Between Good People and Evil PeopleTaken together, these untruths result in “a culture of safetyism” on campus, whereby students must be protected from opposing opinions that might “harm” their “safety,” no longer defined as physical safety but now as emotional safety too.The results of this culture of safetyism, ironically enough, are intimidation and violence on the one hand and witch hunts on the other, as the Lukianoff and Haidt argue in Part II, “Bad Ideas in Action.”They cite the February 1, 2017, anti-Milo Yiannopoulos riot at the University of California at Berkeley as an example of the former, though there are many such examples scattered throughout the book. But the threats of violence are not merely coming from leftwing Antifa activists on campus. The authors point to alt-right off-campus provocation as well, specifically the neo-Nazi march through the University of Virginia’s campus on August 11, 2017. The confrontation between protesters and counterprotesters the next day resulted in the vehicular murder of Heather Heyer by an alt-right driver.Lukianoff and Haidt cite several examples of academic witch hunts conducted against professors who utter heterodox ideas, even if they are liberal or leftwing. Prof. Bret Weinstein’s protest of the “Day of Absence” at Evergreen State College in Washington is a leading example of this. The school is quite liberal, as is Weinstein. On its annual Day of Absence, minority faculty students had since the 1970s gone off campus to make their absence, and hence contributions, palpable. But in 2017, organizers of the event asked white faculty and students not to show up. Weinstein thought this went too far and was subjected to vicious protests for saying so.As these events illustrate, college and university campuses, which are supposed to be beacons of free speech, have instead in many cases become their opposite. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why this has happened, but in Part III, “How Did We Get Here?,” Lukianoff and Haidt identify “six interacting explanatory threads”:rising political polarization and cross-part animosity; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression; changes in parenting practices; the decline of free play; the growth of campus bureaucracy; and a rising passion for justice in response to major national events, combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.This may be the most interesting part of the book, rich in social scientific detail and fair-minded in its analysis. As the parent of three elementary-age children, the chapters on “Paranoid Parenting” and “The Decline of Free Play” were thought-provoking and helpful.Part IV, “Wising Up,” builds on the analysis of the previous chapters and suggests a way forward for making “Wiser Kids,” “Wiser Universities,” and “Wiser Societies,” as the titles of the three chapters indicate. A table on page 263 summarizes the argument of the entire book, so I’ll reproduce it here:PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE // WISDOM // GREAT UNTRUTH1. Young people are antifragile. // Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. // What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.2. We are all prone to emotional reasoning and the confirmation bias. // Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother. // Always trust your feelings.3. We are all prone to dichotomous thinking and tribalism. // The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. // Life is battle between good people and evil people.As I mentioned at the outset of this review, I am serious when I say that every American concerned with the future of our nation’s public discourse and democratic culture should read The Coddling of the American Mind. It stimulated my thinking as a parent and helped form a better opinion of contemporary events as a concerned citizen. As a person, it provided an accessible introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy, identifying the cognitive distortions that misshape our opinions and hence misguide our actions. And as a politically conservative Christian, it reminded me that there are non-religious liberals (e.g., Lukianoff) and centrists (e.g., Haidt) who are intelligent and public-minded and have things to say I need to hear.So, buy this book. Read it. Then share it.

Lukianoff and Haidt offer a treatise on how the moral landscape has changed over the past decade. The book revolves around 3 problematic ideas that have arisen:1. what doesn't kill us makes us weaker (humans are fragile and need more than protection, they need safe spaces and safety nets for increasingly less dangerous events in the external world)2. always trust your feelings (feeling hurt constitutes sufficient evidence that any person or system is wrong/harmful/bad/evil)3. life is a battle of good and evil people (the world is a perpetual battle of your group versus the other group)We now live in a world where adults file accusations of harm immediately, especially with social media, before initially doing an internal check. Just because we feel offended does not automatically mean the other person is an aggressor/bad person. And being on a hypervigiliant search for harm ensures you will find it, even from decent folks that would be best served by an assumption of benevolence until proven otherwise.This book comes at a great time. A lot of societal problems have improved in just the past 100 years (see It's Better Than It Looks by Gregg Easterbrook and Better Angles of Our Nature by Steven Pinker). Yet, explicit sexism, racism, homophobia and their related ilk still remain. Unfortunately, some of the solutions to reduce social problems has produced some undesirable side effects. This book details these problems of progress. With scientific research, sociological analysis, and interesting anecdotes, the authors do a deep dive into the culture of emotional safeguarding - where protecting people from feeling uncomfortable has taken precedence over training people to be critical thinkers.Essentially, many of the principles for protecting people from dissenting viewpoints runs counter to thousands of years of theory and practice, from stoic philosophy to cognitive-behavioral therapy.Looking forward to the debates that will arise from this book. It's an easy read - two settings and you'll be finished. I hope every administrator, teacher, parent, and students read this. Regardless of how much you agree with the authors, its time to have a serious conversation of whether the social progress pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and if so, what can be done.

