This summer is replete with sporting role models. From the ongoing Open golf to the women’s football World Cup, Wimbledon and the cricket and netball World Cups, there’s been no shortage of fantastic athletes for children to emulate.
Their reach and influence appears greater than ever. When I attended a recent primary school-leavers’ event, a video played showing what all these 11- and 12-year-olds wanted to be when they grew up. More boys aspired to be footballers than just about every other profession put together.
And that causes much wringing of hands. It’s not hard to find columnists deriding these gilded superstars for living the sort of remote existence in gated communities afforded
by huge wealth and mass adulation. And, yes, there’s a sense of entitlement that such a lifestyle can go hand in hand with - a potentially toxic mix of bottomless bank accounts and stratospheric egos.
But there’s a snobbery to the condemnation aimed at footballers behaving badly - perhaps from resentment at nouveau-riche young people - and sniffy reminders that he (it is usually a he, sadly, if a newspaper is writing about footballers) is a “role model” and should remember his responsibilities to young fans.
There’s more than a touch of hypocrisy in this: are the same standards applied to the musicians and film stars that young people look up to? It seems the ideal sporting role model is some sort of automaton: brilliant at what they do on the pitch or court, a paragon of virtue off it.
If that’s the case, then we’ve got role models all wrong.
First, there’s the misconception that the ideal role model is saintly. But who is the better role model? The sports star who is metronomically brilliant and never gets into trouble, who is unstintingly polite in interviews and never strays into topics that could be considered controversial? Or the mercurial talent capable of brilliance but who also behaves badly at times and has opinions and feels confident in sharing them? Don’t we do our young people a disservice by implying that the ideal role model is someone who toes the line? The likes of Galileo, Rosa Parks and Billie-Jean King certainly didn’t.
Second, the whole idea of squeaky-clean role models is patronising to young people.
Humans are flawed, complex and make mistakes all the time. Surely students, perhaps with a little guidance from a teacher, can work out for themselves public figures’ good and bad attributes, and see that we don’t have to blindly follow everything they do and say.
Take tennis player Nick Kyrgios, whose well-publicised bad behaviour has drawn much criticism, especially after his recent ill-tempered match with Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon. Hardly a role model, you might think - he abused the umpire, spat phlegm on the Centre Court grass and, at times, simply seems to stop trying in matches.
But then there’s the chutzpah he had to serve underhand to a champion like Nadal, the exuberant brilliance of his best tennis and the honesty and self-awareness to admit that, while gifted at his sport, he does not consider it the most important part of his life.
Kyrgios is a case study that could send a classroom discussion off into all sorts of interesting philosophical directions. Can you be a good person in one place and a bad person in another? Is it better to win in a pedestrian fashion or lose in a blaze of glory? Is sport important? Who decides that an underhand serve is disrespectful? Do sports stars owe it to spectators to try all the time?
The role models that adults wish for children are often bland and controversy free. But role models should not simply provide a virtuous template - they should change the way young people look at the world and deepen their understanding of it.
@Henry_Hepburn
This article originally appeared in the 19 July 2019 issue under the headline “Our urge to serve up bland role models does children a disservice”
