Sadly, few boys these days have meaningful relationships with male mentors and father figures, men who can teach and inspire them.

Some boys grow up without having been taught by a male teacher or are taught by teachers who have no life or work experience outside of a classroom.

The boys in many a modern British home may have several ‘fathers’ over time. How times have changed?

As a youngster, I used to call around to see my friends. ‘He’s out, he is helping his dad.’

The lad’s father might be a builder or mechanic; a marine painter but the youngster was being moulded in masculine ways. Often heard; ‘My dad’s helping me with the Meccano set,’ or ‘I’m going fishing with my dad.’

My dad, self-taught in Gaelic, had fought in four conflicts by the time he reached his fortieth birthday. His passion was writing and he patiently taught me the art of written communication. Today I practice what he preached.

It is said that when you educate a man you educate an individual; educate a woman you educate a family. No one is going to argue with that but when you educate a man you educate all the little men. At school, I recall only one female teacher; Miss Illingsworth; an absolute angel of a woman.

The rest were men and they were no angels. Many of our male teachers had service backgrounds. From them, we learned discipline and respect; respect for women, your elders and your peers. They were lions teaching cubs how to get things right and stop fooling about.

My stepfather taught my brother and me how to live off the land by fair means or foul. From him, we learned, often the hard way, that necessity is the mother of invention and self-sufficiency a virtue.

My mates were members of boxing or ju-jitsu clubs; they played football. Several were members of the Church Lads Brigade, Sea or Army Cadets; the Boy’s Brigade. They were taught manly things and manly ways by real men.

So far so good and then for me it was sea training school then sea-going career. There it was a different kind of male mentoring; you learned respect and you learned that the price of indiscipline was more than a thick ear.

Those men practiced what they preached. They were preparing us youngsters for life in which getting it right and wrong was the difference between life and death. It is hard to imagine anyone better able to guide young men.

Not to be forgotten the men who had gone before us and left their lessons behind; the adventurers, the poets and the writers who had carved a path for us youngsters to follow.

I am not here to judge. I just do wonder at times if we have made a rod to beat our own backs with when young men were abandoned by real men.

QUOTE TO MAKE YOU THINK: ‘The greatest want of the world is the want of men, men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.’  – American Author and Co-Founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church Ellen G. White. 1827-1915. ~ MICHAEL WALSH. PLEASE SHARE OUR STORIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL  ex-Liverpool seaman Michael Walsh. Bestseller: 70 stories and over 100 pictures. A first-hand account of the British ships, seafarers, adventures and misadventures (1955 – 1975). A tribute to the ships and seamen of the then-largest merchant marine in history.

BOOK LINK    https://tinyurl.com/3kuja2s5