Over 40 years ago, in Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, there is a proposal at a Senate meeting to invite a prominent geneticist as a guest speaker. One of the radical majority objects, on the grounds that “his work is fascist, and we've no business to confirm it by inviting him here. The conservative Dean mildly objects, “'I had always thought the distinguishing mark of fascism was its refusal to tolerate free enquiry”. The lecture goes ahead, but is broken up with violence.This is the territory of this book, with an added dimension: modern students may be opposed to such speakers, but must be defended from them lest they be upset. Welcome to a subset of the snowflake generation.Lukianoff and Haidt begin by amplifying the “three bad ideas” which, they claim, lie at the heart of the modern tendency of “campus safety”. They then give several real world examples of how this thinking manifests itself, suggest reasons for how we got here, and finally propose some ways to break the cycle.According to the authors, many students now expect “not to be exposed to intolerant and offensive ideals”. It is argued that that the suppression on campus of opinion deemed to be non-egalitarian is not new, and can be traced back to Herbert Marcuse (hence, I believe, the fictitious but realistic episode in the History Man), but has developed due to a variety of factors. These include:-Reaction to perception of intersectionality. (I first met this term last week, when watching Bath University’s video “Why is my curriculum white?” – required viewing, I suggest.) This can increase the extent of polarisation between different groups (if you’re not a good guy, you’re a bad guy).-The tendency for social media to increase the frequency and intensity of “call-out culture” (naming and shaming for small offences against political correctness)-The belief that physical violence is a justifiable means of preventing the expression of “hateful” views, e.g. racism.As to how these factors came into play, some of the suggested causes are:-Universities have become more like large corporations, and like them have acquired an ever-growing army of administrators, for whom one main aim is to ensure students are “comfortable” – even if this means severely limiting students’ exposure to new ideas.[An example of this relates to the very article which was the origin of this book. A professor got his class to read the article, then asked them to discuss a controversial topic of their own choice (transgender issues). After the professor had said that the discussion needed to include the viewpoints of those opposed to some provision for transgender people, a student filed a “bias incident report” against him, after which the university did not rehire him.]-The students now coming to university – “iGen” arrive having had “less unsupervised time and fewer offline life experience than any previous generation”, which ill prepares them for confronting ideas alien to them. The authors suggest that this is not simply an Internet issue, as the preceding generation - the Millennials – were made of stronger stuff. As an example, the book contrasts a questionnaire given to parents of new first-graders in 1979, which majored on how independent the child was, and a modern equivalent concerned mainly with their academic level.The remedies the authors suggest are targeted at children, and include CBT, mindfulness and limitation of screen time. If the “campus safety culture” is as embedded as claimed here, and elsewhere in the media, it may take more than these techniques to shift it, but it’s a start.Bravely, Lukianoff describes how, several years ago, CBT helped him to overcome his own suicidal feelings. He uses this as an example of how to recognise cognitive distortion, the factor which influences so many modern students to exaggerate the impact of speech and ideas which do not suit them.You may or may not agree with the book, but it is valuable reading for anyone who wants to get a feel for current campus atmosphere, or is concerned about how it has developed. The raguments are generally well-presented, though the authors could havetaken slighltly more of their own medicine, i.e. included more content based on interviews with the “safety” school of thought.I started with Malcolm Bradbury, so I’ll finish with the statement, erroneously credited to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. This, as much as anything, is the core argument of the book.

Being a fan of Jon Haidt I very much enjoyed this book. Both authors explain the trends we've been seeing in both universities and society clearly and concisely. Being a psychotherapist who works at a university and having first hand experience with these issues, this book is a great help in my understanding. I've been observing for a while that the thinking patterns of (some) of the very far left (and also young people) are replicating all the very unhealthy cognitive distortions, which we often try and undo in the therapeutic setting in order to help people have happier and functional lives. It filled me with both relief and sadness to have my thoughts on this confirmed. Clearly the authors have explained all this in a way I never could, so for me it's an excellent book and I would recommend this everyone whether you work with young people or not.

