Book Review: The Coddling of the American Mind
In a previous blog post on progressive vs. rigorous education, I lamented the declining academic standards and loss of rigor in our education system — a trend which appears to accompany the real and important progress in other areas of education, such as collaboration and social-emotional learning. Since its publication I have been asked several times, “But Mike, why do you think our education system became less rigorous as it became more progressive?” Over the last couple years I gradually formed an opinion on this question, but a final piece did not arrive until I read The Coddling of the American Mind, a book about the apparently unrelated issue of silencing opposing viewpoints on college campuses (a topic that interests me following 16 years at three universities).
The Coddling of the American Mind was written by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and lawyer Greg Lukianoff. I can’t possibly summarize the book in one short essay, let alone one word, but I’m going to try anyway: this is a book about the rise, causes and consequences of safetyism. The authors define safetyism as the belief that safety (primarily psychological, but also physical) is paramount and must be prioritized above all else. The book explains trends on college campuses through the rising belief that speech must be curtailed in the name of psychological safety. We are thus brought to the first of three “Great Untruths” defined by the authors, the Untruth of Fragility: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. (The other two Untruths are Emotional Reasoning and Us vs. Them.) Here the authors draw on the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile and its basic idea that challenges and struggles are an essential component to thriving in some systems — in this case young people.
The Coddling was a fascinating read full of unexpected connections to my work in education. The chapter on helicopter parents and overscheduled children connected to my observations about students’ increasing fixation on grades over curiosity. The concept of safetyism provided a useful framework for considering our ideas about students leaving the safety of their comfort zones and yet safeguarding their sense of self-worth in the process. The section on teen mental health validates our observations about social media and internet use (likely a big topic in Haidt’s upcoming book, The Anxious Generation).
But it wasn’t until near the end of The Codding that I was struck with the “Aha!” moment. To the question of why our education system became more progressive but less rigorous, The Coddling provides a possible answer: through the lens of safetyism, rigor is perceived as a threat to the psychological safety of students. If something is hard, it can make students feel bad, and therefore needs to be avoided. The results: grade inflation across both Canada and the U.S., the cancellation of Provincial Exams in B.C., and even professors fired for making their courses too hard. This approach is like trying to make a problem go away by pretending it doesn’t exist. On the contrary, students need to be challenged so that they can grow, and avoid potentially much worse feelings if they reach adulthood without the necessary skills and resilience.
How do we reconcile these criticisms of safetyism with the need – which feels self-evident to me – for students to be safe at school, both physically and psychologically? I believe the answer comes down to balance, through a series of many small, nuanced judgement calls; this is our job as educators. If a student isn’t meeting expectations, we need to let them know honestly but supportively. If two students are not getting along, they should have the opportunity to resolve conflicts on their own, but there are also cases where we need to intervene. Every student should encounter a math problem that they can’t solve, but they should know that it’s OK not to solve every problem. I do not advocate for an extreme position here, or one without empathy and caring. Rather, I advocate for thinking about the wellbeing of young people in the long term, not only the present. Just as parents need to avoid dispensing too much junk food or hovering too much at the playground (a particular struggle for me personally!), as educators we must at times let our students struggle. This is not easy. But it is exactly our empathy and caring that should drive us to do so.
In short, we must keep students safe without expanding our definition of safety to include the discomfort of disagreement or the productive struggle that comes with rigor, challenge and growth.
When I started The Codding, I did not expect to find a common cause between two trends I observed, decreasing dialogue in universities and declining academic standards in high schools. But the pieces seem to fit together. Rather than capitulating to safetyism, VISST stands for the power of dialogue and mutual understanding even if opposing viewpoints are uncomfortable, and for striving and challenging ourselves even if failure is unpleasant. Indeed, these are core values of the school, and I believe upholding them will enrich and strengthen our students and our community. (This also means not everyone at VISST subscribes to my arguments here, but that’s OK, or even a good thing.)
If you agree with my points above — or perhaps especially if you don’t! — consider picking up The Coddling of the American Mind as an approachable, thought-provoking read that weaves a theory of safetyism by drawing on trends all across the fabric of our society.
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