The Coddling of the American Mind

How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

By: Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt

Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen?

First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction.

This is an audiobook for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Enrich Understanding

As a Hockey Coach for the Past 12 years, I have experienced changes with kids of all ages. Bluntly put, the change is NEGATIVE. Kid's ages 5 - through College who I coach and interact with are having more and more trouble with dealing with adversity and that is simply because of the safety nets at every turn of their lives. Moreover, athletes in general tend to be more successful in life because of the life skills learn through sport which directly correlate to the books crucial concepts that help people develop and evolve as thoughtful individuals with comprehensive thought processes. I think every coach, parents and students in HS/College should read this book. Break the cycle of fearing failure. Fail and fail often and continue learning from your experiences to develop yourself and your mind.

An even handed evidence based approach

The book is written in an even handed unemotional manner, it relies heavily on scientific evidence rather than ideological speculation, and offers actionable items to address the problem both at a personal and societal level.

A necessary perspective and a must read for parents and educators.

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. 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 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 Weaker
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battled Between Good People and Evil People

Taken 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.”
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 book really resonated with me as an educator in a mostly affluent but mixed income school. Coddling is hurting the quality of education and college readiness. Despite agreeing with most of the contents of this book. I am concerned about how the arguments made in regards to micro aggression might be used by people of privilege to dismiss the hurt and stress they cause minorities on a daily basis. Micro aggressive words or actions do not cause physical harm but do impact peoples’ health, stress levels and blood pressure. It’s a burden people of color endeavor through on their journey to pursuit happiness. I thought this section of the book could’ve been handled with more care and well-rounded perspective.

Extremely Important Book

Few books have struck me as significantly as "Coddling" has.

This is not just an important book for educators, students, parents or lawmakers - although all of those people should absolutely read this book - this book is for everyone who wants to start to bring America back together and end the worsening political and partisan divides.

I am going to evangelize this book like the gospel.

Informational with a dash of conscious bias

The majority of the book was extremely useful and informative. I really believe the authors are knowledgeable and we'll meaning. The only thing I didn't enjoy wasn the glaringly disingenuous comparison between President Trump's worst points of Administration and President Obama's best points his Administration. It took away from the fact based presentation of the information and came across hypocritical when purporting to present an unbiased presentation of fact when it was clearly opinion based. I am not Trump advocate by any means but believe when presenting information as a matter of fact we should all present from an position of fact, not opinion.

Other than the glaring disparity of conscious bias between Presidents, the book was fantastic and very well put together and presented.