This book is about the change in the way children born after 1995 were brought up. It is not just the authors who have noted a significant change. Others such as Ben Sasse and Jean Twenge have noted the change. The authors here pointed out that it was Twenge who identified 1995 as the cut-off year. The parenting attitude post 1995, amplified by increased use of electronic devices, caused parents and administrators to practice ‘safetyism’. That is what the authors refer to as ‘coddling’. Children are over-protected. Instead of leaving them to develop an immune response to peanuts, protecting children from contact with peanuts had the reverse effect, it caused an increase in peanut allergy in children. These children belong to the generation that is known as ‘iGen’. Over-reaction to speeches that offend, students demand that universities curb such speeches. The authors point out that those speeches may offend, but they are not violent and cause no physical harm. The conventional response, especially in a place of tertiary education, is to present opposing speeches so that the audience and students can evaluate the opposing views. That is no longer the case. Protests by students have led to universities cancel planned lectures or remove speakers whose views the students do not like. Two important changes have been noted. First, iGen grow up more slowly because they spend less time in social interaction. Secondly, the rate of anxiety and depression has risen rapidly. What has driven the surge in mental illness among the young? The authors point to the spread of smart phones and social media. Combined with a lack of training to deal with adverse comments, young people become more sensitive to criticism – and in social media, social criticism can be extremely harsh. The young need to be toughened, not coddled. Consequently, those children grow up into adulthood incapable of dealing with criticism. Everything becomes a harassment to them. This leads to the curtailing of enriching alternative views, and in turn, affect one’s understanding of justice. In this regard, the chapter ‘The Quest for Justice’ is enlightening. Justice, the authors point out, is multi-faceted. How do we redress the problem of safetyism? The authors recommend ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’, a simple guide is set out in the appendix to the book. The last part of the book also provides many ways to help overcome the impact of safetyism.The CD version is very clear and very well read, with a brief epilogue by Jonathan Haidt.

Are good intentions and bad ideas setting up a generation for failure? This is the proposition in the subtitle of a provocative critique of western society built from analysis of the breakdown of diversity and polarisation within the United States which is creeping our way. The authors note trends alongside this polarization: increased adolescent depression, overprotective regimes in universities, pursuit of justice that makes the best an enemy of the good, obsessive use of phones and tablets, widespread play deprivation and more fearful parenting.‘Paranoid parenting… convinces children that the world is full of danger; evil lurks in the shadows, on the streets, and in public parks and restrooms. Kids raised in this way are emotionally prepared to embrace the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people - a worldview that makes them fear and suspect strangers. We teach children to monitor themselves for the degree to which they “feel unsafe” and then talk about how unsafe they feel. They may come to believe that feeling “unsafe” (the feeling of being uncomfortable or anxious) is a reliable sign that they are unsafe (the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings). Finally, feeling these emotions is unpleasant; therefore, children may conclude, the feelings are dangerous in and of themselves - stress will harm them if it doesn’t kill them (the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker)’.In ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff allies social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to challenge these three ‘untruths of fragility, emotional reasoning and ‘us versus them’’ as contradictory to both ancient wisdom and modern psychology besides being harmful to individuals and communities who subscribe to them. A presenting problem is the use of social media by the passionate to rubbish people and not just ideas with loss of the time tested wisdom of giving people the benefit of the doubt. A deception that the world is made up of ‘Us versus Them’ is promoted by the same media as people live in ‘self-confirmatory bubbles, where their worst fears about the evils of the other side can be confirmed and amplified by extremists and cyber trolls intent on sowing discord and division’. Coupled to this deception is promotion of a safety culture in which people’s need to feel comfortable is put on the same level as their need to be protected from physical danger. The consequences for the rising generation is a certain naivety as they grow up protected from life experience they need to develop resilient living.The authors cite critically a quotation from an essay in EverydayFeminism.com: ‘In the end, what does the intent of our action really matter if our actions have the impact of furthering the marginalization or oppression of those around us? Such an understanding makes bigots of all of us who upset others with our views however pure our intentions’. Paradoxically distinguishing hurtful talk from harmful talk, a distinction widely accepted in ancient wisdom traditions, serves to help address the roots of conflict. This is why universities have been up to now loth to protect their students from ideas some of them find offensive bearing in mind the purpose of education as bringing people out of their comfort zones to make them think.Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is commended for rebuking a ‘pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically ... divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.’ Western society is being crippled by disrespect shown in debates lacking humility in which people rubbish one another, blind to the truth that, whatever opinions they hold, all human beings possess both fragility and beauty. The authors mention unfavourably the oratory of Donald Trump and some of the things being said in the Brexit debate.What strategies can bring the world out of such error? The authors look particularly to religion as a source of transformative vision quoting Martin Luther-King: ‘Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend… Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’ It's ironic that the vision that impelled King is getting increasingly obscured by those offended by religion’s immemorial place in the public square. This is a challenging, inspiring and timely book.

