Growth Mindset Reimagined
My beloved gingered overlords flew to Florida, making this a quiet, introspective week in Lazartown, during which I have endeavored to stitch a couple ideas together. I’ll explain…
On Saturday, I recorded a lively podcast conversation with a dear old friend with whom I have not spoken in over two decades. He is every bit as sharp and sweet as I remember him. When our recording ended, we seized a moment to catch up, swap memories, and revel in the challenges and opportunities of parenthood. We both have one kid, both tween daughters. We extoled our girls, we consoled each other. Ain’t easy y’all.
Our conversation about encouraging our daughters encouraged me to revisit the language of growth mindset. I first learned about growth mindset in a podcast I recorded in 2020 with fitness coach, Kim Greenstein. A later podcast with guidance counselor Tamara Faber persuaded me to read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck.
If you are unfamiliar with growth mindset, it might best be presented in opposition to what Dweck calls fixed mindset.
These mindsets are bluntly illustrated by the self-talk seen below. While we rarely speak to ourselves so bluntly, we illustrate these ideas through our actions.
Cool? You can read Dweck’s book for elaboration. But you get the gist.
Actually, I was listening to a podcast called The Gist this week when I was reminded of Einstein's assertion that, “it’s not that I'm so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Dude had growth mindset.
I grow and learn as a parent and a partner. But with the family gone, I am taking music and language classes, fostering my growth as a pianist and a polyglot. Maybe I will write more about my mindset as my bachelor summer progresses. But for now I seek to scale the concept of growth mindset. Stay with me.
On Tuesday I dropped one of the most compelling podcasts in ten seasons of For a Living. If you listen to one podcast in July, it should be this one! Dr. Tiffany Florvil is an historian focusing on post-1945 Europe, the African diaspora, social movements, Black internationalism, and gender and sexuality. She does important intersectional, international, transnational work. She is next-level brilliant. She is also kind and compassionate. She’s a friend. I’m biased. But I’m right.
Tiffany is wrapping up her time in Berlin during which she’s been (among other endeavors including launching the German translation of her book Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement) working on a book on May Ayim (below).
May Ayim (1960-1996) was an Afro-German poet, activist, and educator who lived in Berlin-Kreuzberg (as does my family). She co-founded Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black People in Germany) in the 1980s. Ayim’s mother was German, her father Ghanaian. In 2007, the Green Party successfully campaigned to rename the street Gröbenufer in Berlin-Kreuzberg as May-Ayim-Ufer. Why? Gröbenufer was named after Friedrich von der Gröben who established Fort Großfriedrichsburg in present-day Ghana. From that fort, he oversaw some 50,000 African slaves shipped to Europe and the Caribbean. So unless you dig slave traders, let’s quietly agree that Herr von der Gröben doesn’t need to be celebrated on waterfront property.
This week, Berlin renamed Mohrenstraße. “Mohr” (Moor) is a racist, colonialist term referring to North Africans. It is now Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße, the first African-born person to study and teach at German universities. A philosopher, Amo was a vocal opponent of the slave trade. Berlin chose growth.
Also this week, German journalist Anne Sauerbrey wrote in the New York Times about the unveiling of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ growth mindset oriented national security strategy. “For the first time in the postwar period,” argues Sauerbrey, “Germany is paying proper attention to the rest of the world.”
As you read Sauerbrey, touch your nose every time you see an example of growth mindset. I’ll give you the first one. You find the rest.
The new reality, ushered in by the war in Ukraine, is challenging the country to go outside its comfort zone. [growth mindset]
The German delegations, for the most part, have been warmly welcomed…But sensitivity to historic injustices is just as much part of their reasoning. In many of the countries Germany hopes to woo, postcolonial resentment runs deep. And Germany, for all its overtures, is seen as part of the colonizing West.
That has been a bit of a shock. Germany simply does not perceive itself as a former colonial power. It’s true that compared with the British, French, Spanish and Dutch Empires, Germany’s started later and was smaller in scope. But the German Empire occupied vast lands mostly in the southwest and east of Africa, as well as in the Pacific. It was in one of its colonies that it committed the first officially recognized genocide, of the Herero and Nama people. It wasn’t until 2021 that Germany recognized the murder as genocide, offered an apology to Namibia and agreed to pay $1.35 billion in aid…
But the lack of public commemoration may also have something to do with the fear of relativizing the Holocaust and even giving succor to antisemitism. It’s a reasonable concern, to be sure. Yet the monstrosity of the Holocaust, in its mind-blowing magnitude and singularity, has effaced from public memory the other atrocities Germany committed. The experiences of Ukraine and the Global South slipped from view. We were too busy patting ourselves on the back for being the champions of historic reckoning. [fixed mindset]
It’s getting harder to maintain such hubris, though. Germany is becoming increasingly multiethnic — according to the most recent census, in 2021, nearly a third of German residents were first- or second-generation migrants, compared with about a fifth in 2011 — and so are its political and cultural institutions. As a more diverse generation enters Parliament and takes on positions in regional and national government, so do new perspectives…
This process of education is an utter necessity, not just for the chancellor.
Germany’s history is unique and uniquely atrocious. But other countries have histories worth knowing, too. If Germany doesn’t want to be lost in the new world, it must reckon more fully with its past and empathize with the pain of others. Perhaps — tentatively, cautiously — it is beginning to do just that.
So in grappling with its history, the governments of Berlin and Germany are pursuing growth mindset. They are trying new things. Working to get it right. Seeing failures as opportunities to grow.
Preferring not to be pollyannaish and recognizing that not everyone seeks to grow, I’ve also been reckoning with the potential for blowback. To wit, as government policies towards anti-colonialism, anti-racism, an anti-climate destruction grow, this week saw growth in the popularity of the far-right German AFD party.
I’ve been interested this week in how growth mindset, conceived to promote the growth and potential of individuals, can be applied to cultures and countries. What would it look like if the American government, for instance, pursued growth mindset? How can we pursue growth mindset attitudes and policies without alienating and radicalizing others?
It’s a lot to chew on. Please leave comments or get in touch through other channels. Still growing, I’m open to ideas.
-DL
I’m learning how rituals that mark time matter to me. So this year, I am carving out an hour or so on Friday to sit quietly before my family wakes to write about what I obsessed about that week. If you enjoy this weekly reflection, please subscribe so I can send it to you every Friday.