‘The Coddling Of The American Mind’: Teaching Fragility

One purpose of education is to prepare people with knowledge and tools to navigate the world’s rough waters and rocky shoals. But, as The Coddling of the American Mind shows, much of modern education does just the opposite.

Teaching Mental and Emotional Fragility on Campus

The Coddling of the American Mind is both a book and a documentary, looking at how societal shifts and especially huge cultural changes on campuses have done a severe disservice to many Gen Z students.

As the book’s co-author Greg Lukianoff (with Jonathan Haidt) says in the film (available for digital rental on Prime Video, AppleTV and elsewhere):

I think it’s really important to have great sympathy for younger people today, because they’re just doing what older people are telling them, like this idea that they’re always in constant danger, that words will permanently harm them, and that they’re much more fragile than they actually are.

We’re taking these brilliant, hardworking, amazing kids and teaching them that they’re capable of less than they actually are.

The result of all this has been a rise in various kinds of anxiety disorders, mental illness and depression. While some may claim that’s because Gen Z is more open to discussing these things — and there’s some truth to that — the book and movie point out that the data supports a real increase.

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Talking to Young People

The film version talks to several young people, both American and students from other countries who studied here. Thrown into the progressive-minded monoculture of the modern university, they describe twisting themselves into knots trying to satisfy the demands of teachers and fellow students.

They struggle to espouse the correct opinions (whether they agree with them or not), say (or don’t) the correct things, have the correct ratio of friends, and so on, all while being told that other people are out to harm them in ways large and small.

At the same time, they’re pressured to avoid or actually attack anyone who holds different views — or isn’t sufficiently supportive of the “correct” views … and they’re afraid of being attacked themselves.

The result is that these students became deeply anxious, sad, upset and, in one case, suffering enough to be hospitalized.

The Split Can Be Political, but the Phenomenon Isn’t

Much of the conversation around the situation on campus has become politically polarized, but this phenomenon is not particular to politics.

Anytime a monoculture develops that aggressively rejects all viewpoints but its own, and insists on interpreting the world solely through an us-against-them lens, individuality and independent thought suffer. That has been true throughout human history and long before today’s poltical parties formed.

While today’s university climate may split along a left/right axis, the sociological and psychological forces behind it are as old as humanity itself.

As Lukianoff writes in the book:

The notion that a university should protect all of its students from ideas that some of them find offensive is a repudiation of the legacy of Socrates, who described himself as the “gadfly” of the Athenian people. He thought it was his job to sting, to disturb, to question, and thereby to provoke his fellow Athenians to think through their current beliefs, and change the ones they could not defend.

It’s also the opposite of what Angela Duckworth was talking about in her outstanding 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (one of my favorites, not least because she learned a lot from former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll) :

“And here is how Jamie [Dimon] translates the poetry of Roosevelt into the prose of a JPMorgan Chase manual, titled How We Do Business: “Have a fierce resolve in everything you do.” “Demonstrate determination, resiliency, and tenacity.” “Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.” And, finally, “Use mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better—not reasons to quit.”

Meet the Filmmakers

Catholic couple Ted and Courtney Balaker are behind the film version of The Coddling of the American Mind (both are producers; Ted is the writer/director/editor). I had a chat with them, and here are some highlights.

On what they’ve heard since releasing the film in 2024:

Ted: We’ve been thankfully hearing lots of positive things, especially from the audience we care about most, which would be Gen Zers and their parents. We hear very heartening stories of moms and daughters watching the movie together, sometimes in tears or laughing.

We had a very large premiere in Los Angeles, something like 400 people. And there were lots of parents and teens there as well as members of the media and academia. So we’ve run into problems on certain parts of college campuses, shall we say, but that’s to be expected these days. But overall, it’s been very positive.

Courtney: We were actually in production on the film during the pandemic shutdown. We made the film very shortly after the book had been released [in 2018]. Then the pandemic happened, and then we released the film in 2024.

And a few things were surprising how timely it just kept becoming. I mean, we released this film in 2024. There were already issues, problems going on with on college campuses, students.

Obviously, our film is focused on the mental-health crisis among that generation: Gen Z. But it seemed like even after we released the film, there was this conversation about free speech on college campuses, students using college as an opportunity to broaden their understanding of the world, not narrow it based on what makes them feel comfortable and uncomfortable.

On how fear can leads to a desire to control others, to exert power over them:

Ted: It goes beyond ideology and politics. It is that very human impulse to exert that kind of control. And as our interview subjects make very clear, they’re given a clear choice. You either use this power or it’ll be used against you.

How fear also forces students to conform to the views of professors and peers:

Ted: The students, they’re terrified. They want to succeed, they want to make friends, they want good grades, and they realize again and again that the way to do that is to parrot a certain point of view.

So you have a whole generation who, with all this talk of be yourself, be authentic. So often that’s the first thing they’re really doing because they’re taught that there was a right way to view things and a wrong way.

And college is no longer this time where you go explore ideas, figure things out. It’s OK to be wrong. It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s OK to be friends with people who don’t agree with you on 100% of everything, because that’s everybody. If we are all open about our opinions, we all have areas of agreement and disagreement.

Courtney: As human beings, we interact with the human beings. That’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s what we have to do. And that’s going to come with a lot of joy and bliss, and it’s going to come with a lot of pain and conflict. But that’s what makes our brains stronger.

When we interact with other people from different cultures, from different points of view, our brains grow. They learn more. You understand yourself more. You are able to articulate your point of view better when you have conversations like this.

But when people put themselves in this bubble wrap where I just want to be around people who like me and agree with me … . Jon Haidt says it’s like shooting yourself in the brain. You’re killing off an evolutionary part of a brain’s development.

On the change the Balakers hope the film inspires:

Courtney: We are hopeful that the film starts a conversation about: Is this really what college is supposed to be? Is this healthy for people to be angry and shutting themself off from ideas that they don’t agree with because that’s popular to do, or they will lose friends if they are open-minded?

Very tribal things have been going on for a long time on college campuses, and that’s not good for anyone, students, faculty members, or society in general.

Ted: One thing you can do is try to find an intelligent person who has an opposing point of view to be your friend, because then you can learn what it’s like to have an actual give and take intellectually and not lose your mind.

I think it’s important to realize that if you’re going to certainly your typical public school or even a lot of these elite universities, you’re being told one side of the story. So it’s up to you to really educate yourself.

I think there’s a difference between education and schooling. We have a lot of students who are very well schooled. It remains to be seen how well-educated they are.