Parents' Guide to The Coddling of the American Mind

This documentary presents some interesting "nonpartisan" food for thought, but be careful not to swallow it whole: Just because it's served with confidence doesn't mean it's fully cooked. For instance, The Coddling of the American Mind shows five diverse college students concluding that DEI programs and "woke" thinking are causing them to be unhappy, even suicidal—which conveniently distracts from the fact that the filmmaker and the authors shaping the film's anti-DEI analysis are all straight, White, American-born men. Could it be that they found a handful of students who echoed their perspective, rather than a genuinely representative slice of students at liberal arts colleges? Additionally, the film pins the rising anxiety of Gen Z on the overprotective parenting that began in the 1990s, with the assertion that this led to youth seeing themselves as "fragile." But three of the five featured college students grew up in Africa or India, where "helicoptering" isn't really known to apply. Further, the documentary argues that cancel-happy students can't really be blamed, since they're under the influence of their parents and professors. But that just feels like cognitive dissonance: A 13- to 20-year-old following the mindset and orders of parents and other adults? Have these men raised a teenager?

Beyond the holes in the docu's tenets, there are other tactics that seemed designed to skew viewers' opinions. One example: A couple of the students frequently refer to a training video about microaggressions that they say trained them to see interactions that followed as offensive. No doubt, that was their experience, but what's the context of this video? We don't know, but it seems likely that it was shown as a way to make viewers think about how they treat others, rather than intended to teach viewers to receive questions or comments with offense. The film's overall suggestion is that we relax and look at the intent in others' comments, yet this may very well be an example in which the intent was positive. Watching Coddling, which suggests that woke culture may be cannibalizing itself and that parents should do better, certainly brings up material for a dinner-table debate—just remember to take all of it with a grain (or spoonful) of salt.