Burnley Grammar School

Good posts from you both Anthony and Jason.

Give people positive reasons why they should do things.

Get yourself onto a shirtless running group to improve your self esteem is my answer, especially to anyone who thinks they have a big aversion to being shirtless in and around others in situations.

Our bareskins running group continues to expand on whatsapp from a tiny start. Not all the men are supremely sure of themselves. Some are seeking to prove themselves and it works. It's a great time of year to do it.

Maybe you were a kid at school who was shirtless averse but you might not still be that adult today. Nobody's physical condition is perfect anyway, accept what you are and say to hell with it.

This butterflies thing that was mentioned is real. One or two first timers on our bareskins runners have said the same thing, and these are grown men! Once you take the plunge, everyone wants to do it again. I personally find running bareskin far more enjoyable than covered up on top, and it feels so good. It's even better in company.

I've made quite a few new friends just by choosing to run with my top off. A regular shirted running group probably would never have taken off like it has with the bareskins attraction to it.

You can call me Tony if you must, I've been called worse I'm sure.

I think Jason has said it as I would have said it, and it sounded quite similar to the original comment I made a couple of weeks ago here.

Last Friday we did our sports day. Let me say, because there was some confusion, we were not making anyone do the school sports day shirtless. If during the course of the afternoon anyone wished to do so then there was an allowance for that, there were a small amount of voluntary removals. I've seen a comment about a mandatory shirtless sports day, these were probably very common in the past I think. It's a shame anyone would torture themselves about it if it happened to them. People always tend to think others are judging or noticing them far more than they really are.

Earlier in the week, on both Monday and Tuesday of last week, as per my comment of the Sunday evening that I made, we did all gym classes inside in bare chests for boys for simple practical and comfort reasons in the high heat and humidity. Bodies can sweat off and evaporate the moisture far easier that is created through physical work, so we decided all the gym classes would do PE that way on those two days. We will be doing the same tomorrow also. In the clear and strong sunshine nobody will be going outside in a bare chest unless they have the SPF protection, the school says 30 minimum but I agree with the 50 factor myself. There will be some boys that choose this option, but nobody is made to go outside shirtless because a teacher has told them they must in these conditions. If it's a very warm day with a thick cloud cover we sometimes treat it like the gym and might decide it's a good idea just to do PE in bare chests, but it's not something done every week or even every other week.

The showers at our school must be taken by everyone who does a full PE lesson and this is sensible and so there is no problem in taking part in activities to the fullest extent in hot weather like now, and unlike two comments I have read, we absolutely do encourage the use of any kind of soap brought from home or school provides its own if not. It's all part of a healthy PE routine in my opinion, and schools that shy away from this nowadays are just doing their pupils a real dis-service, especially if they have the means, which they are meant to, but refuse to utilise them, that's quite foolish to me.

Some people on here seem keen to criticise aspects of PE such as a class being taken in bare chests as old fashioned and anachronistic but I don't agree with that at all, how can the human physique be thought of as old fashioned? It's just a good solid method of physical fitness working that has long been proven effective and often quite popular with teachers and pupils alike.

If you are shy about your body it is definitely worth trying to cure it and the only way that can be done is facing head on what you fear. There is no doubt in my mind that I've had many boys with shyness concerns of the type raised here but in most cases, possibly all of them, experience shows that these boys inhibitions can be quickly and easily overcome in most circumstances.

Someone has asked why PE teachers do not openly acknowledge pupil body image concerns. Quite simple really, you don't want to draw attention to things as a big issue, so just getting on with things as if they are the most normal thing in the world is the best way forward.

I'd be very surprised if there was anyone I take that was so strongly against removing a top in PE that it had a big effect on them. I have not even come across anyone yet who refuses to shower either.

They say talking about things makes things better but this forum suggests to me that talking about it is making some people worse.

I think one of the nuttiest things anyone could do would be to no longer allow PE teachers to take a class without tops on or say we couldn't get them showered after working out hard. In the end though, sometimes you just have to drag the more reticent ones along with you and hope for the best outcome for them eventually.

You should not be scared of your body in single gender situations.

"..........Discipline and routine: Fosters group norms, respect for rules, and personal responsibility........"

Yet another one singing from the Jason songbook. "Discipline"- and routine? - don't quite see what you are on about with that (do you?)

