The Automobile Association has always been a very philosophical outfit. Their current motto of "Get rescued from the roadside - from £30" has deep religious overtones too, I feel.

Are you sure it is the Automobile Association Nordmann? I thought it was the creed of American Airlines?

If American Airlines start rescuing people from the roadside - even at £30 a pop - we'd all better start wearing hard hats!

I'm with the others on the role model being ultimately a candidate for emulation, whatever else that might imply. The hero/heroics thing I'm not too sure about. If one doesn't take the person as a whole then I believe it's quite acceptable to apply the term "hero" on the understanding that it's not quite the entire individual who is being heroic. In English we tend to say "something of a hero" or similar to hint at the fact that the person isn't quite the full deal in our estimation. However as a person who has long abandoned the notion that such people actually exist anyway I am quite prepared to accept "something of a hero" as the highest compliment one can attribute to someone else in any case. At least one that's honestly meant.

Perhaps it's more acceptable to stick to describing a deed as 'heroic' or when referring to a person that they are 'a hero of....' some specific incident or cause. I also find it difficult to think of anyone who might, in their entirety, be deserving of the accolade of 'a hero'. Those blinking clay feet do always seem to pop out sooner or later.

Now that the ‘games’ have ended, it leaves little doubt in my mind that the general idea of what constitutes the modern hero is vastly different to that of just a few years ago.

During the games ‘hero’ was bandied about almost constantly by the commentators, yesterdays round up of the events surpassing all my expectations. Its little wonder peoples idea of heroics, heroism and hero’s have changed… even lessened the meaning of the term. I got quite fed up with the contestants being referred to as ‘true hero’s’… no, they’re not. Most have been very brave during surgery and the ensuing rehabilitation etc. and shown great courage getting their lives back in some form of order… but those that put their lives on the line in the execution of their duty… and competed in the games… hero’s.

The Victoria Cross is awarded to members of the British Armed Forces for "most conspicuous bravery, or some daring act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy."

Only 1,356 Victoria Crosses ("for valour") have been given since 1856.

The George Cross, the civilian equivalent, is "for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger."

161 George Crosses ("for gallantry") have been awarded since 1940.

To my shame, I am not able to name one recipient of a VC or a GC. No, I tell a lie - a *dog* ( a mine sniffer?) received the animal eqivalent of the VC and his handler was also decorated, I think. I cannot remember the human hero - but the dog was called Theo.

Who decides who should receive these awards, I wonder?

I do remember that on the wreath he offered at the funeral of George VI, Churchill simply wrote "For Valour". Was this a nice theatrical touch from a master of theatre, or was Churchill (himself perhaps Britain's greatest hero?) absolutely right to suggest that this king had shown most conspicuous bravery in the face of the enemy?

In Orwell's "Animal Farm" there were two decorations: "Animal Hero First Class" and "Animal Hero Second Class". I'm trying to remember if any animal was actually ever awarded a First Class. I think Boxer, surely the most devoted and heroic character in literature, was recognised as an Animal Hero First Class after the Battle of the Cowshed. Snowball, who, like Boxer, had shown incredible determination and courage (even after being shot), was likewise honoured. One of the sheep received the Animal Hero Second Class award (it was conferred posthumously).

Napoleon (the pig, not the other one) decorated himself with a First Class, of course - but that was simply because he was the boss.

Theo's handler was L/Cpl Tasker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-19509059

I’m glad to see one VC on a tunic knocks spots off all the gongs on all the royals, generals, air staff and admirals… they don’t dish them out with a bag of sweeties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Victoria_Cross_recipients_by_nationality

Or honours such as OBEs, MBEs and knighthoods going to the likes of singers, actors, cricketers, football players and managers, athletes et al.

I never understand why people object to minor honours going to sportspeople and entertainers etc. They are for people who have gone beyond what is expected of the norm, or people who have added to their jobs by assisting the community, or for people who have brought attention and interest to their country/town/area.

