Coddling young minds
When vigilance to bullying and political polarization intersect
More and more, children are being protected from words and ideas that authority figures think will harm them. But do young people require this protection? Or are authority figures making this determination for them? Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt pose these questions in their Atlantic article and subsequent book, The Coddling of the American Mind, in which they claim the answer is a confluence of both. And one likely causes the other: growing up with overprotective parents combined with an increasingly polarized political landscape likely leads students to seek protection and be more hostile toward ideological opponents.
Lukianoff and Haidt were ringing alarm bells about what was happening on college campuses, and the role of parents and schools in creating a culture of “safetyism.” They point to the lack of free play in childhood and hyper-vigilance to bullying. Teachers in K-12 schools play a role in overly sensitizing students to potential harm. Being vigilant to bullying in elementary schools has now become commonplace.
Around the time of the presidential election, I came across a post in a private Facebook group of over 60,000 education activists that illustrates how many teachers think about and approach bullying. A teacher posted a photo of a bumper sticker that was on an elementary school student's desk that read “Trump 2020 Make Liberals Cry Again.” The text accompanying the Facebook post said something to this effect: "I am nauseous! I walked by a student's desk and saw this! (sick-faced emoji) I'm going to tell her to take it home.” The ensuing stream of comments went in a variety of directions about how to respond to the student who possessed the bumper sticker, but an overarching theme across the comments was that bringing it to school was a form of bullying. Not once did the teacher who posted the photo indicate that other students had seen the bumper sticker. This seemed to be beside the point—the authority figures decided it was harmful to other students to have such a bumper sticker, therefore bringing it to school was bullying.
The responses to the sticker reflect “motivated reasoning,” or the generation of an argument for conclusions they want to support. As Lukianoff and Haidt describe: “Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community.” In other words, the teachers are advocating the prevention of harm because they find the sticker offensive, without knowing whether any student will be harmed.
The responses also reflect “fortune-telling” and “catastrophizing.” According to Lukianoff and Haidt, fortune-telling is when you “predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead,” and catastrophizing is when you “[focus] on the worst possible outcome and [see] it as most likely.” There was no mention that other children in the class saw the bumper sticker. Therefore, the effect of the sticker that the teacher and commenters were concerned about was predicted, and the prediction was that other students will be not just harmed, but bullied—“a distinctive pattern of repeatedly and deliberately harming and humiliating others.”
The teachers’ response to the slogan on the bumper sticker also illustrates the divisive nature of our political landscape and how that plays into how teachers respond to political speech. The teacher who posted the photo expressed disbelief that the mother would be a Trump supporter and some comments suggested that the student be expelled, the sticker be thrown in the garbage, or that the student be silenced. The thread ended with a comment from the moderator stating that “Trumpers” will be blocked or removed from the Facebook group.
Although less common, there were comments that promoted speaking with the student and creating a classroom environment that taught mutual respect and how to listen and discuss issues. One participant was appalled by recommendations to expel, or otherwise punish the student for political expression, confiscate the sticker, or ignore it. She reminded teachers that their job is to educate, not police views or take their personal frustrations out on students. Another urged the teacher to distinguish between the right to support a candidate and the message of making people cry. She noted that the work of educators is to manage their own emotional response and give students accurate information so that they can come to their own conclusions rather than assuming that a political bumper sticker will cause harm.
As Lukianoff and Haidt stressed in their book, humans are antifragile: “They require stressors and challenges in order to learn, adapt, and grow.” To be sure, if bullying (as it is defined above) were to occur as a result of bringing the bumper sticker to school, the teacher should certainly intervene. But speech in the form of a campaign slogan is not a form of bullying. And acting as if it is teaches kids that they need to be emotionally safe from speech. This form of safetyism may set up a feedback loop, according to Lukianoff and Haidt: “kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient.”
Van Jones, when speaking to students at the University of Chicago, articulated well, and quite powerfully, the issues with safetyism and the purpose of an education:
“I think [ideological and emotional safety] is a terrible idea for the following reason: I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.”
A K-12 classroom is not the same as a university campus. Teachers need to consider the maturity level of their students before taking on controversial topics. But students should be allowed to read and hear views that are different from their own. This is necessary to prepare them to participate in a pluralistic society. The role of the teacher is to create a classroom environment where this is possible, not to shield students from ideas.
From the Web
‘They Learn to Parrot What They Know They’re Supposed to Say’. True inclusion requires viewpoint diversity, the educator Erin McLaughlin argues, and children should be taught how to think—not what to think.