Harrumph

Scott Walker thinks we should reopen the manufacturing sector by closing breakrooms and lunchrooms to "keep people at their machinery" pic.twitter.com/sCFSZwQ376

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 16, 2020

That's what causes the spread of disease, allowing these ruffians to go on breaks. Meanwhile David Brooks is taking a big break from the watery cosplay compassion of his Weavery and letting the real Brooks out of the house with a big Tory Harrumph ("The Age of Coddling Is Over"):

Over the past decades, a tide of “safetyism” has crept over American society. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt put it in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” this is the mentality that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The goal is to eliminate any stress or hardship a child might encounter, so he or she won’t be wounded by it.

("The Untruth of Fragility: Whatever Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker" is the title of chapter 1 of the Lukianoff-Haidt book, so now we know pretty much exactly how far Brooks got reading it; he doesn't believe in coddling authors either.)

Not only is this indulgence of the little ones ridiculous, it also causes suicide and mental illness:

Meanwhile schools ban dodge ball and inflate grades. Since 2005 the average G.P.A. in affluent high schools has risen from about 2.75 to 3.0 so everybody can feel affirmed.

It’s been a disaster. This overprotective impulse doesn’t shelter people from fear; it makes them unprepared to deal with the fear that inevitably comes. Suicide rates are way up, depression rates have skyrocketed, especially for girls. As Julian notes, a staggering number of doctor visits now end with a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication, like Xanax or Valium.

We called it "bop ball" in my junior high and you were supposed to stand your ground, and fat Garre (pronounced "Gary"), aiming at my plexus, regularly knocked me to the gym floor as Mr. Fletcher occupied himself with something else. Girls were exempt, as I believe is the usual thing, but I'm pretty sure none of them killed themselves over that. Or is Brooks saying they would have killed themselves if I had been liberated from it?

I hate to tell him about the GPA in affluent schools, but it's not so everybody can feel affirmed: it's pushed by their parents to help the kids maintain their edge in applying to the colleges that give graduates the biggest payoff

"Both parents and students from more well-off backgrounds have the social capital and confidence to confront the teachers in the first place," [researcher Seth Gershensen] says. "The classic helicopter parent stereotype. If you think about why parents would be doing that, a lot of them are well aware of the high-stakes and potential payoff of going to an elite university."

as part of the relentless pressure they're under to succeed in the hypercompetitive atmosphere where nobody has career security any more. If Brooks were still writing Tuesday columns he'd probably be complaining about that next week in one of his anti-meritocracy tirades, not even remembering that just a few days ago he was all about what easy lives the kids have.

And so on. Our kids never got company in the bathroom or special meals ("parents are now more likely to accommodate their child’s fears: accompanying a 9-year-old to the toilet because he’s afraid to be alone, preparing different food for a child because she won’t eat what everyone else eats"), I'm pleased to say, but the fussiest eater in their circle of friends, a boy whose mother was an accomplished restaurant cook but couldn't himself eat anything but spaghetti con burro or the occasional chicken nugget or mozzarella stick, is now making YouTube videos of himself cooking pumpkin risottos and orange duck, so I guess he was going through a phase.

Anyway most of the column is actually devoted to those he sees as the exceptions: med students, who instead of being coddled must face tough chemistry professors and "incredible stress" which leaves as many as 60% unable to finish pre-med undergraduate programs:

“There is tremendous value in knowing they can wake you up in the middle of the night and you can still make a good decision,” says Adina Luba Kalet, director of the Kern Institute For the Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Apparently didn't occur to Brooks to ask her, if medical education is so great, why she thinks it needs to be transformed—seemingly because the medical education we gave now isn't based on character, competence, or caring (the institute is "dedicated to advancing a new foundation for medical education based on character, competence, and caring. We are advancing innovation by applying human-centered design methodology and the principles of the entrepreneurial mindset: curiosity, connections, and creating value"), but mostly because the graduates need to be more entrepreneurial, like the young business managers coddled through their one-year grade-inflated MBAs. Creating value indeed.

All honor to the med students, in my opinion, especially those in their final year who have left school early to join in the incredibly hard and dangerous work of coping with the pandemic, and I doubt they need to be more entrepreneurial or more devoted to creating value, but weren't they just as much subjected to special meals and easy grades, denied dodgeball and going outdoors by themselves. as the others? Were they any less coddled, toddlerhood through high school?

I don't think so. I think Brooks just proved that his central argument—

The virus is another reminder that hardship is woven into the warp and woof existence. Training a young person is training her or him to master hardship, to endure suffering and, by building something new from the wreckage, redeem it.

—is meaningless. (Though maybe I'm just judgmental about anyone so incapable of proofreading his own work as to leave "warp and woof existence" without its "of".)

I don't know. Commenters have been swift to come out and mock him for never having endured any hardship in his own life, but who knows? Perhaps he's suffering in some way as we speak, behind the walls of his isolation, and that's what prompts this unexpected attack on Millennials who majored in English instead of medicine.

That just about explains itself. When do you think he started hating them?

— Leaves of Yas (@Yastreblyansky) April 17, 2020