Also known as the “coddling of the american mind”, this disturbing trend is spreading and speeding up, as exposed in the following papers the Atlantic ‘the coddling of the american mind is speeding up‘, and the two National Review papers ‘Are We Setting a Generation Up for Failure?’ Part 1 and Part 2. Those follow the publication of the book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure‘ And it now also spreads to other countries like France. We had already addressed this trend in our 2016 post ‘How Overprotecting from Different Points of View is a Moral Hazard‘.
The issue is that students can declare to be violently assaulted by ideas that do not fit their opinions and therefore decline to participate to debates and presentations. They can flee to safe rooms. Moreover this leads to cancelling speeches and debates even with renown philosophers and personalities, that have strong opinions on certain subjects.
The interesting point made in the analysis of the situation is the observation that this issue may be generational – linked to the first generation reaching university that has known internet since early childhood and social networks since teenage years. The theory would be they this generation falls prey to a low exposure to contradictory ideas, staying comfortably within their own online communities. “The new beliefs about fragility really came in only for those born after 1995. When [you] read the book iGen by Jean Twenge, and when I saw the graphs that she shows of how mental health plummeted when iGen reached its teen years, that’s when a whole new dimension of the problem became visible.”
This would be the demonstration that internet and online social networks effectively fostering community-centered and intolerant feelings. In addition, excessive protection from parents investing more in their children would also be a culprit.
Another issue is that universities in the US become increasingly corporatized, funded by large endowment funds and avoid to feel the wrath of past and future donors. This may also be a factor.
In any case, this trend is disturbing and needs to be curbed. In the modern world we can’t live in a society where people would close themselves to contradiction and avoid exposure to other ideas than the ones they are familiar with.
