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Axios Finish Line: Everybody needs a hero

By Erica Pandey, Reprinted from AXIOS This article originally appeared in Axios Finish Line, our nightly newsletter on life, leadership and wellness. Sign up here. Whether it’s crime-fighting superheroes in comic books, neighbors who shovel out each other’s driveways after a snowstorm or our moms, heroes inspire us. Why it matters: That inspiration we get […]

Why Michael Phelps and Beyoncé Aren't Role Models - Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring

Research explores why Michael Phelps, Beyoncé, and others are no role models (nor should they be)

Spurgin, E. (2012). , Hey, How  did  I become a Role Model?  Privacy and the  Extent of Role-Model Obligations, Journal of Applied Philosophy. Young people  should  learn  that  Phelps  is a proper  role model when it comes to swimming,  but they do not know enough  about  the rest of his life to believe he is […]

★Professor Earl Spurgin

You’re a professor of philosophy and you wrote an article about how celebrities like Michael Phelps often find themselves into the position of being role models.  Is philosophy a field that typically grapples with issues of role modeling and what’s best for today’s youth?  What got you interested in this topic? ESn (Earl Spurgin): Contemporary […]

Meet Sally Power: Expert on role models in the lives of diverse youth

Sally Power Director of Research, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University There are lots of concerns these days about the kind of role models that young people look up to. Social commentators fear that the youth of today have been captured by popular culture and the so-called cult of the celebrity. This is backed […]

★ Dr. Vartan Gregorian discusses mentoring in the 21st Century

By Vartan Gregorian, President, Carnegie Corporation of New York I am living proof that mentoring works… a point that was very important for me to make in my autobiography, The Road to Home. Born in Tabriz, Iran, raised by my illiterate peasant yet wise disciplinarian Armenian grandmother, my life was changed thanks to a series of […]

Mentoring and the “looking glass self”

In describing the influence of his mentor, one young man recently wrote: When I first met [basketball coach] Steve, I was the product of the housing projects, a product of a single-parent home looking for guidance and attention. I was in and out of trouble. One day Steve took me aside and said, “Do you […]