Andrew B. Myers's Essay 'The Coddling Of The American Mind'

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It used to be that children were taught to toughen up, to grow a thicker skin, to take everything with a grain of salt and that it is what is. If someone hurt a someone else’s feelings, they should suck it up and deal with it or fix it themselves. Rarely did parent get involved, unless the issue was serious of course, because as kids we were expected to rough it out ourselves and learn how to healthily disagree. My parents and grandparents were taught this way and so were my sister and I. It was understood that things weren’t always going to go our way and that that was okay, and it wasn’t ok to be rude or make a scene because we didn’t like something, we were expected to deal with it and make it as palatable for ourselves as possible without …show more content…
People are afraid now more than ever before to speak their minds because they are fearful that someone will find offense in something they say. In the essay “The Coddling of the American Mind” Andrew B. Myers writes about how colleges are trying to rid their campuses of materials that students might find “triggering”, the effects of this ban on controversies and common thoughts on the topic. He purposed that one of the large affects this has on students is mental illness, “54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had ‘felt overwhelming anxiety’ in the past 12 months up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier” he says. The number of students having mental issues is growing exponentially and causing many problems in the academic world around them. People developing thinner skin, and becoming more fragile seems to be doing more harm than good. The fear, that something said could be so incredibly painful to a person, is causing people to not say anything at all and in turn is causing people to have constant stress regarding what they say to those around them, a problem people are not used to having to worry about. The quick shift in the amount of care one has to take while speaking is detrimental to the health of professors and

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