Name: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Address: US

authors

The Coddling of the American Mind:

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

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. How did this happen?

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018

by

The New York Times
The Financial Times
Inc magazine
Bloomberg (#1!)
The London Evening Standard
The New Statesman

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 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.

Quick Links To:

Chapter 1, on antifragility (useful for discussions of growth during the coronavirus crisis)
The Afterword: Part 1 (Jon and Greg's update to the book in 2021)
Catching up with 'Coddling' Part one (a blog series by Greg in 2021, updating the trends discussed in the book. A list of the 17 essays is here
Advice for Parents page
Better Mental Health page (with open-source literature review on the mental health crisis)
Better Social Media page (with open-source literature review on the relationship between the mental health crisis and social media)
International Coddling page (with Google docs for the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & Spain)
Evidence For and Against The Coddling (New studies that we found after the book was published which bear on our research hypotheses)

GREG LUKIANOFF

JONATHAN HAIDT

JONATHAN HAIDT

Heterodox Academy is a politically diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and other scholars who want to improve their academic disciplines and universities.

The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.

At Let Grow, we believe in kids. We believe they are smart, strong and at least as capable as we were at their age.

A free interactive platform designed to depolarize communities and foster mutual understanding across differences.

reviews

Early Praise

“Our behavior in society is not immune to the power of rational scientific analysis. Through that lens, prepare yourself for a candid look at the softening of America, and what we can do about it.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson, director, Hayden Planetarium, and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

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