I can assure you having worked in a brass section, you get to a very professional standard, with full co-operation, between players, and all the other old flannel you came out with, while wearing a suit, collar and tie., Yes, you get hot, most of us wore deodorant, and we were not going to stink the trains, buses taxis, or whatever by going home to shower which I always did, I genuinely wish grown men would stop either forcing young lads to go through these procedures, or gushing about it in retrospect. It was at best a power trip at worse an unhealthy and prurient interest in boys bodies.

With soap and water , which so many teachers insist on anyway , there is no need for conducting lessons in these minimal conditions, and there is absolutely no excuse for middle aged men to watch boys as they shower.

Alan - 'Our teachers - not just him - never bothered to learn our forenames.'


From memory only PE teachers did this where I was from day one, and made up variations of our surnames too, so my surname was Gold and I had blondey/gingery hair and was called Goldilocks a lot, a name actually given me by a new PE teacher when I was 12 which other kids just loved to pick up and go with too.

I bumped into an ex-PE teacher of mine in a department store I was in when I was 23 doing a temporary job. He recognised me immediately and came up but had no memory of my first name at all, but he could easily remember my surname and he used it too. Even when I told him my first name he said it didn't ring a bell and he wouldn't have known it. That's gym teachers for you, they had a parallel universe within school I think.

It always felt overly authoritarian to be called by surname all the while which was what they wanted in most cases one imagines, but a friendlier first name terms approach wouldn't have hurt here and there. It's just another one of those things that some boys don't mind or care about whilst others take to heart far more.

How anyone can read the comments here by men still troubled by being forced to be shirtless decades ago, then continue to advocate it today is mind-boggling

How times have changed, only this morning I drove past a mixed group of children in their PE kits on their way to a local sports centre. All were wearing dark designer T shirts. The girls were all wearing shorts but well over half the boys were wearing long tracksuit bottoms in this 30 degree heat. It is as if a glimpse of ankle would be too much embarrassment for a modern boy to bear.

Comment by: Gary on 10th July 2025 at 15:40
There is no valid reason for, or benefit of compulsory shirtless PE.
Outdoor shirtless PE just sounds ridiculously impractical.



Agree with you Gary.

I had a perfectly good vest and t-shirt, school issue from a supplier, for PE. When worn and tucked into my shorts they were perfect for the job and didn't come loose or flap, hang out or anything like that. These were designed for use in PE in the gym and for outdoors doing athletics in spring/summer term.

We never wore them in the gym. Boys went shirtless there, you were not even allowed to put one on even as school issue. We did use the tops outside for athletics, we could wear the vest or t-shirt, but even there we had days when what seemed like for the sheer hell of it we got told to get outside shirtless even when everyone had come with the actual correct school issue kit.

You paid for kit, you brought the kit into school, it was the actual kit they wanted us to have, and then some gym teacher just said, nope, I'd much rather you lot all went skins for PE instead, tops stay off and bare chests only into the gym you go!

You bet your life some boys dislike being told to do that.

That was a mighty fine defence of the PE teaching profession there Jason from your 10th July 2025 10.13 post this morning. Said like a true teacher of the subject. But those words, articulated well as they were, don't for me stand up to contact with actual reality as I remember it in the early 1980's.

I remember PE teachers who set out to deliberately diminish boys in their lessons, not build them up. I even had one who did this to me stepping out the shower, previously mentioned by me, grabbed my ear and pulled me to him for a minute long lecture while still bare naked and dripping wet. Character building, more taking the effing p*** and seeking deliberate humiliating power games over me.

Why do so many boys see going shirtless as a punishment if it is intended to do something quite the reverse and give them this great confidence?

You talk a good game Jason. I'll hand you that, but it just doesn't quite match up or come close to matching up with anything I personally remember at school in the 80's. All that you said may have been the intention, I'm not so sure though, but if it was then it clearly failed a large section of the male population quite miserably.

Comment by: Jason on 10th July 2025 at 10:13
'You said it yourself—these personal issues are, in truth, quite minor. Yet small matters, if left unaddressed, can become significant obstacles. If a boy feels anxious or ashamed about something as natural and ordinary as his own body—especially within a safe and structured environment such as a PE lesson—we must ask ourselves why this is the case, and what role we as educators play in either reinforcing or dismantling those irrational anxieties.'



