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Random House Books for Young Readers

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

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New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book • Bloomberg Best Book of 2018 • One of Bill Gates’s Top Five Books of All Time “Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities.” —Jonathan Marks, Commentary “The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 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, author of The Anxious Generation, 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 a book 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. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (August 20, 2019)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735224919


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 19


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.73 x 8.45 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences #4 in Cultural Anthropology (Books) #7 in Higher & Continuing Education


#2 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences:


#4 in Cultural Anthropology (Books):


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Excellent accessible cultural analysis - A must-read!
What is happening on the college campus? Is it really as bad as the news stories report? What can be done about it? Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have put together a book to help. The title is long enough to make a puritan blush, but it certainly sums up the message of the book: good intentions and bad ideas can do a lot of damage. The book was born out of a 2015 article written for the Atlantic by the same title (You can read it here). This is the second book by Jonathan Haidt I have reviewed. The Righteous Mind here. This book is not a screed against the “kids today” and how we just need to get back to the good old days. Haidt is a moral psychologist who works as a professor at NYU. Lukianoff is the president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) which focuses on defending First Amendment rights in higher education. Both men independently noticed some disturbing trends which led them to co-author their initial article. Afterward, they decided to put their research into a book to delve deeper into the problem and offer solutions. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1: Three Bad Ideas The authors explore three key bad ideas which seem to be accepted more and more in society: 1) Kids are incredibly fragile. 2) We should always trust our feelings. 3) Life is a battle between good and evil people. These ideas are bad because they are false. First, children are anti-fragile. They are not like glass which shatters. Rather they are more like a muscle that gets stronger when tested. This is not to say trauma is acceptable any more than we would say an athlete getting injured is getting stronger. The point is that kids are stronger than we think. Second, the problem with always trusting our emotions is that we can be easily fooled. We lose the ability to have a healthy confrontation because we stop caring about someone’s intent and only care about their impact on our emotional state. Third, when we boil relationships down to only a conflict between good and evil people we will not be open to compromise or even listening to the other side. If I think my opponent is basically Hitler then I am not going to reason or persuade him. I am going to fight him. These three key ideas are being taught and reinforced in our education system, entertainment, and social media. The problem with these ideas is not the intent behind them which is protection and the betterment of society. The problem is that these ideas in action make everything worse and actually do the opposite of what they intend: we become more fragile, more angry, more stressed and anxious and so on. Part 2: Bad Ideas in Action This section catalogs cases where these bad ideas were put into play. The authors are careful to note that events are not indicative of every college campus. However, they are present in major universities predominantly on the west and east coasts. The authors review some of the riots that occurred in recent years on college campuses as well as the march in Charlottesville. They examine the nature of intimidation and violence that is trending in the news. Then they look at why our society is so prone to witch hunts and the importance of viewpoint diversity. Part 3: How Did We Get Here? This section was the most emotionally difficult part of the book for me. The authors dissect how we arrived in this situation focusing upon polarization, anxiety and depression, the decline of play, the rise of safety policies, and the quest for justice. They examine the influences of social media, screens, overprotection, and misguided efforts to achieve social justice. This section is not blasting those who want justice, school administrators, parents or children. The authors are interpreting the data in terms of “six threads” that together help explain how it is we arrived in our present state. Part 4: Wising Up Again, the book is not just old men yelling to protect their lawns. The authors present solutions along three lines: families, universities and society. They encourage parents to allow their kids to take calculated risks while resisting the urge to jump in as soon as they struggle. The authors talk about teaching children how to cope with disappointment and pain. They strongly recommend limiting screen time. There are more solutions, but if you want to know them you should read the book! REFLECTIONS This book came out at the right time for me as I had just finished reading Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. I also watched the news and was actively wrestling with my own use of social media. Normally it takes me less than five minutes to fall asleep at night (apparently I’m overtired). Yet there was one-night last spring (2018) that I couldn’t go to sleep because I was so angry about things someone I didn’t know said on social media. My mind wouldn’t rest as I rolled over what my response would be to this person and how I would show them how wrong they were. I think it was around 1:00 am that I finalized my brilliant rhetorical salvo I would unleash in the morning. However, when I woke up I knew something was wrong with me. I needed to back off social media. Last fall I even deactivated my Facebook account. I didn’t even self-righteously announce it beforehand! The point is that I was primed to read this book. This book thoughtfully and fairly engages with serious issues in our society which will get worse unless we commit to making serious changes. I appreciate the authors’ desire not to castigate or vilify anyone. They want to make things better. They assume that the people involved in these issues on the campus are acting in good faith. This allows for thoughtful analysis and generous criticism that actually contributes to the conversation. My only criticism is that the final three chapters which present solutions are very short. Perhaps in time, the authors can present how they and some of the groups they point to as good examples are handling these modern challenges. Also, this book cannot give us the reason why we ought to live this way except for the general improvement of society. For Christians, grace and holiness are central for how we interact with others (or at least they should be!). There are core reasons why we are compelled as followers of Christ to live differently than society. As a holy people (set apart by mercy) we do not participate in that which is abhorrent to God. But as people who have been saved by grace, we explain our hope and commitment to Jesus with