When I went to University in Britain in my thirties, I looked forward to sitting at the feet of the intellectually gifted and thoughtful, engaging in discussion where varying viewpoints were defended or discarded and reading widely. in this book that makes for profoundly distressing reading, an arrogant, monstrous, unchallenged and self-righteous cadre of teenagers have been allowed to run riot on American campuses, causing mayhem at events, getting staff sacked and raising issues where none exist, all in the name of political correctness, an obsession with the 'rights' of minorities to the exclusion of all others and a scale of intolerance that puts Mao's Red Guard in the shade. Shamefully, academe in America has capitulated to this nonsense allowing ill-formed, barely educated young people to disrupt learning, stifle debate and indulge in verbal and physical violence that might have been learnt in the re-education camps of pre-modern China. Haidt, unfortunately, is an honest if benign observer / commentator looking at solutions and offering explanations which while plausible and perceptive do nothing to stop this madness in its tracks. He is unreasonably optimistic in his conclusions. Revisiting parenting of Generation Snowflake etc might be a long term solution and even schooling for intellectual humility might help but at present a troubled and destructive group of teenagers are on the rampage and instead of 'confronting and sending down' the troublemakers, long time gifted academics are resigning, their careers ruined. A good book, who knows, perhaps Haidt is simply cataloguing the existential hell that is modern American life.

I’m not sure if I’m getting old but as someone who sometimes supports students, I seem to have noticed that many seem to be a little bit less resilient and more fragile than perhaps I was in my day. I have recently changed my style so that I can offer students the options of answering a question when I ask it or going away and thinking about it and then replying to me. Personally I find this a hopeless way of learning as I can’t really find out what student already knows and am able to give them an answer and help them think things through. Along with the fact that almost anything Jonathan Haidt writes is almost always an amazing book and certainly ‘the happiness hypothesis’ and ‘the righteous mind’ have been two of my favourite books of the last decade, and that is why I chose this book. It’s a much narrower subject but I also thought it would have a lot to offer and it certainly does. The book begins with dismantling several untruths such as what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings and people can be divided into good people and bad people. I believe all the three statements are nonsense to me but I do see others taking them on board to be true. However, we know that bones will break if we don’t put pressure on them and become stronger when we do, babies are stronger to the pressure delivered by natural birth rather than Caesarean and babies who are born in a germ free environment are much weaker than those exposed to germs. So the main message in this book is that we need to accept some pressure and stress to help make us more functional and stronger human beings in both college and the work place. Perhaps his book is not as strong as the other two Haidt books I have read but it certainly gives me plenty of food for thought. I personally found the chapter on what Internet he is doing to us on our phones alongside social media fascinating and thought-provoking. And I loved the last bit of how to do CBT which I’m going to employ and trial on one of my colleagues to see if it will help with their anxiety. There is a summary of what to do at the end, it might be of benefit. This is a fascinating book and well worth reading alongside Alex Beard’s ‘natural born learners’ which I read at the same time.

An excellent evaluation and summary of the dynamics and cognitive biases and distortions at play influencing both professors, legislators and parents which has in turn given rise to a generation of overly anxious un-prepared children seeking group solidarity by attacking what they mistakenly perceive as the cause of all their problems. In the process free speech and robust debate and critical thinking becomes eroded as ideology dominates. The authors illustrate this with many other parallel cases in history.I cannot recommend this book enough (I am a chartered psychologist myself and written a book on resilience).