I might say it is no easy thing to nominate someone. A woman in my town has begun gathering what is needed to nominate someone for a lowly community honour and she has had to spend hours and hours on this, asking others to provide supporting evidence and letters, travelling hours to personally get these, checking dates, names, activities. And you're supposed to keep it secret, not such an easy thing in a little town. And after all that it might not be accepted.

Temp, Jagger may spout anti-establishment views but I note he didn't say no to the knighthood. The H word springs to mind.........

Caro, winning a test match, playing or managing football or acting in a few movies is not going beyond the norm. It is merely doing what they were paid (a hefty wage) to do in the first place, and if done well, then awards and acculades within their chosen field is earned. But they have hardly done anything that would be beneficial to an entire community or that would warrant rolling out the Queen. No wonder she usually looks sour having to do this rubbish. Imo, it is yet another example of the shift in the definition of 'role model' from the truely deserving to the truely silly.

It smacks of massively lowered expectations, which itself is a worrying trend sociologically. In Britain people are now so amazed that someone does their job well that they decorate them with the country's highest public honours.

In my view the list of those who refuse such honours represents probably the more honourable Britons. John Cleese (who refused a baronetcy), Alan Bennett, David Bowie, Stephen Hawking, Michael Faraday, Trevor Howard, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Morley, Henry Moore and company (who all refused knighthoods), take a bow.

I wonder if a similar thing happened as the Roman Empire fell apart? How was conspicuous courage acknowledged in Rome? Wasn't there something called a Grass Crown which was very rarely conferred (a sort of Roman VC??)?

Did gladiators and other entertainers ever receive awards and decorations that had previously been given only for outstanding military achievement or for real public service? Did this disgust members of the "old" order?

Was there, in short, ever a Roman equivalent of a "Sir" Mick Jagger?

Was it ever any different? People got earldoms etc in the far past for fighting for the king, and similar activities. I don't know about the more recent past.

How do you know who has refused an honour? We hear of people doing that in NZ but don't know normally know who they are. If you say you have refused one, you might as well accept. Our last PM, Helen Clark, refused a damehood, but didn't have a choice really since her government took them away and substituted something that didn't mean anything much to most of the population. It got changed back with the new government. Her deputy accepted one though - maybe he hadn't been in favour of the change.

I've just looked up the "Grass Crown" entry on Wiki. I see that Augustus was awarded this great honour by the Roman Senate, but that it was "political homage rather than a military award".

Early days, but was the rot setting in?

If I remember correctly Temp, a Grass Crown was awarded to someone for outstanding courange and bravery when on the field of battle. It was woven from the grass of the battlefield and given to the person by his peers and those who fought alongside. Because it was awarded by fellow soldiers and was not traditionally given either by the establishment nor the military hierachy, the Grass Crown was the highest and rarest honour that a Roman could receive.

Those who received Grass Crowns were automatically granted a seat in the Senate and where to receive a standing ovation at any public appearance for the rest of their lives. Julius Caesar (when barely out of his teens) and Cornelius Sulla both received Grass Crowns, can't think who else now.

Thanks ID.

One last thought from me this morning - British heroes and heroines now end up on "Strictly Come Dancing". I read yesterday: "Olympic heroes Victoria Pendleton and Louis Smith ready for the Strictly Come Dancing challenge."



You can't somehow imagine Marlborough saying: "I'll just sort the French out, then I'll go and practise my Argentine Tango."

But you never know.

Temperance wrote:

You can't somehow imagine Marlborough saying: "I'll just sort the French out, then I'll go and practise my Argentine Tango."

I think Marlborough had other more urgent things on his mind when he got back from 'sorting out the French'....

From the diaries of Sarah, Duchess of Malborough:

"His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots".

Oh my, goodness gracious, your Grace.......

Edit. And yes it has happened already, on the Beeb this morning Murray was named a 'hero'. Sigh.

and the butler wrote... she offered her honour, he honoured her offer, and all night long he was onher and offher...

as for murray.... agggghhhhh!!!!!!

