Edward Sullivan's Reviews > The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

This urgent, important book should be read by everyone, especially parents and educators. The authors examine the root of divisiveness plaguing American society, the increasing inability of individuals of all political persuasions to engage in rational, intelligent, thoughtfully reasoned debate and dialogue. Complicit in this alarming decline are institutions of higher learning embracing emotionalism over critical and analytical thinking, dialectics, and abandoning their sacred obligation to defend academic and intellectual freedom. Equally complicit are parents who smother their children with overprotection to the point that they are emotionally and intellectually infantilized. The consequences of having a generation unable and/or unwilling to engage intellectually and thoughtfully with ideas that make them uncomfortable are profoundly dire for society, opening the door to forms of authoritarianism across the political spectrum.