Grand Valley Review Volume 10 | Issue 2 Article 7 1994 "I Am Not a Role Model": Charles Barkley and the Morality of Teaching Brian White Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvr Recommended Citation White, Brian (1994) ""I Am Not a Role Model": Charles Barkley and the Morality of Teaching," Grand Valley Review: Vol. 10: Iss. 2, Article 7. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvr/vol10/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Grand Valley Review by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ; in the Library" "I AM NOT A ROLE MODEL": CHARLES BARKLEY AND THE MORALITY OF TEACHING Brian White merican Women's INTRODUCTION ~lativism: Barkley's Story-And Ours od, the Bad, I remember the first time I ever saw Charles Barkley play professional basketball. ~rnational Business I said to myself, "That man is a monster." He is enormous; he is powerful; he is quick; he is graceful; he is mean. When being interviewed, he makes very plain that 1 American Studies he does not suffer fools gladly and that nearly everyone is a fool. He has become an unusually successful, unusually famous, unusually notorious athlete. But his fame and notoriety have not driven him into seclusion. To the contrary, he refuses to be constrained or controlled by public opinion or the crush of adulation. He goes where he wants to go and does what he wants to do. After a game, he goes out on the town. He spends time in bars, but has never (to my knowledge) been accused of being out of control or of having had too much to drink. Unfortunately, this cannot be said of certain of his fellow patrons. In the past few years, several people who obviously do not value their own lives have picked fights with Charles Barkley, in and outside of various drinking establishments. So far as I know, Barkley has never lost one of these fights, but he has come under increasing attack for even being in places where such altercations could occur, and for responding to these chemically altered simpletons with a less than cool head. "Charles!" people say. "Don't you know that you are watched and admired by thousands of young people? That thousands of young men want to be just like you?" To which Mr. Barkley has responded, "I am not a role model." Karl Malone, another large professional basketball player, has taken issue with Barkley's response, and has tried to convince Barkley that his personal decision NOT to be a role model doesn't change the fact that he IS one-like it or not. To date, Barkley has not backed down (from anything); he persists in believing and in stating that he is a professional athlete, not a role model; that parents are the rightful role models for today's young people. I would like to point out a way in which university professors are role models for the next generation. You might (like Barkley) decide that, whatever White says, you are a professor, and not a role model. Like Malone, however, I will say that all of us are role models, that we have no choice, and that we have an ethical responsibility to be the best role models we can be. Grand Valley Review • 3 aware of the moral v The Teacher as Role Model "reverently conscioL ludicrously oxymoror In The Process of Education, Jerome Bruner (1977) writes that academy. The teacher is . an immediately personal symbol of the But perhaps revE educational process, a figure with whom students can identify and Grand Valley. A high compare themselves. Who is not able to recall the impact of some (more than one in t particular teacher-an enthusiast, a devotee of a point of view, a attitudes, techniques disciplinarian whose ardor came from love of a subject, a playful but adopted by these fu1 serious mind? There are many images, and they are precious. Alas, teach today-not jus there are also destructive images: the teachers who sapped students on a daily confidence, the dream killers, and the rest of the cabinet of horrors students in the pu (pp. 90-91 ). responsibility to our c Bruner argues that these powerful images of teachers, whether precious or destructive, become entwined with students' images of subject matter. And T according to Dewey (1933}, ". the influence of the teacher's personality is intimately fused with that of the subject"; he writes that "the [student] does not Teacher Training at separate or even distinguish the two" (p. 233). Students simultaneously study both subject matter and teacher; the two become one in their minds. And if a teacher's Nearly 2,000 of 1 behavior and personality seem to spring more from the cabinet of horrors than from some individual unit: the hall of fame, Dewey argues that students' attitudes toward the subject matter will example, nearly two be influenced accordingly. He concludes that "Example is more potent than precept, people with power ~ and a teacher's best conscious efforts may be more than counteracted by the determine how many influence of personal traits that he is unaware of or that he regards as unimportant" education as a caree1 (p. 232). there are 5 or so prm Dewey does not limit the influence of the teacher's personality, attitude, and 5 of the 26 students < "style" to students' attitudes toward subject matter. He writes that teachers exert sound like many, but profound influence upon students' "morals and manners, upon character, upon year of teaching, be 1 habits of speech and social bearing" (p. 233). And with this Giovanni Gentile ( 1922) secondary students, 1 would concur, for he writes that teachers must be acutely aware of their moral are both future tead influence upon students. In his view, teachers. nothing [is] more harmful to the school than the conviction that the moral formation of man is not the entire purpose of education, but The Effects of the P; only a part of its content. It is indispensable, I maintain, that the educator have the reverent consciousness of the extremely delicate When we think o moral value of every single word which he addresses to his pupils deliberate, active ap and of the profoundly ethical essence of the instruction which he apprenticeship of imparts to them (pp. 162-163). apprenticeship-an a We hear very little today of the moral roots and ramifications of instruction, future teachers are perhaps because so many of us have come to believe that morality is intensely students. From the tir personal and almost exclusively individual, that intellectual pursuits can be teachers and to learn abstracted and removed from the moral morass, that instruction can be viewed to this teacher? What superficially, focusing on the style of what we call "delivery" while ignoring the moral does the teacher feel ' freight inherent in a particular style. We and our students are not often reflectively the prof. react when \1\i 4 • Grand Valley Review aware of the moral value of every teacher-student interaction, and that we should be "reverently conscious" of our moral responsibilities as teachers sounds almost ludicrously oxymoronic to ears accustomed to the cynical discourse of the modern 3t academy. nbol of the But perhaps reverent consciousness is in order today, and especially here at identify and Grand Valley. A high percentage of our students in the disciplines are future teachers act of some (more than one in ten), and there is mounting and convincing evidence that the t of view, a attitudes, techniques and strategies adopted by professors in the disciplines will be a playful but adopted by these future teachers when they enter their K-12 classrooms. How we ~cious. Alas, teach today-not just what we teach, but how we teach-and how we interact with tho sapped students on a daily basis will directly influence the education of thousands of ~t of horrors students in the public schools. In my view, we cannot escape our ethical responsibility to our own students and to their future students. hether precious or ubject matter. And THE APPRENTICESHIP OF OBSERVATION :her's personality is [student] does not Teacher Training at Grand Valley 3neously study both ;_ And if a teacher's Nearly 2,000 of Grand Valley's 13,000 students are prospective teachers. In of horrors than from some individual units, the percentage is astounding. In my own department, for e subject matter will example, nearly two thirds of the students are preparing to be teachers. Although potent than precept, people with power snickered at me when I asked them if there was a way to :ounteracted by the determine how many students in a given general education course are considering 1rds as unimportant" education as a career, my hunch is that, in every gen. ed. class of 30 or so students, there are 5 or so prospective teachers. In my own English 150 course this semester, nality, attitude, and 5 of the 26 students are seriously considering education as a career. That might not that teachers exert sound like many, but when you consider that each of those teachers will, in the first on character, upon year of teaching, be responsible for the education of 30 elementary children or 150 tanni Gentile ( 1922) secondary students, their presence is magnified. Sitting before us in our classrooms ware of their moral are both future teachers and, in a real sense, the future students of those future teachers.