I've no problem with the concept of a "sporting hero". It fits in naturally with the rest of the language of sport which (when not just foulmouthed) uses a load of similes drawn from warfare and battle etc.

The problem is that the "simile" bit seems to have been dropped. As many, if not more, sportsmen and women are receiving honours once reserved for those who did the actual business, not the sporting copy.

Meles meles wrote:

Temperance wrote:

You can't somehow imagine Marlborough saying: "I'll just sort the French out, then I'll go and practise my Argentine Tango."

I think Marlborough had other more urgent things on his mind when he got back from 'sorting out the French'....

From the diaries of Sarah, Duchess of Malborough:

"His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots".

But, MM, perhaps it was all practice for his Strictly routine! The Argentine Tango is after all not a dance for the sexually repressed (as the picture above shows). Tricky in your top-boots, though, I should think.

Sorry - lowering the tone. Will immediately revert to sedate Virgo Vestalis Maxima mode.

Actually it did occur to me that the likes of Malborough ... and many other great and famous people... could probably dance the socks off yer 'strictly come dancing' celebs. The ability to dance well, or at least to know the steps and be able to dance a bit, was surely required learning for most educated/cultivated people in european 'society'. Being able to dance was generally assumed, I think, much as today one assumes one's dinner guests know how to use a knife and fork.... It was just social etiquette, manners, refinement, breeding... it just went with the job.

When the Duke of Wellington was asked/expected to lead the dance at the (anticipated victory) ball before Waterloo he didn't demur or nip off for a few quick lessons in the tango .... he just did what he had to do: lead the first dance... correctly, competently, confidently, .... and then make a polite excuse and go off to fight the battle.

Was he a hero? ... Maybe, but not for his ability to do both the 'supreme allied commander' and the 'Dashing White Sergeant'.

Yes - and you have given me an excuse to post the mazurka (actually the music is the waltz from Act I of Swan Lake) scene from Anna Karenina. Count Vronsky (Sean Bean) was a cavalry officer (a colonel, if I remember correctly) in the Russian army.

He could certainly dance as well as lead a cavalry charge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gc_P5Bt2zk

Caro, this is for you!

PS Poor Kitty.

I'll see your Sean Bean and raise you a Frederick March.

But this - alas - is 2012:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2197005/Who-IS-blond-poodle-kissing-Keira-Knightley-Fans-criticise-adaptation-classic-novel-Anna-Karenina-gives-dark-hero-X-Factor-makeover.html

Let me try to get the discussion back on track. *Tragic* heroes and heroines, Russian or otherwise, can rapidly become very tedious.

Islanddawn wrote:

Edit. And yes it has happened already, on the Beeb this morning Murray was named a 'hero'. Sigh.

Ah, but Andy Murray has gone beyond being a mere hero, ID. According to Alex Salmond, the lad has now progressed and is become a *Scottish legend*. Is Mel Gibson any good at tennis?

So, how do you make the transition from hero to legend? Will Murray ever be a myth? (You have to be or become a god to be a myth, don't you? I think Beckham was once described as being (like) a young god.)

It is all getting very silly indeed, with or without similes.

Edit: The One Show has just started - guess who they're wittering on about. They're going "live to Dunblane". Please, please, someone make it stop.

And all in the space of one day Temp! The Scottish giraffe is something special indeed, best forget mere knighthoods this boy will be made an Earl, at least.

Actually despite my unfavourable prejudices ref the Murray boy, those of us who have a bit of experience of such things, think he may be a little Autistic… or have a touch of Aspergers syndrome, that is the way he seems to presents at times, in which case… if that is so, he is doing amazingly well.

Talking of *myth*, winning the Tour de France has been described by the Daily Telegraph (several times) as being "the Holy Grail of cycling".

Arthur's knights setting off on their bikes isn't quite right somehow. And I really can't cope with Bradley Wiggins as Sir Galahad.

