Abstract
Mentor–protégé relationships have existed throughout history in politics, music, business, and entertainment—Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great, Bach was a mentor to Mozart, Richard Branson was a protégé of Freddie Laker, Sir Anthony Hopkins was mentored by Sir Laurence Olivier, and Harry Potter had his Dumbledore. The origin of the term for sage advisor has been traced to the period when Odysseus left his son, Telemachus, under the care of his wise friend, Mentor, when he departed for the Trojan War (Lytle 2009). Mentors are trusted friends, counselors, or teachers, acting as positive role models, who share their knowledge with a younger, less experienced person. Modern mentoring programs have strong face validity—they seem like they should work, instinctually we believe they can work, and, furthermore, we want them to work (Roberts et al. 2004). Mentoring is said to be one of the most popular social interventions in American society (Rhodes and DuBois 2008), and there exists a “good news only” mindset within the media that tends to undercut the impact of any legitimate empirical findings (Rhodes and Lowe 2008). The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) supports mentoring as an effective way to prevent at-risk youth from becoming involved in delinquency (http://www.ojjdp.gov/). An estimated three million youth are in individual mentoring relationships in the U.S. In the twenty-first century, federal funding for mentoring programs has increased considerably with appropriations by Congress of $100 million (Rhodes and DuBois 2008).
The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes
Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
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Macomber, D., Grigorenko, E.L. (2012). Mentor Programming for At-Risk Youth. In: Grigorenko, E. (eds) Handbook of Juvenile Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0905-2_28
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