What doesn't kill you makes you weaker Always trust your feelings Life is a battle between good people and evil people
These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. And yet they have become increasingly woven into education, culminating in a stifling culture of "safetyism" that began on American college campuses and is spreading throughout academic institutions in the English-speaking world.
In this book, free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigate six trends that caused the spread of these untruths, from the decline of unsupervised play to the corporatization of universities and the rise of new ideas about identity and justice.
Lukianoff and Haidt argue that well-intended but misguided attempts to protect young people can hamper their development, with devastating consequences for them, for the educational system and for democracy itself.
About the Author:
Jonathan Haidt is a social and cultural psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and The Happiness Hypothesis.
Greg Lukianoff is a lawyer, First Amendment expert and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate and Freedom From Speech.