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Radiantflux's Reviews > The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
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97th book for 2018.
This again seems like a good article that got bloated unnecessarily into a book. There are some good points about the necessity to develop resilience in children, but with little strong substance to back things up. The arguments seem one-sided and cherry-picked. Reading this book you'd think that snowflake liberal children are rioting on every campus in America.
Also the focus of the book is a bit unclear to me: is it a critique of the commercialization of the university system in America, where students have become consumers, or is it a critique of current child rearing practices in the USA?
Mostly it seems to be a criticism of a few selectively picked incidents that have occurred over the last year in the America, without giving any credence or context to the aggressive culture wars occurring throughout the USA at this moment.
Two-stars.
This again seems like a good article that got bloated unnecessarily into a book. There are some good points about the necessity to develop resilience in children, but with little strong substance to back things up. The arguments seem one-sided and cherry-picked. Reading this book you'd think that snowflake liberal children are rioting on every campus in America.
Also the focus of the book is a bit unclear to me: is it a critique of the commercialization of the university system in America, where students have become consumers, or is it a critique of current child rearing practices in the USA?
Mostly it seems to be a criticism of a few selectively picked incidents that have occurred over the last year in the America, without giving any credence or context to the aggressive culture wars occurring throughout the USA at this moment.
Two-stars.
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Nov 03, 2018 05:23PM
Review! I would really like to pick this one up
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Ha! Funny review. I like the part about snowflake children rioting on campus :)
Great review. I don’t really feel like I need to do a review on this, you have summed up my thoughts well. One of the most frustrating aspects of books like this, is that they keep regurgitating the same old mantra “the center in American politics is where we need to go in order to reduce the polarization” but the center is essentially neoliberalism. This is what has caused the issues, economic issues solve social issues. Social issues become heightened when economic differences are made to such varying degrees.
Maukan: Great comment! Completely agree about the neoliberalism being at the heart of most of these problems.
I agree that there are currently deep economic issues at play that are greatly exacerbating (and perhaps, to an extent, even creating) social issues.But. The "center" of American politics is not (necessarily) neoliberalism. I would agree that neoliberalism, aka "socially liberal, but fiscally conservative," is indeed a *form* of centrism (if that means the "liberal" and "conservative" portions sort of average out.) But that is just one form, and American neoliberalism is only ~40 years old and had, along with its partner neoconservatism, to occupy the center; it didn't simply fill a void.
