Teachers as Role Models: a classroom quandary

What is the most important moral lesson in a school’s character curriculum? According to American educational psychologist Thomas Lickona, it is the idea that teachers can only cultivate children’s character if they display it themselves. While we have all heard the mantra that virtue is first “caught” and then “taught”, I doubt whether the meaning...

Young People’s Role Models: Miley Cyrus or Mother Teresa?

Role-modelling, especially of the kind that moral philosophers, moral psychologists and moral educationists define as learning from moral exemplars or exemplarity, has been achieving renewed prominence. The reasons for this development are probably varied, but it seems likely that they stem from declining trust in the ability of pure reasoning principles to enact lasting changes...