Jason, the trouble is that none of these 'educators' as you call it, I'll just say PE teachers, made any attempts to understand or acknowledge these pupil insecurities that they will have been fully aware of in many cases I am sure of that, they were not blind after all, but just chose to ignore or turn a blind eye to so much that gets mentioned on this forum.

I cannot remember who said it, but someone on here a few weeks or months ago actually said if their PE teacher had actually taken the time to acknowledge his own difficulties then it would have made things so much better, even if he still had to keep doing the things causing anxiety, which was probably the shirtless PE.

I'll raise the point for discussion - why did almost no PE teachers ever seek to understand human nature just a little bit more and simply railroad everyone along the same track. My own teachers were all the same, so completely stereotypical of what you expected them to be and act like and would never have taken kindly to anyone at school even hinting at things that get said on these pages.

The boy who gets told to run a cross country shirtless on a cold March day, it's quite acceptable to ask why you are being asked to do that. That's one of my own long ago PE memories.

Comment by: Jason on 10th July 2025 at 12:22



".........Had you attended the school I went to, I suspect your view might have been quite different. For us, the minimalist PE uniform—shirtless for boys, white shorts only—was completely normal. It wasn’t a big deal; it was just how things were done for all sports activites. No one gave it much thought, and in fact, most of us came to appreciate the practicality and simplicity of it.......

......More broadly, I think we’ve reached a point where we’re bending over backwards to accommodate every individual sensitivity, often at the expense of common sense and tradition....."

No, Jason, I would not have "appreciated" it, even if our teacher hadn't been as bent as a nine bob note. There is absolutely no need for what he prescribed - nothing under the shorts for example, to give him another cheap thrill no doubt. Our teachers - not just him - never bothered to learn our forenames. We were treated like shit. That was "tradition", and it was a damned bad one.

I have to say, Jason, you worry me with all this talk of "tradition". This country is so hidebound and unimaginative because we kowtow to tradition far too much. Trooping the Colour is traditional, but it has little point or relevance to most of us. Ditto Black Rod and the State Opening of Parliament. You have to move with the times, and if the tradition of treating boys like army recruits or borstal inmates has continued along the lines you have suggested, all this "discipline" jazz, seems to be doing damn all good today, with increasing amounts of violence, knife crime and theft often perpetrated by teenage boys. Treating older teenage boys as if they were children is, I suspect, the reason for their disregard of society. and it's rules.

It is bad enough that 16 year olds were so treated, now they are more or less forced to stay till they are 18 it is totally inappropriate and unacceptable. I might well be older than you, but I am more interested in tomorrow, not tradition.


Comment by: Gary on 10th July 2025 at 15:40


"There is no valid reason for, or benefit of compulsory shirtless PE.
Outdoor shirtless PE just sounds ridiculously impractical"

Thanks Gary - right on the money. I think teachers who insist on it just like seeing boys wearing as little as possible for their own gratification.

If Heyman is to be believed he said last week that when boys play sport outside (he seems to conduct his classes shirtless) they had to wear suncream. Can you imagine how much time it must take for them to apply the stuff all over their upper bodies and face - it must take up half the lesson time..

I just wish teachers would try to come into the present day and not act as if it were still the time of Goodbye Mr. Chips.

Mark has put it quite well here.

I'm 47, so grew up in the era at school when boys not being allowed tops in PE lessons and forcing us to shower naked with each other was all the rage in secondary schools.

I'm a straight guy, nice enough looking I suppose, was average to quite okay medium sized body at school and still am just about, but couldn't stand the constant overbearing attitude from PE teachers about making us shower and watching while we did it, or all those PE lessons when they wouldn't let us put tops on, or did shirts against skins and you'd always seem to find it was the boys who least liked taking their tops off who had to do it, that was when the whole class wasn't doing it that way.

School didn't appear to have a set rule that boys must be bare chests for PE but it was just one of those things that seemed to happen because various PE teachers decided it must. Some teacher were keener than others, but having said that, they were all at it.

There were definitely boys at school in PE who were very confident in their bodies when bare chested and knew it, would puff their chests out and strut about almost saying look at me, but most of us were not like that.

