Celebrity mentoring gives young people a distorted idea of success and lets politicians off the hook
On her last visit to the UK in 2009, Michelle Obama visited an excellent inner city school in Islington to give a speech to the students. I took part in an event at the school a few months on and you could still feel the excitement. I spoke to teenagers who described the first lady as "amazing" and "inspirational" and said, "I could have listened to her all day". And no one's going to argue that hearing encouragement from one of the world's most famous women, especially when she's black and from a poor neighbourhood in Chicago, isn't going to give an inner-city school a massive lift.
This week, Michelle is following up her last visit by meeting students from the school at Oxford University with a view to helping them "be the best you can be". You can't argue with that idea either. Helping youngsters from poor backgrounds to realise their potential, building their confidence and offering your support is a fundamental part of what education is all about. But it does raise a difficult question: Do such role model and mentoring initiatives actually work?
Everyone in education is familiar with the theory. You have a class full of sullen, underachieving teenagers. Then you bring in big stars from the "community" who've been successful in their chosen field. They give a little pep talk and the youth think, "If they can do it, so can I …" And before you know it, you have a class full of confident go-getters and the next time you see them, they're on TV, in the boardroom or scoring goals at Wembley.
This idea isn't entirely fanciful. Most successful people from poor backgrounds can usually point to someone who's helped them think big. The trouble is that those people are more likely to be a parent, a teacher or a youth worker than someone from business, or a musician. My uncle was the most inspirational mentor I had in my young life. The quiet day-to-day encouragement and support that actually makes a difference is more likely to come from those you actually live among rather than from those who drop by for an hour and then disappear. Where support from "outside" role models is consistent this isn't a problem. But as Muhammad Ali once said, "How many successful guys from the ghetto are actually going back and helping out? Not many …"
And if you tell inner-city youth that with talent, hard work and a positive attitude you too can go to Oxford or Old Trafford the implication is clearly that those who don't (and that's always going to be the vast majority from any background) are lazy, untalented and negative. That's not a very helpful message.
Inner-city youth understand the reality of their situation. They know that however much effort they put in, or however ambitious they are, their chance of realising their aspirations is next to zero.
When was the last time you met a young doctor or lawyer with a working-class accent? This wouldn't matter so much if there were decent alternatives. The young David Bailey/Diana Ross wannabes from the 1960s who didn't make it could still expect to find a job that paid the bills and a home to live in. Now even that ambition is beyond the reach of many youngsters in our cities. It's "success" or nothing.
But perhaps the whole notion of role models and mentors raises the most fundamental question of all. Why are the youth of this country (of all backgrounds) being invited to admire and emulate those who are defined as successful by how much money they have? The people who gave us Iraq and the credit crunch? The celebs with their superinjunctions, breakdowns and rehab clinics? When did "working class" become a synonym for "loser"? Even when I was a child the residents on my housing estate of all ethnic groups were proud to be working class – now they're treated by themselves and others as a pack of failed X Factor contestants.
Get to grips with the problem of why we have an economy that writes off a substantial section of the country's youth, work out how we came to admire those who sometimes aren't admirable and how we regenerate pride, self-respect and solidarity on our estates and we may well find that we have all the role models we need already living in our own communities.