Who were YOUR role models

[Serial_Apologist]

I was prompted by Mahler's #339 on the Riots thread. We haven't heard much about role models during that particular discussion.

I can't recall the concept of "role models" coming into my consciousness as a child and adolescent. I can't remember exactly when people started taling about the need for "good role models". Was it sometime during the 1970s?

Is anyone on this forum aware of having had formative role models or a role model when they were growing up? If so, was it a parent/parents? A relative? A friend? A school teacher? A religious leader? Film star? Musician or artist? An author or a character in a book? A philosopher, politician, philosophical, religious or political creed? Another species?

How old do we need to be before we can say we have no further need for role models - if ever?

Are role models A Good Thing in the first place?

Role models are touted as crucial in the raising of the young today; I just wondered what others thought.

S-A

[Anna]

Interesting question S-A. I think firstly was my Maternal Nan (Grandma to those who are posh!) She left her husband due to his drinking, gambling and womanising and set out as a single parent in Cardiff in the days before benefit, got a job and supported my Mum and Uncle, admittedly initially with the help of various Aunts. She worked until well past 70 in an Italian restaurant and then played the piano for what she called 'the old folks' in a daycare centre in her 80s. She was feisty and didn't give a cuss about anyone who criticized her choice to go it alone. She was the most loving person I have ever known and she gave me, a bit of a wild child in my teens, unconditional love.

I think what she taught me was you may plough a lonely furrow, but it's your own furrow and your own plough and it's your choice.

I guess my Father was also instrumental. Does anyone know the Kings X area? He grew up in Beaconsfield Buildings, it was built as model housing for the working class in the 1880s, it was demolished in the 60s as the worst slum in London, he took up boxing to protect himself. He was largely absent during my early childhood and died when I was 17 but he installed in me the fact that (like Nan) you stand on your own and you don't rely on others and that one of the most important things was to read, books were vital, books were always your friends when you didn't have any friends. Oh, my Mum. No, not a role model, she bowed in deference to men in general as females relied on males in her view as hunter gatherers (she was brought up in a mining community in The Rhondda so I guess the macho element was ingrained?)

Perhaps that explains why I am still single!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My role models were my parents. I rebelled, of course, but fundamentally, I knew they were usually right, and respected them for it.

[scottycelt]

My father ... he combined strict discipline with a warm humanity.

Sadly, I've never got anywhere near matching his standards.

We are all different, of course, but I do think a moral role-model is good for a child.

Sorry if that might sound awfully 'pompous' to one or two politically-sensitive souls here, but, hey, we're all for free thought and speech, eh ... ?

[Simon]

Good for you, S-A, for starting an interesting topic - and what a fascinating first reply from Anna.

Maybe we don't consciously know who our role models are till we get older - I'm like you and I certainly didn't - but surely they are simply the people whose characters and actions influence one the most?

In which case, for me, it would be my family - especially Mum, whose chief characteristics were bravery, a work ethic and an uncompromising adherence to moral standards of decency and integrity (shared equally by Dad, who wasn't around much (not through choice, I add!)).

Then there were a couple of the Masters when I was away at school, especially the senior house master and the Director of Music at the Cathedral, with whom I met up quite often after leaving and found always to be the same amazing person, and from whom I picked up far more about decent things and decent living, as well as about music than I can ever say.

There were a few of the local villagers, whom I knew well years back - hard-working, honest and in a couple of cases, heroes from the wars, growing old with no fuss but to whom we all owe so much. One taught me to use a scythe when I was about 8, another taught me to build drystone walls. Some of them worked for us, and I won't forget them.

Finally, a departmental superior when I started work, who taught me so well and who was respected by everybody.

I expect all this isn't unusual, as most of us will have had similar experiences, at home, locally, at school and at work... But you did ask.

bws S-S!

[eighthobstruction]

Jacob Bronowski and Bobby Charlton....Jon Snow and Geoff Arnold....

....[just burned a pizza to charcoal]

[french frank]

Jacob Bronowski and Bobby Charlton....Jon Snow and Geoff Arnold....

....[just burned a pizza to charcoal]

And King Alfred?

[eighthobstruction]

No. actually Sooty....

[Segilla]

My eccentric London choirmaster, rooted in Victorian values, sanctimonious but an excellent leader, generous and an inspiration to youngsters.