Lots of things are described as the Holy Grail of... Just like books are described as The Bible of... It's metaphical language and seems quite valid to me.

(Re Andy Murray: I was pleased to hear our sports announcer end a short report about the tennis with "Thank you Andy for relieving us of those interminable references to Fred Perry.")

The book I am reading at the moment on cricket suicides has a quotation from one of the people involved which shows that using sportsmen as role models is not all that modern. Raymond Robertson-Glasgow wrote in his autobiography in 1948, "I have never believed that cricket can hold Empires together, or that cricketers chosen to represent their country in distant parts should be told, year after year, that they are ambassadors. It they are, I can think of some damned odd ones." He played cricket in county and international games from about 1920 t0 1937, and reported and wrote about it after that.

A girl in Singapore broke down in tears yesterday after she had spoken to the Duchess of Cambridge.

"She is my idol, she is a great model and something really to aspire to," she is reported as having said as she wiped away the joyful tears.

Many would agree, but some, perhaps, would be horrified at such adulation and such aspiration. Is this young woman - our future queen - a girl who is undoubtedly beautiful, slim, elegant, slim, with L'Oreal "Because I'm Worth It" hair, slim, intelligent/well educated (but not so much that it makes her tiresome), slim, sporty and, above all, apparently completely sane and slim - really the best role model for girls?

Well, better Kate nee Middleton than Kate Moss or Katie Price (there's another awful celeb Kate too, but can't remember her surname), I suppose.

All her excellent qualities (and the D of C does actually also seem quite nice) have made this girl a real life princess. She has done what girls are supposed to do. And she has done it so well, with such style and grace. (Real grace, too, not your Princess Grace-type put-on grace.) She has also done it - or so it would seem - without any anxiety about not having had at least a stab at a career that demanded that she use her brains, her education and her talents. That, of course, is her choice, but does this make her a good role model?

We were talking about this yesterday. One of my friends asked me, "Now come on, ***, be honest, who would you rather be, the Duchess of Cambridge or Hilary Mantel?"

I did hesitate, but only for a moment. I decided that I definitely wanted to be Hilary Mantel, but a very slim Hilary Mantel. Everyone laughed, but it's not actually very funny.

I wouldn't want to be anyone in the public eye. Hilary Mantel would be better than the Duchess, because being able to write as she can and not being photographed every five minutes is considerably more appealing than Princess Catherine's life. But I even get stuck on the thinness, because I am not slim. And when it comes down to it, I can't seem to imagine or want to be anyone but myself. I'd quite like to be a cleverer me, or a more-able-to-remember-what-I-read me and a little fitter me (but not so fit that running appealed) and a slightly sexier me (but not so much so that men smothered me), but mostly not a very different me. I certainly wouldn't want to be seen as little more than a clothes horse.

Is that an age thing, not wanting a role model? Or is it more generational? Or just individual preference?

I wouldn't have made the choice, ***. Just being me is challenge enough. If enving other people is not bad enough, being envied is not much better. I have recenly learned that I and my family were envied - and for the smallest of differences by people I loved and admired very much. It was quite a shock but it explained a few unkindnesses - yet there was nothing to envy and we did nothing to cause it. That much has been admitted. I think the brilliant 'Hyacinthe Bucket' character helped to finally wipe away the many people I knew just like her and who we as a family enjoyed watching in action. There are others now who amuse me. These are grey haired ladies who are hearty enthusiasts making up for lost time and climbing mountains in Peru and such.... and why not. I don't envy them, just amused. Perhaps I have had a priviledged life of challenge and hardship mixed with unusual circumstances and social swirl - all at the same time.

I think Kate is doing a great job - and I wonder how Di would have reacted to her? May the press never find cause to bring her down. As a role model in presentation and decorum alone most of the young girls about here could do worse. Is the era of sleasy celebs on the wane? Oh I forgot, 'Strictly' is on again soon. On the other hand, cool bakers wear FairIsle..... am I watching too much TV?

