Blog posts for ‘Role Models’ 
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Inspirational body confidence campaign by teenagers in York
Thursday 16 May 2013
Categories: Growing up, Health, Media Influence, Role Models, Self-esteem
I was delighted to hear a group of 13 and 14 year old girls on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour recently, speaking about their campaign to challenge the use of “stick-thin models” on billboards and in shop windows.
The girls were articulate and spoke with passion and conviction: “we want more girls to challenge these fake pictures and the prejudices they feed. It’s not fair or right to pressure girls, especially at a vulnerable age, to look a certain way and change how we look….. this is...
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Failure...a key educational experience
Wednesday 3 April 2013
Categories: Education, Letting go, Parenting, Role Models
As a teenager one of my favourite reads was Stephen Pile’s The Book of Heroic Failures, which distilled failure into humour and thus made it fit for human consumption. Failure may be funny when served with a side order of schadenfreude, but in the real world, it really isn’t all that popular at all.
Perhaps it has always been this way, perhaps I’m just noticing it more, or perhaps it’s a product of the easy A-grade culture, but I am increasingly conscious that parents don’t like their...
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How brilliant and hard it is to be a woman in the 21st century
Monday 4 March 2013
Categories: Careers, Girls' schools, Media Influence, Role Models
I have always rather liked the quote from Madeleine Albright “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women“. These words came into my mind again last week as I caught up on the media spat that has briefly flared over the novelist Hilary Mantel’s comments about the Duchess of Cambridge. I will declare an interest in this matter from the outset: I think Hilary Mantel is a great writer and believe that ‘Wolf Hall’ will stand as one of the finest novels of the 21st...
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Character building in schools...
Sunday 20 January 2013
Categories: Parenting, Role Models, School curriculum
Head teachers get asked some weird questions. One that stands out in my mind was the mother who made an appointment to see me to ask if I would please tell her daughter to tidy her bedroom “because she won’t listen to me but she does to you Mrs Morris”. Flattering I suppose but really! And now the Head of a boys’ school is going to call for a General Certificate of Character Education (GCCE) to be introduced in all British schools to give pupils a good grounding in good manners,...
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Time to look beyond the mirror
Thursday 15 November 2012
Categories: Media Influence, Role Models, Self-esteem
1st November marked the start of Positive Image Month and the launch of a brilliant new campaign – to encourage each and every one of us to donate an hour to help someone else realise that it is who they are who matters, not what they look like. This isn’t an anti-beauty or anti-fashion campaign – it is just, quite simply, the start of an amazing movement to help us all recapture what really matters in life and to remember that it is not all about what we look like, but what we do and...
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Somebody said that it couldn't be done...
Friday 2 November 2012
Categories: Education, Literacy, Role Models
Professor John Gurdon this week was awarded the Nobel Prize for his services to cloning.
During the various interviews about his award he admitted to having framed one of his school reports from Eton which said he would never make a scientist. He had scored a mere 2 marks out of a possible 50 in a biology test and was ranked bottom of his year of 250 boys. So what does this say about school reports? There are so many examples from the famous and the not so famous of school reports which...
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Not so much a problem but an opportunity!
Friday 5 October 2012
Categories: Careers, Girls' schools, Media Influence, Role Models, Science
Here’s a way for your daughter to get ahead – study Physics. Then she’ll be one of a precious few women with the specialist knowledge and understanding of this fascinating world. In a very few years, there will be employers begging to employ female scientists and physicists.
Why? Because research shows just how few are taking up the subject – in half of the UK’s state co-ed schools not a single girl took A Level physics in 2011. Mind you, the picture is very different in...
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Who does your daughter look up to?
Monday 24 September 2012
Categories: Careers, Media Influence, Role Models
I was very pleased on Thursday night of this week to take part in an ITV Tonight programme about role models for girls and young women, hosted by Penny Marshall: Who does your daughter look up to?. This programme looked at the lack of role models for women, and the evidence that suggests that this absence is damaging aspirations for girls. It was an excellent and thought-provoking programme, and this issue is one of the most important challenges facing girls and young women today if they...
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Olympic legacy
Thursday 9 August 2012
Categories: Extra curricular, Health, Media Influence, Role Models
I have a dream, a personal vision of what our wonderful Olympics’ legacy should be.
When Seb Coe and his team pitched for the Olympics he painted a picture of winning London bid which would be inspirational for our youth so that its legacy would be a generation of sport-loving, healthy girls and boys, and adults too.
I loved how the fabulous opening ceremony put youth centre stage. I believe Tessa Jowell’s suggestion that every primary school should have a specialist P.E. teacher is...
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Celebrities as role models?
Monday 21 May 2012
Categories: Careers, Media Influence, Role Models
The Independent recently reported on a survey carried out by Childwise, an independent market research company, for Girlguiding UK into role models and influences on girls of different ages. The newspaper tells us: ‘They look to Cheryl Cole, Katy Perry, Jessie J and Adele for their role models. But few girls can identify any successful businesswomen and most failed to name a single sportswoman,’ and, ‘The survey also found that girls and young women dismiss careers such as...