The Dimbleby Lecture
Gareth Southgate has recently delivered a Richard Dimbleby lecture on the position of young men in today’s society. Whilst his speech is broader in scope than I would wish to address here, he certainly makes a strong case for the need for positive role models for young men and, given that every other person I have spoken to is talking about ‘Adolescence’ on Netflix, it seems his words were extremely prescient. An article on Southgate’s speech summed it up as follows:
Sports can empower young men in a positive way
Southgate suggests that participating in a hobby such as sports, is an avenue that is far more empowering than being glued to a phone that sits neatly in the palm of your hand like a parasitic leech.
This poison, that has taken over society like a menacing and calculated criminal, is the smartphone, a device that young people are often taken prisoner of for fourteen hours a day, wreaking havoc on relationships, health, and wellbeing. With just one touch, young men can obsessively game and gamble to their hearts content, getting into crippling debt, and as a result, feel completely cut off and alienated from the rest of the world.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking element of his lecture was his focus upon young men who are suffering from poor mental health due to online rhetoric that men should: ‘not show emotion and never show weakness’. As a result of this, more and more men are turning to their phone, rather than the people who really love and care about them such as their friends, family, teachers, bosses and coaches: ‘Young men end up withdrawing, reluctant to talk, or express their emotions’.
Young men ‘fail to try, rather than try and fail’
Southgate suggests that failure is the only way young men ever learn to grow a sense of resilience and strength, and as a result, become better versions of themselves.
In the lecture, he reflected on his crucial missed penalty at the Euros in 1996, and stated: 'That pain still haunts me today, and I guess it always will.' Southgate said it was a 'watershed moment' when he missed the goal, but ultimately this failure forced him to 'dig deep, and revealed an inner belief and resilience I never knew existed'. But, he also added that currently young men fear failure because of how they will be viewed by society, and instead: 'fail to try, rather than try and fail'.
He also stated that: 'we have to show young men that character is more important than status'.
In this sense, Southgate offered words of solace for young men, who might not have missed a penalty, but will all, at some points, have experienced failure and setbacks. He encouraged men to not just view success through the lens of social media, which bombards them with unrealistic and harmful content, and instead wants them to see success as: 'how you respond in the hardest moments.'
Speaking from his own experiences as England manager, he called on society to help create more leaders who can: 'set the right tone and to be the role models we want for our young men'.
Here in school we continue to address the risks posed by online influences and mobile phone reliance. We also await guidance from the government, due later in the year, that is designed to support schools in addressing these points further.
Inservi Deo et laetare.