gentleness, respect, and love. This is not really a criticism. It is an acknowledgment of the limits of a non-Christian book. I was challenged by this book to consider how I am raising my children particularly in terms of allowing them to take risks and giving them the room to fail. This book also led me to reflect on how I interact with others. I found myself reading this book saying, “Yeah, the Bible says we should do that…” We know it yet we don’t do it. For example: thinking the best of others or at least giving them the benefit of the doubt. Or how about not be hasty with our words in person and especially online? I seem to remember something about taking every thought captive. A good sign to me that this is a good book is that you leave it hopeful that we can do better or at least how I can do better. THE BOTTOM LINE I said in my review of The Righteous Mind that I would likely recommend this book over that one. That turned out to be true. This book does a wonderful job explaining current trends and what can be done about them. Positively there seem to be reasons for hope that things are changing already on the college campus. While this is encouraging, the pressure to unnecessarily self-censor seems to be increasing and there remains a cause for concern. This book is well written, engaging and challenging. It is not a Christian book (I'ma pastor) so don’t expect biblical answers or a biblical worldview. I do recommend this book if you are looking for an insightful cultural analysis of the rise of terms like “trigger warning” and “safe space” and the current state of social discourse in America. Overall, an excellent read and well worth your time. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2019 by Eric Mabbott
    • Colleges are mental gymnasiums...
“It is the ultimate mental gymnasium, full of advanced equipment, skilled trainers, and therapists standing by, just in case.” A few years ago I read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt and I loved every second of that book. So when I heard Haidt was involved in writing a book about college students and how we prepare them for the world, I knew I had to read this book. Let me start off by saying I loved the book. I could not put it down. It was engaging from start to finish. Each chapter of the book stretched my mind until it felt like mush. There were moments when I thought the authors were geniuses and other moments where I thought the authors were completely nuts. And looking back on it, I realize this is the problem. We want to put everything into categories. Everything has to be either right or wrong. Nothing is allowed to be the middle. You must be for something or against something, there is no room for anything else. However, we must accept tension. Living within tension is beautiful. It is not easy but it can release our limitations. If we instantly put things into categories before we think through them, then we have already lost. The authors point this out: “Teaching people to see aggression in ambiguous interactions, take more offense, feel more negative emotions, and avoid questioning their interpretations strike us as unwise.”I can love this book even though I think the arguments in the book are at times weak and other times amazing. I have worked with college students for many years now. I know there are generational differences, but they are all human and college student problems are all the same they just manifest themselves in different ways. This is the challenge we see today. College students can be very resilient when they want to be, the trick is challenging them to be resilient. Colleges are imperfect places and there are a no quick fixes to higher education woes. For example, I worked on a college campus that did not provide on campus medical staff and I was shamed by a parent for it. I said it wouldn’t be a problem, but we would need to raise tuition a few thousand dollars per student just to cover the costs of staff, facilities, and insurance. Let’s just say, the parent did offer to donate any money. (And no, we did not have a climbing wall or lazy river on our campus either) Again, I loved the book and I loved the message of resiliency but here a few items mentioned in the book that I am not so quick to blame: Social Media: Are social media and smartphones powerful and dangerous tools that can do major harm? Absolutely. Will television and video games rot my brain? No, it didn’t though I was warned incessantly by my mother and other so-called research. That said, I think technology gets blamed way too quickly for society's problems. It is easy to blame because adults usually don’t understand it (for example, Congress had no idea how Facebook works and the government looked silly trying to blame them for modern problems). Extreme Anecdotes: A professor gets fired for an unassuming email. Protests erupt on campus because of speaker. A mother gets shamed online for her parenting. These are all real issues, but they are all extreme cases. I have worked long enough to know that what we see covered in media is not the full story. Even in this book, the authors use a throwaway line such as (and I am paraphrasing) “Now we don’t know about other events that led up to…” That’s a pretty big throwaway. It may be a case of an overreacting student, but it could also be the straw that broke the camel’s back on a campus strife with innate racism and sexism. A lot of things change when you raise the temperature just one degree when water can begin to boil. Risks to Democracy: Yes, if we cannot have civil discourse, democracy suffers, but I think it is a little much to say that “coddled” college students are setting us all up for failure. Young people rarely vote and that is probably because they do not understand a lot of things yet about themselves. Near the end of the book, there is a line that I think sums up perfectly why college students are recently acting differently: “College students today are living in an extraordinary time...They are identifying injustices that have been well-documented and unsuccessfully addressed for too long.” Perhaps they are tired of the same old thing. This is a great book and it deserves to be read thoughtfully. I loved the end where it said “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” I think this is very true. We can’t make the road safe, but we can wear seatbelts and get upset when the same darn pothole hasn’t been fixed. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2018 by Reid McCormick
    • It's time for Americans to put on their “ Big boy (or girl) pants”
(As posted in Goodreads closed parentheses) What a comprehensive book! It has four sections, then a conclusion, and then acknowledgments! I read through the beginning of the acknowledgments. The first three sections were great. When you agree with every point made by the book, you get a certain kind of Identity and familiarity with it. It points out how much we cuddle our citizens and protect them from knowledge and thought, and fighting for Their beliefs and debating and arguing to actually expand individuals' World knowledge and experience. Part four I had some disagreement with, mostly because I hate being told what to do :-); although theoretically, It doesn't say what to do, it only gives suggestions. My own opinion is that that section should be reworked. The conclusion does tie it all together, but overall the book is repetitive, and into the conclusion. Overall, I prefer when the book doesn't spell out conclusions, but it allows the reader to draw them. But overall, it says some very good things, and the citizens need to stop being pampered. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2024 by Marsha L. Woerner

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