In this article we examines the role and potential of the educator as a role-model within both formal and informal education.
What exactly is role-model education? I can think of no clearer way of explaining this most effective of all educational tools than words (above). Children, especially during adolescence – their most vulnerable and impressionable age – are in need of role models, and take them from all areas that are close at hand, whether mass media, parents and family, or their teachers.
Role model education is not concerned with the imparting of knowledge and information, as one might expect from an educational context. Rather, its aim is to expose its target groups to specific attitudes, lifestyles and outlooks, and, in particular, to individuals in which these attitudes and lifestyles are embodied. This educational tool is stressed in informal education settings such as youth movements, where the sometimes charismatic educational youth leader embodies the values that he or she is espousing, and therefore provides a frame of reference for the children.
Not only is there no reason for teachers not to utilize these ideas, but rather the teacher has a responsibility to use them, and to be wary of the power behind this concept. Children of this age are incredibly perceptive, and will automatically see through a teacher who tries to convince them of something they are not convinced of themselves. (I have seen this at first hand, in a school with a strong ethos that not all the teachers embody in their personal lives, such as a religious denominational school, where non-practicing teachers are forced to lead or facilitate prayer services.)
Role model education can be seen as effective because it bridges the gap between the ideal and reality. Education becomes experiential, as students learn a little about their teachers’ lives, and how they embody the values they are trying to pass on and explore. The gap between theory and practice is bridged, as ideological concepts become realities before the eyes of the students. Once they have truly understood an idea because they have seen it at first hand through teacher’s expression of it in the way they conduct themselves, they are only then in a true position to judge its validity to their life, and then make the relevant lifestyle decision.
By: Mrs. Liberty O. Laquinario | Teacher II | Culis Elementary School | Culis, Hermosa, Bataan