My woodwork and biology master at school. A serious man, quite strict but fair and an excellent teacher. I can still quote several of his wise words. A few years ago I learned he was a Quaker.

Mozart and the others.

[Serial_Apologist]

Certainly not my parents from the pov of a loving couple. My father (1908-2001) always regarded the Edwardian period as the happiest of his life, "When poor people never complained about having no shoes on their feet, and people respected authority". My mum, by her account a feisty lass as a youngster, completely capitulated to his dominating demeanour; emotionally deprived by her parents, she over-sacrificed herself to my father's needs, him being disabled, virtually gave up her pianistic abilities as a brilliant exponent of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin, and projected her insecurities by becoming over-protective and possessive of me, her only child.

So I was not given to questioning anything apart from my own inadequacies, that is, until at age 14 I picked up one of those tawdry paperback novels one impressed ones peer group with - "A sadistic homosexual killer roams London for his victims" - which turned out to be Colin Wilson's "Ritual in the Dark". Wilson's introduction of Existentialism, through other books such as "The Outsider" gave me characters to part-model myself on, however imperfect, and ways into philosophy and psychology. At age 15 my reputation as an oddball was justified by my proclaiming things like, "The problems of the world are caused by conditioning. The most important task in life is to get rid of conditioning, then we will all be free!"

The one area in my life in which my parents, my father in particular, did influence me positively was that of music, though whether for that alone one could call him a role model in the usual sense is debateable. "Serious music". But to avoid the label of "square" one did not advertise one's love of classical music - outside of which the sole area of popular music seemingly worth investigating in the early '60s was jazz: the image of which was an exciting, funny music from the 1920s played by white men in bowler hats and striped waistcoats! Hardly role models!! One made the then-common transition from trad jazz to "modern jazz", forsaking one group of friends for another into Mod styling, and finding out that apparently most of the great jazz was made by black musicians in America! This was the time when black Americans, with cutting-edge modern jazz one of the main cultural emblems, were questioning their racial status in American society as never before - as I too soon came to question the racist assumptions pumped into me by my father, with his views of Britain's "civilising" mission in the Empire.

As the sixties progressed, the various strands of my thinking converged and coalesced at the Dialectics of Liberation Congress held at the Roundhouse in 1967. My role-models - thus far Colin Wilson, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane - expanded to encompass Hanns Eisler, Brecht, Henze, Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen, Stokeley Carmichael, Herbert Marcuse, Gregory Bateson, R.D. Laing and, dare I admit, Castro. Amazingly I had had no political references up to that point apart from British Conservatism. I remembered at age 11 a breakfast table quarrel between my father and grandfather, in which my father accused his father of being A Communist for stating that the government should build more homes for the poor. Grandpa (1875-1969), for all his military bearing a kind and funny man, was a lifelong Liberal.

In the early 1970s my main role models were Alan Watts (The Way of Zen - he still remains so) and a range of feminist writers after reading "The Female Eunuch" and realizing I didn't need to think I may be gay-in-denial just because I was not attracted to women solely for their physical attributes. I kept diplomatically schtum about my political views while going through a number of clerical and junior managerial jobs until taking employment at a large engineering plant and getting involved in trade union activities, joining the Trotskyist IMG (International Marxist Group) in 1973 until leaving over disagreements on the miners' strike and Ireland in 1984.

Since when, disillusioned in politics in general, while keeping faith with a basic Marxist view of humanity's woes, I have come to see all the musical figures whose music drew me to this board's R3 predecessor 2 years ago as in some ways reflecting what I most admire in human beings: in Schoenberg and Bartok the willingness to expand the great Eurocentric clasical tradition's innate possibilities to unflinchingly reflect the 20th century; in Holst and Vaughan Williams, followers of Morris in their belief in putting oneself completely into the creative act, a commitment to what I would call expressing a socialist ideal through example, educational commitment to the disadvantaged (Holst especially), community music making, and an agnostic humanistic faith in the inherent goodness of people - given, in my additions, the satisfaction of basic needs for their own and others' growth and fulfilment. And in jazz the capacity to challenge those same conventions while paying them respect, as well as respecting and loving the capacity the music affords for spontaneous interactive creativity, of people head, heart and spirit being able to find themselves and create conviviality for little material gain while forgetting for a few moments the false roles thrust on them and us in order to survive in this world.

