Surrounded by Fixed Mindsets

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One of the most powerful things we can do is to steadfastly hold an opinion, receive new information… and change our minds. This is what school board member Courtney Gore did:

A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum.

“Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”

To learn new information that ‘doesn’t fit your narrative’, and then to change your mind and take a new stance… this is learning. This is a growth mindset. This is what we need in the world.

But if you read or listen to the full article, you’d learn that Courtney Gore’s new outlook led to threats against her and her family’s lives. It’s hard to change your mind, even harder to change the minds of people with fixed mindsets.

Fixed mindset thinking is why I spoke out before our last School Trustee election. It’s why our votes matter in every election. It’s why we need to pay attention to civic positions of power and not just provincial or federal elections. Fixed mindsets threaten learning and common sense… and can ultimately limit our rights and freedoms. At least here in Canada it’s less likely for guns and threats of violence to be the part of the consequence of fighting a fixed mindset. So we really don’t have an excuse.

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