Matthew
Syed is one of my favourite journalists. I first encountered him when I was a
table tennis obsessed fourteen-year-old and he was British men's number one, and I
came across his name later on when I started reading my parents’ Times newspaper, which Syed now writes
for. He is a pretty inspirational guy, forging a success out of two
very different careers. And his recent book Bounce
is a great read, convincingly doing away with what he calls “the myth of
talent” in favour of the idea that success in any domain is better explained by
dedication and practice.
Nonetheless,
there is an area in which I find myself consistently disagreeing with Syed. Pictures
recently emerged of England captain Wayne Rooney drunk and disorderly at a
wedding. Misdemeanours by leading sportspeople, especially high profile
footballers, are of course nothing new, and whenever they are revealed in the
press they are accompanied by proclamations to the effect that such people are
‘role models’, and it is in large part for this reason that their behaviour is
unacceptable.
Syed
disagrees with the idea of footballers as role models. From what I remember (he
is very welcome to write to me for clarification!) he argues (a) that
footballers sign up for the job to play
football, not to be some kind of totem of morality, and (b) that in any
case, we are misguided as a society if we use footballers as such totems. As
Syed writes: “When did our culture start to indulge the ridiculous idea that
because someone is good at kicking a football, they are also the kind of people
to look to for guidance when it comes to personal morality?”
Now, I
work full-time with children. In my work, I regularly come across children,
young boys especially, who do model
their own behaviour on that of their footballing idols. We can draw a
distinction in Syed’s argument between the normative
– i.e. what ought to be the case, and
the descriptive – what is the case. It might very well be true
that, as a society, we shouldn’t look
to footballers as examples of how we ought to behave, but the fact is that we,
and in particular children, do look
at footballers in this way. To try to undo this would, it seems to me, require
undoing some basic facts about children’s psychology: they see people they
admire, and they try to emulate them. Children do not draw the kind of
sophisticated, fine-grained philosophical distinctions that Syed does; children
see, and children do.
I’ll give
a specific example. Not so long ago I refereed a football match involving
nine-year-old boys. The kids delighted in feigning injury, elaborately wailing
and rolling around then nonchalantly getting up when their opponents kicked the
ball out of play. They were constantly up in my face, aggressively challenging
my every decision. They were pushing and shoving each other. They were
spitting. They were swearing. And they were, all in all, very nice kids. Where
did they learn this behaviour? From the telly, obviously.
Whether Syed likes it or not, the fact is that footballers are role models. They may
not ask to be or want to be, but they are. Analogously, I may not want to
become a father. Does that mean I am morally within my rights to just piss off
when it happens (“I only signed up for the sex, not the fatherhood")?. Of course
not: I undertook an action that I could reasonably foresee might lead to this
consequence. Similarly with footballers: it is not unreasonable to expect them
to recognise that their actions will be broadcast and publicised, and will have
influence on people beyond themselves. Given the proliferation and
globalisation of the sport, it almost seems as though moral rectitude should be part of the job description,
rather than merely, as Syed states, “kicking a football”.
And we
can bleat all we like that children should follow the example of Martin Luther
King rather than John Terry, but so long as the likes of the latter penetrate
our consciousness via screen and page, their example will be followed. This is
just how children work. We can do various things: we can stop publicising the
bad behaviour of footballers; we can teach children more about morality and
personal responsibility; we can educate footballers themselves and demand
certain standards of them; we can do all of this and more. But it is not enough
simply to say that these guys are footballers, not monks, so let’s get on with
it. Try telling that to a nine-year-old
who has just bitten his opponent “because Suarez did it.”
(As a
final ad-hominem: I would be interested to know how much experience Syed has of
working with and generally being around children, and whether working with them in a sporting context
would influence his arguments regarding whether or not footballers are
role models.)
