Model answer
Written by 8020 teachers. Do not memorise it — take the structure and the way ideas are developed, then speak about your own life.
Q: Why do young people often admire celebrities more than people they actually know?
A: I think it comes down to curated distance — you only ever see the highlight reel, the interviews, the achievements, never the boring or difficult parts, so it's much easier to project admiration onto someone you don't actually have to deal with day to day. With people you know, you see the whole picture — their bad moods, their compromises, the gap between what they say and what they do — and that inevitably complicates the admiration. There's also a status element; celebrities represent a kind of success that feels aspirational precisely because it's remote, whereas the adults around you often look, frankly, quite ordinary. That said, I don't think it's entirely irrational — celebrities can model ambition or resilience in a way that's genuinely useful, even if the relationship is one-directional and slightly artificial.
Q: Do you think a teacher can influence a student more than a parent can? Why?
A: In certain narrow ways, yes, but I wouldn't say more overall. A teacher meets a student at a moment when they're actively trying to work out who they are outside the family, so a single offhand comment from a teacher — "you're actually good at this" — can land with disproportionate weight precisely because it comes from someone with no obligation to be encouraging. Parents, on the other hand, shape the underlying values and emotional baseline over years, which is a slower but arguably deeper kind of influence. So I'd say teachers can trigger specific turning points, while parents set the conditions those turning points happen within.
Q: Should schools teach students how to choose good role models?
A: I'm slightly torn on this one. Explicitly teaching it risks turning something quite personal into a checklist exercise, and role models chosen that way rarely stick. But I do think schools could usefully teach the underlying skill, which is closer to critical thinking than role-model selection specifically — helping students separate someone's public image from the actual substance behind it. If a class did that well, students would end up choosing better role models as a side effect, without ever being told directly who to admire.
Q: Is it healthy for people to model their whole identity on someone else?
A: No, and I think that's true almost by definition — identity that's entirely borrowed tends to be brittle, because it depends on the other person continuing to behave the way you need them to. The moment your role model does something disappointing, which they eventually will, the whole structure is at risk of collapsing with them. I think the healthier version is picking up specific traits or habits from several different people rather than importing one person wholesale — that way no single disappointment can undo the whole thing.
Q: Do you think role models matter less in a culture that values individuality?
A: I'd actually argue the opposite — role models might matter more, just differently. In a culture obsessed with conformity, a role model tells you what to become; in a culture that prizes individuality, a role model is more useful as a demonstration that being unconventional actually works out, which is reassuring in a different way. So the function shifts from "copy this" to "proof this is possible," but the need for some external reference point doesn't really go away.