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The Coddling of the American Mind
The Atlantic ^ | September 2015 Issue | GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT

Posted on 08/11/2015 10:05:51 AM PDT by Veto!

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: correctness; education; liberalism
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To: Veto!

What is the end goal here? Making people (including academics) afraid to say ANYTHING, unless it is scripted and pre-approved by some bureaucrat somewhere.


21 posted on 08/11/2015 1:45:13 PM PDT by rbg81
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To: Jimmy Valentine
Lotus eaters. Wait until they get out in the world

They won't, really, unless they all become attorneys who defend the chronically offended.

I never watch daytime tv, but had it on yesterday for a few minutes……it's almost all about shouting, stomping, chronically offended people. Really, these horrible shows promote dreadful behavior and mindsets.

22 posted on 08/11/2015 1:48:48 PM PDT by Veto! (Opinions freely dispensed as advice)
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To: Tax-chick

The college revolutions of the 1960s—the ones that gave rise to the social-justice warriors of today’s campuses—were fueled by free speech. But once you’ve won a culture war, free speech is a nuisance, and “eliminating” language becomes a necessity.


23 posted on 08/11/2015 1:50:31 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: tbw2

Marxists always knew that.


24 posted on 08/11/2015 1:51:20 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("All the time live the truth with love in your heart." ~Fr. Ho Lung)
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To: Tax-chick
I’ll bet they never thought their control over university education would be threatened by the fact that the students refuse even to engage with many topics because it’s too upsetting.

Probably not. The problem is, their worldview has now created a lot of these really mentally unbalanced people that are going to eventually be let out of their closed little asylum, and the rest of us are going to have to deal with them. I really do think some of these people have been damaged pretty badly. We can expect some really horrific things to come from this.

25 posted on 08/11/2015 1:55:11 PM PDT by zeugma (The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun)
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To: zeugma

It’s going to be very difficult for employers and for people getting into personal relationships. A questionnaire (or an app ;-) might be prepared to help diagnose them before one has any personal investment.


26 posted on 08/11/2015 2:04:37 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("All the time live the truth with love in your heart." ~Fr. Ho Lung)
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BFL


27 posted on 08/13/2015 9:57:18 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: Veto!

Didn’t we already see this in Red China under Mao? Has the Red Guard arrived on college campuses?


28 posted on 08/20/2015 5:59:31 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine's brother (A black mother should not have to fear her son's death whem he commits a felony.)
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To: Veto!; redleghunter; Springfield Reformer; kinsman redeemer; BlueDragon; metmom; boatbums; ...
Just came across the article on the Atlantic site which i find you posted here in August, and as i though that it would be good to post, but i site-searched it first, and sure enough, someone is on the ball. Must have missed it in Aug.

It is even more fitting in the light of most recent events. Thanks. Grace and peace thru the Lord Jesus.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong.

The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.

Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers can remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unchaperoned by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to occupy themselves, getting into minor scrapes and learning from their experiences. But “free range” childhood became less common in the 1980s. The surge in crime from the ’60s through the early ’90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than their own parents had been.

In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well. - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

29 posted on 12/07/2015 9:37:27 PM PST by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: Veto!; 2Jedismom; 6amgelsmama; AAABEST; aberaussie; AccountantMom; adopt4Christ; Aggie Mama; ...
In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said.

And those liberal professors are surprised, just why?

They are merely reaping what they sowed.

This outcome is THEIR fault.

I know this isn't exactly a homeschool article, but homeschoolers are going to be sending their kids off to college some day and they need to know what they're facing.

In general, I don't see homeschool parent mollycoddling their children the way public schools do to the kids attending them.

30 posted on 12/08/2015 1:35:35 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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To: rbg81
What is the end goal here? Making people (including academics) afraid to say ANYTHING, unless it is scripted and pre-approved by some bureaucrat somewhere.

A college degree sans effort...

31 posted on 12/08/2015 2:34:34 AM PST by raybbr (Obamacare needs a deatha panel)
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To: metmom

In some discussions on the general subject, I’ve seen Lefties blaming the overprotective parents of these special snowflakes who are pushing this nonsense, more so than the Leftist bent of the public schools, colleges, and universities. FWIW


32 posted on 12/08/2015 4:05:31 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: FreedomPoster

Of course. They’ll never admit that it’s their failed thinking that led to this.


33 posted on 12/08/2015 4:18:37 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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To: Veto!
In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like.

I think not.

I blame it on the name of A bully is mean to me that has been TAUGHT to these poor, fragile people.


Never having to get poked in the eye by fighting back when they were young (tell an ADULT; they will handle it), they are ill equipped to accept the pushback that is NOW coming home to roost.

34 posted on 12/08/2015 4:33:21 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: metmom

There is probably a grain of truth there, but the idea that insufferable political correctness wasn’t largely a result of the way our schools and universities ran things is laughable.


35 posted on 12/08/2015 4:33:22 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Veto!
College kids think they have a right to never be offended.

We teach them this in grade school; so why not!?

Everyone is equal!

There are NO winners; just game players.

Here's a plastic 'trophy' for your participation.

36 posted on 12/08/2015 4:34:58 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: fivecatsandadog
She has already. It used to end with the letter x.
37 posted on 12/08/2015 4:35:50 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Lexington Green

The Red Guard arises in America.

Coming to YOUR location soon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome


38 posted on 12/08/2015 4:36:48 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: caww
....they're mindless and simple minded robots easily mis-led and stupid when it comes to the real world and how it functions...

There WILL come a time when lightning will flash across 'social media' and stampede these people just as a sudden storm in the plains would affect a cattle drive.

39 posted on 12/08/2015 4:38:58 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: The_Reader_David
...(atheists, agnostics)...

These folks are NOT stupid; just mis- or un- informed about GOD.

40 posted on 12/08/2015 4:41:03 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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