Quote :

On the other hand, cool bakers wear FairIsle..... am I watching too much TV?

Absolutely not, P, not if it's my current favourite programme anyway.

Yes, Kate is doing a great "job", Priscilla, but I'm still uneasy about what our decorous, decorative and beautifully presented duchess represents. Are we reverting to the Downton Abbey ideal of womanhood? I think we possibly are. Does Kate send out the old-fashioned, but powerful and immensely seductive message that, to be happy, all any woman needs is to be is beautiful, slim, nicely dressed - and married?

Let's leave Hilary Mantel out of this, as she is an old bat. If I were young again I rather think I would choose the Homeland girl (Carrie, played by Claire Danes) as my role model, not the lovely duchess.

I admire Danes's character because she is fiercely intelligent, driven and utterly dedicated to her own job. She's slim, not because she's on the Dukan Diet and exercises for an hour or more every single day as the media tell us the D of C does (shades of Diana there?), but because she is so absorbed in her work she simply forgets to eat. She throws on a white tee shirt and a pair of jeans and looks great. Her hair admittedly is always a bit of mess (no Chelsea blow-dries for this girl); but then she has no time to faff about too much with the old BabyBliss heated brush.

Unfortunately, Carrie is also quite bonkers (full blown manic depressive who needs medication to stay sane), but we'll ignore that. The CIA have actually sacked her, I think...

The other problem with Carrie, of course, is that she does not actually exist, except on Sunday nights.

Talking of Sunday nights, Downton Abbey and Homeland are both back this autumn; Julian Fellowes's masterpiece (Series 3) is on again this very Sunday. Not sure when Homeland returns, but it's soon.

I shall watch/record both.

If we're talking about fictional TV role models, I'd have to go for CJ in the West Wing. How I loved that programme. You see, I am a romantic.

.

Most people do marry, Temperance, and some jobs just don't the career of the partner. The monarch's one seems especially so - Prince Philip didn't really pursue a career to any great degree after his marriage.

You sound like our government a bit - they think everyone should work (everyone that they might otherwise have to pay for, that is - they don't care whether I work or not). Not only should we all work but we should all work in an export business. None of this namby-pamby service stuff (although teachers have to cope with changes every year, so exporters have a good workforce, and nurses are worked off their feet); if we were all upskilled the way the government thinks it wants, who is actually going to tend to the people in resthomes, and sweep the streets, and work in the supermarkets? Oh, yes, immigrant workers. They are good - they work 7 days a week and they don't bother too much about wages and certainly not about conditions, unless they reach actual slave conditions.

Have got a little side-tracked from role models. A career person with manic depression doesn't much of a one to me. In fact career people without a life outside their career don't seem quite the thing at all. There must be a mniddle way between decorative and decorous and ambitiously driven and absolutely dedicated to a job.

Caro wrote:

A career person with manic depression doesn't much of a one to me. In fact career people without a life outside their career don't seem quite the thing at all. There must be a mniddle way between decorative and decorous and ambitiously driven and absolutely dedicated to a job.

Oh, Caro, I despair. Please note that I did say that Carrie is "bonkers" and that "she does not actually exist". She has a lot in common with my other "role model", Anna Karenina. Role models/heroes a dangerous idea?

I think it is time I dropped all these attempts at irony (here and elsewhere) - perhaps then I will not be misunderstood so much.

The point I was so clumsily trying to make is that finding your "middle way" (which I agree is the sane path) is not always easy for many girls and women today. Perhaps that is why so many of them (in my experience at least) are so very confused and unhappy. Perhaps it has always been so. It must however be admitted that the women who have written and spoken honestly about their confusion and misery are the ****ed up ones, so possibly we should take no notice of them.

I am in a great rush - I should have waited until this afternoon to reply, but your post has really stung me. Odd.

I have never been told that I am like a government before - I am mortified.

