Teachers As Role Models?

Are Role Models Really Necessary?

At a recent debate on education held in The Fairways Hotel attended by a few hundred teachers and parents, et al - including Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, the function of teachers as role models received heavy emphasis. In particular some of the teacher/speakers (men) seemed to think they were of vital importance as role models for young boys.

Everyone remembers that scene from the old James Cagney movie where he breaks down deliberately just before he is led to the gas chamber. A bad guy with a heart of gold he does not want to give an example of defiance to the kids who may know him.

In later years Kurt Cobain was thought of as a powerful role model for the younger generation and parents and adults had great misgivings about this.

Other people may be able to think of other “role-models” and, indeed, not all of them are taken from the lives of the saints – although a saint that always appealed to me was Blessed (now Saint) Martin of the Lepers.

Anyway talk of role-models proliferated and multiplied at the public consultation forum in the Fairways on Tuesday ( 2 March 2004) about education policy. The Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey TD, was present; Joe Duffy of RTE facilitated and chief among the other notables present was Dr Garret Fitzgerald – looking well.

What with one-parent families and all some of the (male) teachers present and speaking asserted that they were frequently the first male “role-model” some students encountered and then only at the age of 12 or 13. This resulted from the fact that most primary school teachers are women.

Is this an important issue? Or was the attendance at the meeting being too gullible in accepting the arguments of a few assertive and self-congratulatory male teachers?

I don’t know any sensible person – teacher or otherwise – who would dare to set themselves up and consider themselves role models for the young or anyone else - although it is clear to me that humility is a virtue which is honoured more in the breach than the observance by this generation of adults.

If education means anything then I think that parents and teachers should encourage their charges to be themselves and to think for themselves and pay only a sceptical regard to so-called “role-models.”

When I was young in the 1950’s the description “copy-cat” was a term of revilement.