Fragile systems and cognitive therapy: from anger to self-improvement

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain how the American education system blames entire generations for failure in “Codling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Set a Generation of Failure” and propose alternatives to prevent it. Your proposal will be of interest to us, since it is similar to what has happened in Latin America for decades, which has greatly accelerated in the United States since 2015.

Centennial generations had to live disproportionately using social networks during their formation, comparing them with virtual reality and the possibility of cyberbullying. Thus, anxiety, childhood depression cases, and suicide rates have increased, especially among girls.Greg and John explain that the school's response is overprotection of students caused by three errors. The first is to believe that students should be protected from fragile and harmful thoughts. The second mistake lies in preaching emotional reasoning — “Believe in your feelings.” The third is to see the world as a struggle between good and evil.

Pedagogy is guided by “cognitive distortions” that eventually distort reality, creating a culture of overprotection for students. “Instead of preparing the road, the road is prepared so that the child does not hit himself.”

When you arrive at college, you meet baby boomers teachers who have racial, gender and cultural differences, but few ideological differences (the same is true in Argentina). There was always some bias on the left, but traditionally the ratio was between 2 and 3 teachers from left to each teacher on the right. However, there was plenty of diversity, and there was a frank discussion in an atmosphere of freedom of thought. This is indispensable because every teacher has a natural “affirmation bias”. When investigating, he tends to collect evidence that confirms his theory, ignores or does not see contradictions without realizing it. These prejudices are neutralized thanks to discussions with other teachers and students with different visions where the possibility of “unconfirmation” arises. The word “university” comes from “Universitas”, which means everything. It is a place where students have to evaluate all their thoughts and thoughts, find true thoughts and analyze arguments that seem serious to some people, and reject falsehood.

At present, the ratio of teachers on the left has been tilted 5 to 1, and the confirmation bias has certainly shifted to the left. For the humanities, the imbalance between 10 to 1 and 17 to 1 in psychology was overwhelming. In economics, it is somewhat less: 4 vs 1. These disparities cause critical thinking to disappear and arguments are replaced by a “cancellation culture” .John and Greg detail how students organize themselves to prevent speakers with “uneasy” ideas from speaking at the university. Many times they were silent and sometimes expelled when university authorities tried to maintain order.

After all, those affected are young people who do not have the right tools when entering the adult world to earn a living and develop autonomously.

John and Greg suggest breaking three mistakes to reverse this situation.Students are not fragile. Vulnerability is the quality of objects that tend to break easily. If we believe that a teenager's mind or body is fragile, we tend to treat it with extreme caution to protect it, but psychologists know that overprotection is more harmful than early vulnerability. The reality is that the mind and body, such as the immune system, are not easy to break.In other words, to strengthen oneself, problems, Must be exposed to rudeness and viruses.

There is a real case that confirms this: In 1990, it was found that 0.4% of American children suffered from peanut allergy. Immediately, many schools began to protect children by banning peanut-based products. After 18 years, children with allergies increased more than three times, reaching 0.14%. In 2015, George Du Toi, Graham Roberts, etc. (a randomized trial on peanut consumption by infants at risk of peanut allergy.Du Toit et al, 2015) showed that overprotection is actually the cause of this epidemic It was considered to be at high risk In a controlled study of 640 babies, half were exposed to peanuts and half were protected. By the age of 5, 17% of protected children developed peanut allergies, and only 3% of children who were regularly exposed suffered from the condition. The immune system appeared to be a fragile prevention system. Complete isolation of a person with disinfected foam damages and weakens the immune system.

Greg and John are convinced that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is very useful for disarming three errors.Recognizing the human mind as a “fragile” system will result in training and confrontation of ideas. CBT teaches not to trust emotions, but to understand emotions and neutralize wrong thoughts. The world is not divided into good and bad groups, but each person individually contains the good and bad that must be learned to distinguish them. The battle is within himself.That is why we must cultivate effective learning with critical thinking, discussion, curiosity, openness of mind and intellectual humility. It also suggests that young people should start work early or perform paid services as part of education to strengthen their self-esteem and enter the adult world more easily.

These ideas can be useful for those who want to change the Argentine education system, which for decades portrays young people as fragile people who are oppressed by the capitalist system and have been dominated by left-wing ideas that can only survive under the protection of the state.

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