The Alleged Importance of Being Tough, Really Tough |
| |
Authors: | Robert Klee |
| |
Institution: | (1) Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, 14850, USA |
| |
Abstract: | Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, a philosopher and a psychiatrist, now both policy analysts at the American Enterprise
Institute, write in their recent book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance that empirically unsupported psychological theories ultimately descended from the cultural upheavals of the 1960s have slowly
wormed their way into the educational and social scientific mainstream. These theories, the authors argue, promote a view
of the human person as someone who is ‘too fragile for this world’, and in need of ceaseless counseling and coddling from
the cradle to the grave. The case the authors make for their thesis is, I argue, uneven – strong in specific cases, but weak
and overwrought in many others. In the end, I argue, they misidentify the main cause of the increasing shallowness that, to
a growing number of critics, is slowly infesting contemporary social science and education.
A review essay on Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel’s, One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, 2005, St. Martin’s Press, New York. |
| |
Keywords: | American cultural studies consumerism and superficiality philosophy of education psychology of trauma therapism the 1960s |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|