Lukianoff, Greg & Haidt, Jonathan. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure. (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
The Coddling of the American Mind
This book examine disconcerting trends that have led to a “coddling” of college students whose psychological and emotional fragility is so great they cannot tolerate exposure to ideas contrary to their preconceived views of themselves, others, and the world around them. If, in the past, college was meant to be a time of exploration and discovery, now it frequently seems to be a race to acquire marketable skills. Engaging with complex and vexing questions is at best a distraction and at worst (a growing number of students claim) psychologically damaging. Without dismissing the possibility of real danger, the authors suggest that not every encounter with “difference” (be it ideas, people, or experiences) is a physical, psychic, social, or existential threat. Developing what Angela Duckworth calls grit and Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “antifragile” means:
…seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people, within a simplistic us-versus-them morality. (p. 14)