Oh, I didn't mean to mortify you, Temperance! Most of your post wasn't ironic, though - I am sure you mean the first paragraph about the Duchess Kate and the first sentence about Clare Dane's character (I don't think we have this programme in NZ, but there are dozens we have that I don't know about, so perhaps we do).

Don't forget you are talking to someone who has never done an honest day's work in her life. (More or less). And could have followed a career rather more assiduously. So role models who spend their life dedicated to a career aren't going to appeal fully. I don't think men who spend all their life pursuing a career to the detriment of everything else are admirable either. But I don't live in a city where people seem to have to work 14 hours a day to feel they are getting ahead.

I am not sure role models have to exist for young girls to admire them. In fact I'm sure they don't have to, and now I think about it, if I were to have a role model it might be a couple of Georgette Heyer's heroines!

Caro wrote:

Most of your post wasn't ironic, though - I am sure you mean the first paragraph about the Duchess Kate and the first sentence about Clare Dane's character

True, Caro- I did mean what I said in those lines. I *am* very uneasy about the Duchess of Cambridge being accepted as a role model for today's young women.

But I am also uneasy for our young men, too.

Is the "old lie" - or rather are the old lies - attempting a sneaky come-back? The old lie that, for girls, *merely* to be sweet - and appropriately dressed - is indeed a sweet and appropriate aspiration? While it seems that the idea of young men dying or being maimed in unnecessary warfare is also once more something to applaud? The old "dulce et decorum est..." for girls *and* boys?

As I try to turn my thoughts away from female angst and *our* search for role models, I'm mindful of all those Victorian schoolboys who thrilled as they were fed their "bellyful of the classics" (who was it said that? - will check in a moment). Impressionable lads reading avidly (well, some of them - I suppose "avidly" and "thrilled" would only apply to those who were good at Greek and Latin) about the Roman and Greek heroes of the old legends.

To suffer hardness with good cheer,
In sternest school of warfare bred,
Our youth should learn; let steed and spear
Make him one day the Parthian's dread;
Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life.
Methinks I see from rampired town
Some battling tyrant's matron wife,
Some maiden, look in terror down,—
“Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war!
O tempt not the infuriate mood
Of that fell lion I see! from far
He plunges through a tide of blood!”
What joy, for fatherland to die!
Death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake,
Nor spare a recreant chivalry,
A back that cowers, or loins that quake.

Dear old Horace. Did anyone tell those boys at Eton and Winchester and Marlborough and Harrow etc. that Horace also admitted somewhere else - apparently without any embarrassment - that he himself as a young man had actually been a bit of a wimp? At the Battle of Philippi it seems that this encourager of young heroes had actually flung his shield away and legged it.

I don't know what "**** this for a game of soldiers" is in Latin, but probably more sensible advice than the words of the famous ode.

PS And all right then, yes, I *do* really admire young Carrie, even if she is bonkers. She *is* fiercely intelligent and she's also fiercely independent. I think she's a great kid.

"Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race."

Henry Miller.

I'm not sure I *entirely* agree.

Mmm, Temps, HMiller's opinion gave me excuse for posting what I have been thinking about - Romantics V Realists. To serve under a General steeped in classics would be unnerving. Patton comes to mind and so does Churchill too., come to that. 'Tommies and Squadies' were ever the lead soldiers who fell to them on the nursery floor battlefields of ancient heroics. Good 'ol Horace inspired me too. I would have stood my ground on the bridge or at the Pass - when I was ten I would have, or so I believed.... That was before I realised how chicken I really was so the next best thing I decided was to train my mind to look for creative solutions - and plan ahead,,,, verrryy carefully and watch my back at all times. Thus I managed to avoid or counter - survive, anyway, tircky and improbable situations you would not believe I could have got myself in or out of... an incurable romantic, me, then.

Pindar also did a fast and shieldless run from Marathon - not as celebrated an event because he left somewhat earlier than Pheidippedes - was it?. He had to take a load of derision for that..

