Sociology paper

Book Review

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Institution

Book Review: The Coddling of the American Mind

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, the authors of this book, discuss about the intellectual decline of the United States institutions of higher learning and the conditions that appear to be cultivating a generation for failure. There is no doubt that the state of American youths is not a new preoccupation, with various people predicting chaos and doom for the next generation. Critics have described the problem as crisis in the university and used different languages befitting crises. Some have strongly criticized the traditional purpose of institutions of higher learning and pointed out intellectual as well as moral collapse, as the common doctrines taught in these succumbing institutions. Opponents of this position charge not that this is a misreading derived from the disapproval and the disconnection of the old people for the young generation. Instead they indicate that it is a retrogressive idea meant to smuggle the evil doctrines back to campuses through the back door, hidden in the language of free enquiry and free speech as well as thinking for oneself.

It is because of this agitation that Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt authored the book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which focuses on the intellectual decline of the United States institutions of higher learning and the conditions that appear to be cultivating a generation for failure. The book discusses the intentions and ideas that are “setting up a generation for failure,” which is a subtitle of the book. It is a bit calm as it aims and manages to discuss the evidence with quiet and unexciting authority. Lukianoff and Haidt dwell on learners demanding protection from contentions they find challenging and administrators as well as professors who submit to them. The first section of the book elaborates what Lukianoff and Haidt refer to as the “Great Untruths” which supposedly dominate campuses (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018). They target “safetyism”, a language of micro-aggression and inter-sectionality as well as identity politics. The generation “iGen”, which comes after the millennials, according to the authors, is suffering from mental health crisis due to smartphone addiction plus the upper middle class’ paranoid parenting style.

The title of the book echoes Allan Bloom’s 1987 “The closing of the American mind”, a bestselling attack on relativism which Bloom claimed threatened the western civilization’s achievements. As if paying homage to Alan Bloom’s love of classics, Lukianoff and Haidt open their book with a pilgrimage to Misoponos, the Greek oracle that serves Koalemos, who preaches the three great untruths. This excursion is a bit mischievous since Lukianoff and Haidt assert that they did not travel to Greece with the aim of discovering the three terrible. As such they did not write the book because of Misoponos, but wrote it, maybe, due to fact that their article in the Atlantic Newspaper went viral.

The bait and the switch are strange ways to start fighting dogma rather than facts. Lukianoff and Haidt update the neoconservative themes like Roger Kimball and Dinesh D’Souza. However, if the authors are hoping to capitalize on the forces that made Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball and Dinesh D’Souza successful, this is a repetition with some difference. Instead of Plato and cannon they advocate for data and preservation of mental health. They posit that health is what can save democracy. The methods that the book teaches originate from the cognitive and behavioral therapy, which the Lukianoff credits with saving his life when he had depression. The authors contend that students’ aspirations for social justice are just but expressions of cognitive malfunctions that the cognitive behavioral therapy can correct. They also posit that the problems that young people worry about are not as big as they think but simply problems of progress. Even though the title may suggest cultural and civilization diagnosis, the checklists and worksheets support that the genre of the book is self help.

The book provides important tips that may benefit upper middle class families. Also, the tips can benefit learners from minority groups who join elite universities to find that, irrespective of the good intensions, the institutions are not fully prepared for them. However, the framing of the book leaves no room for considering the impact historical and social changes on universities and individuals. Moreover, this framing clearly explains how Lukianoff and Haidt can write many pages about the misgivings of contemporary higher education rather than mentioning debts or adjuncts. For them the pragmatic solution is to prepare children for the road instead of preparing the road for the children. The one thing that the authors cannot countenance is the prospect of a group of children uniting to construct a new road instead of waiting for others to build the road for them.

However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the authors “Great Untruths” as only a hype dressed in cognitive behavioral therapy social scientism. Lukianoff and Haidt are right to counteract the cultivation of fragility plus victimhood, as well as defend free speech as an essential mission of higher education. Learners and professors should have no fear expressing themselves, making mistakes, living through constructive disputation and identifying better ways of thinking. The authors’ insights on the effects of creating moral dependency habits are not only timing, but important as well. In as much as things may no longer be what they used to be, common sense advice is indispensable.

Reference List

Lukianoff, Greg, and Jonathan Haidt, 2018. The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Penguin, New York.