I am giving this five stars even though it dips a bit at the end. Maybe I was just hoping for more of the qualIty it begins with. If you are involved in education or training read this. And if your school strap line is something akin to we have a "safe learning environment." Blah blah blah. You will probably not like it. A great read too for over protective parents of the Internet generation. ..

I ordered this as I’m a university lecturer, so naturally interested in what it had to say about identity politics and threats to free speech on university campuses. While, thankfully, I’ve not had much direct experience of this myself, I have heard of various ‘witch hunts’ and threats against those whose views are deemed politically incorrect, offensive, or even harmful (including Rebecca Tuvel, documented on p. 104).The main argument of the book is that the post-millennial generation, ‘iGen’ or Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2012, have suffered from over-protective parenting and a culture of ‘safetyism’. The authors stress that they do not think that this generation have everything easy or face no challenges. However, modern parenting and schooling (and a shift towards playing with screens rather than outside) increasingly deprive children of opportunities for free play and risk-taking which, in turn, stunts their emotional development. The result is that adolescents are, or at least see themselves as, fragile and come to regard anything that they find uncomfortable as a threat to be removed, rather than an obstacle to overcome.The authors argue against tendencies to avoid risk or challenge, trust our feelings, and see life as a battle between good people and evil people. Instead, they suggest, we should learn to confront and overcome challenges, thereby growing as people. While those who seek to remove dangers, and create ‘safe spaces,’ are well-intentioned, this results in diminished resilience. (Here I’m reminded of the Martians from H. G. Wells’  The War of the Worlds (Collins Classics) , who had succeeded in eradicating germs from their own world but, in consequence, weakened their immune systems.)The first two sections of the book examine three ‘Great Untruths’ and their manifestations. Part three tries to explain how these changes have come about, while part four suggests some ways that parents, universities, and society can try to respond to these changes, encouraging risk-taking and engagement with alternative points of view, rather than trying to silence them. (Here I’m reminded of J. S. Mill’s classic arguments in favour of freedom of expression. It’s no coincidence, as Haidt was involved in the production of  All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated , which gets a plug on p. 248.)While I found it an interesting read, I have to say that the description and diagnosis of the problems was nothing particularly original. The authors first set out their position in a 2015 essay in The Atlantic and, while this book expands on it, I don’t know that it adds much of importance.I’m more interested in the proposed remedies, but I’m not convinced how effective these are likely to be, if things really are as bad as the authors suggest, particularly for university educators – like myself – confronted with cohorts of children who have been ‘coddled’ through their upbringing. It might well have been better had this not been the case, but what can be done now? Will they continue to resist any attempts to challenge them, in ways that they find uncomfortable, and demand protection? Might it even be the case that their upbringing has not only made them think that they are fragile but actually made them fragile? If so, perhaps they actually are less able to deal with challenges than they might have been had they been given the kind of upbringing recommended here.I’m not sure that this book offers real answers or, at least, practical ones. Even if the advice were implemented, at a societal level, given that the authors stress the importance of formative years – both in childhood and the impressionable ages of 14 and 24 (p. 214) – it might not make a significant difference until the next generation. I take it that the authors think members of iGen are not really as fragile as they think they are and that it is not too late for them to learn to overcome discomfort, rather than to see it as dangerous. But, given all that’s been said about the various over-coddling tendencies, this may be optimistic. The War of the Worlds (Collins Classics)All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated

This book has very much been needed to highlight what is going on with this new generation of soft, easily offended children. I dont know if it highlights the whole story but you will definately learn something from this book if you are interested in what is going on with the new generation and their strange brainwashed idiosyncrasies.

well put together case about helicopter parenting leading to the snowflake generation. Haidt and his co-writer and not totally negative about the current "iGen" but they do think and show that we could be a bit less over protective with our kids and help them grow up more robust. Kids are "anti-fragile" (what doesn't kill them does make them stronger).

I really enjoyed this book it was very well written and structured.A great mix of data and first hand experiences used to portray the fact on what is and extremely interesting subject.I highly recommend reading this

It is a thoughtful and informed expose of immature beliefs and thought processes in students and academics, which is damaging tertiary education and the development of young people into full adulthood.

A good book, but it felt like they were pulling their punches, so the point that they didn't make all the points they could have, or as clearly.

A must read for anyone sending children to university or for educationists readying people to go into higher education