Quote :

While it seems that the idea of young men dying or being maimed in unnecessary warfare is also once more something to applaud?

I haven't noticed this particularly, Temperance. What has brought it to your attention? I think young dead soldiers do tend to be glorified but I don't think in general boys and young men are feeling encouraged to go to war at the moment. I am more concerned that the pervasive girlification of young females is tending towards young men now. While I don't at all object to men feminising themselves in the way of jewellery and long hair and fancier clothing, there are signs that they too feel superficial looks are more important than character and achievements.

But then I look at my children and daughters-in-law and the young people in our district and they all seem sensible, individual and grounded (this sounds a rather modern cliche but I can't think of a better word), so perhaps these worries are really unfounded. (Or perhaps I live in a country area and city values don't reach here so much.)

Our news media had concerns yesterday that Lego has reached out to girls by using pink and static situtations to attract girls. Lots of the comments below seemed to suggest feminists were worrying about nothing, and girls would be girls whatever, which I don't think is quite right. But some did also say that the article had concentrated on the one scenario which fitted when there were others of vet clinics and active situations.

Every year the Dunedin newspaper runs Class Act which celebrates the excellence of up to two senior students in each school in the region, about 55 kids in all. Excellence is not defined but is usually to do with academic or sporting or music success, although one boy’s excellence a couple of years ago was in stud sheep breeding. The students are presented to the Prime Minister, given a certificate and are the subject of a supplement to the paper. (My youngest son was one of these a few years ago.)

The students’ achievements are listed, their career preferences noted (both the kids, girl and boy, from my local school want to be farm owners, which is a little odd these days), and they asked for their role model. A few say none and quite a few choose well-known sportspeople, family members – mostly parents but also a grandfather, sister and brother, or make a general statement about the sort of people they admire. Sporting roles models do not include any English soccer stars (though one did chose the New Zealand football captain Ryan Nelsen); they do include some All Blacks, two said Roger Federer, and someone a Canadian paralympian Viviane Forest. But lots of their role models were lesser known people or people well back in the past, like Florence Nightingale or Abraham Lincoln or Leonardo da Vinci. I was specially taken with the boy who chose Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian President “the first woman in Africa to become a head of state, and she managed to reconcile a country torn apart by civil war”. Others chose Baha’i faith founder Baha’u’llah, Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, and musicians Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Morello. No one chose Lady Gaga or the Duchess of Cambridge or Justin Bieber.

Another year, another Class Act and their choices of role models still interesting.  I was interested to see one girl (who had achieved her gold Duke of Edinburgh award) said her role model was Prince Philip "because he had a great vision to get students involved in the community".  Lots of the kids nominated their parents, grandparents or siblings, but others had various present-day sportspeople, and then there was Mohammed Ali, Nelson Mandela, UN conflict prevention leader Jan Egeland, scientist Brian Cox, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Sklowdowska-Curie (I've never heard her called that before), Edmund Hillary ("Because of how he went back to the Himalayas and built schools for the children and looked after the poeple. He always gave back."), our former PM Helen Clark (good choice!).  The ones I liked were the young Asian girl who said Songebob SquarePants - "he's happy and he works hard", the girl who nominated a very well-known rugby player, former captain and coach of Otago and said, "He played for Otago so long and captained them, and he's my dad." 

But mostly I was interested in the boy who said Grant Robertson, Labour politician. I wondered why - Mr Robertson doesn't have a specially high profile - he is the Deputy leader, but he hasn't make big splashes.  This boy did say he hoped to become a secondary school teacher and he had as Plan B to study politics at university. But I then saw that Mr Robertson had been involved with overseas aid and a diplomat, but perhaps what this boy liked was the fact that in his maiden speech in Parliament he referred to his being gay "a part of me like being a Wellington Lion supporter, a former diplomat, a lover of New Zealand music and literature".  I had forgotten that - in general NZ doesn't make much of its politicians' private lives.