That's about it!

S-A

[amateur51]

Many thanks, S_A - a fascinating account, and honest too

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks, S_A - a fascinating account, and honest too

Thanks AM - others will probably now feel I set up this thread with an axe to grind - and they could well be right

[Chris Newman]

I suppose my main role models were school teachers. The gentleman who taught me and my two sisters in our top years at Primary School is always mentioned in family discussions: he instilled in us all a love of stories read well aloud. Then at grammar school there was my English teacher who intoduced me to the joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell and Milton. He also gave me a love for treading the boards, an activity my father fought tooth and nail against. This desire was increased by my music teacher who encouraged me and my friends with tickets for concerts by Alfred Deller, Wilfred Brown, Colin Davis and others. My Latin teacher also gave me a love for adventure through the school cadets and playing rugby. Colin Davis became a hero and I stalked him at concerts and became a Promenader. Enjoying his attempts to get us to sing with the Malcolm Sargent Memorial Choir tempted me to have singing lessons. When I was a muddled teenager the warden of my local Friends Meeting House taught me what true friendship and leadership are and I tried to emulate her when I became an English and Drama teacher. She was a fascinating lady who had been the staff chef at Glyndebourne. She introduced me to Wilfred Brown, one of her Quaker friends. Later as a student teacher I continued singing with Duncan Robertson and Donald Francke, two more role models. I never sang much for money but enjoyed a renaissance in my late fifties belatedly singing most of the popular Mozart tenor roles.

[Serial_Apologist]

I suppose my main role models were school teachers. The gentleman who taught me and my two sisters in our top years at Primary School is always mentioned in family discussions: he instilled in us all a love of stories read well aloud. Then at grammar school there was my English teacher who intoduced me to the joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell and Milton. He also gave me a love for treading the boards, an activity my father fought tooth and nail against. This desire was increased by my music teacher who encouraged me and my friends with tickets for concerts by Alfred Deller, Wilfred Brown, Colin Davis and others. My Latin teacher also gave me a love for adventure through the school cadets and playing rugby. Colin Davis became a hero and I stalked him at concerts and became a Promenader. Enjoying his attempts to get us to sing with the Malcolm Sargent Memorial Choir tempted me to have singing lessons. When I was a muddled teenager the warden of my local Friends Meeting House taught me what true friendship and leadership are and I tried to emulate her when I became an English and Drama teacher. She was a fascinating lady who had been the staff chef at Glyndebourne. She introduced me to Wilfred Brown, one of her Quaker friends. Later as a student teacher I continued singing with Duncan Robertson and Donald Francke, two more role models. I never sang much for money but enjoyed a renaissance in my late fifties belatedly singing most of the popular Mozart tenor roles.

Chris - drifting off topic for a mo - I have on cassette a piano piece titled "Grooving Through Old Tombs" by, I'm pretty sure, a Chris Newman. Would that be you, by any chance? It was from a broadcast of piano pieces by Howard Skempton, John White, Cornelius Cardew and, yourself? - played by a certain Michael Finnissy.

[StephenO]

My old English teacher, Hugh Ottaway.

As well as instilling in me a love of literature (and getting me through my English exams), he was also instrumental (if you'll pardon the pun) in developing my even greater love of classical music. He was a frequent broadcaster on Radio 3, often giving the interval talks in concerts, and wrote a number of books including a biography of Mozart, of which I still have a much treasured signed copy, and BBC Music Guides to Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich. He had a vast library of LPs which he was happy to lend to us Sixth Formers.

With his round, horn-rimmed glasses, high, domed forehead and goatee beard he looked not unlike Trotsky in baggy, green cords. We had diametrically opposed views on politics (he was as left wing as I was then right - I've since drifted leftwards), leading to some lively debates.

As adolescents we relished him calling us "beastly boys" and used to collapse in hysterics, when we were studying Far From the Madding Crowd, every time he told us to "Get out your Hardy's". He was one of the kindest, most intelligent men I've ever known. He died not long after taking early retirement. I was at university at the time and can still remember the shock when my mother phoned to tell me.