I remember when school PE teachers at secondary began making us shower in 1989, it was so awkward for many of us, and I remember a few in class getting one hell of a roasting off a teacher for not looking like they wanted to do it. I remember thinking it was a horrible thing to force me to do and as someone mentioned butterflies with going shirtless, absolutely remember this feeling and one of almost shock about beginning showers and stripping naked for them and joining lots of others, our naked bodies literally bumping into each other while we showered. I was quite worried that someone might begin making comments about my body or my exposed area between my legs. No secrets from anyone, every last bit of your entire body on show and it was only a water shower anyway, someone else (Yours Truly I think) said much the same a few posts back.

I don't know what makes some of us automatically shy or much more modest than others, our genes rather than upbringing I think. But your secondary school PE teachers weren't too interested in that kind of thing, they simply tried to fit us all into the same box for everything and acted like nobody cared about showers, despite them making us strip naked when they said, that's quite an extreme thing to do to any other human being, in the adult world only something done to prisoners or suspected drug runners.

When I was 40 I had an examination in hospital by a consultant in his room which involved me having to remove my clothing to my underwear for an eczema outbreak check, nothing serious but he asked for a proper check over. That was okay, but what really annoyed me during the process was there was a young woman in his consulting room when I entered, standing there who said nothing and was not introduced to me, who spent the whole time just watching me being seen, and I wasn't given the opportunity to decide if I was alright with her presence during my examination, and I didn't feel I could say anything without creating an awkward atmosphere, but I left rather annoyed by it.

Hi Gary, I beg to differ, here are some benefits of compulsory shirtless PE:
Improved cooling: Helps regulate body temperature more efficiently.
Increased comfort: Reduces sweat-soaked clothing and chafing.
Freedom of movement: Enhances mobility, especially in the shoulders and torso.
Hygiene: Less damp clothing to carry, reducing bacteria buildup.
Body awareness: Promotes better posture and understanding of body mechanics.
Visual feedback: Allows teachers/coaches to observe muscle use, breathing, and technique.
Team distinction: Easy method for forming teams (e.g., shirts vs. skins).
Discipline and routine: Fosters group norms, respect for rules, and personal responsibility.
Confidence building: Normalizes body diversity and may reduce body-related anxiety over time.
Uniform simplicity: Practical when PE kits are "forgotten".
Accountability: Visible effort and engagement can encourage participation
Enhanced safety in gymnastics and physical contact activities:
Eliminates risks of clothing snagging on equipment.
Reduces slipping caused by damp fabric.
Facilitates safer partner work and coach assistance through unobstructed contact.

There is no valid reason for, or benefit of compulsory shirtless PE.
Outdoor shirtless PE just sounds ridiculously impractical.

Alan,
It sounds like your strong reaction may stem from a past experience that left a deep impression—possibly with a teacher who behaved inappropriately. If that's the case, I’m truly sorry you had to go through that. But I think it’s important to recognise that such experiences, however distressing, shouldn't colour the whole idea of shirtless PE for boys.

Had you attended the school I went to, I suspect your view might have been quite different. For us, the minimalist PE uniform—shirtless for boys, white shorts only—was completely normal. It wasn’t a big deal; it was just how things were done for all sports activites. No one gave it much thought, and in fact, most of us came to appreciate the practicality and simplicity of it.

More broadly, I think we’ve reached a point where we’re bending over backwards to accommodate every individual sensitivity, often at the expense of common sense and tradition. Perhaps it's time we re-embrace a more consistent and disciplined approach—one that recognises that being gently pushed beyond your comfort zone is actually a vital part of growing up. Building resilience and confidence often starts with small challenges like taking your shirt off, blending in, not making a fuss and growing.

Comment by: Jason on 10th July 2025 at 10:13


".......Alan,
You said it yourself—these personal issues are, in truth, quite minor. Yet small matters, if left unaddressed, can become significant obstacles. If a boy feels anxious or ashamed about something as natural and ordinary as his own body—especially within a safe and structured environment such as a PE lesson—we must ask ourselves why this is the case, and what role we as educators play in either reinforcing or dismantling those irrational anxieties.

It is not the shirt that gives a boy his dignity, but rather his self-respect and confidence. In previous generations, compulsory shirtless PE for boys was not about punishment or exposure—it was about equality....."


Jason, with all due respect that it is total damned nonsense. You sound like a teacher yourself?. "Safe and structured?" - you should have had our P.E. teacher who was a raving homosexual who couldn't wait to see you in the changing room, and especially the showers afterwards, especially the older you got. He bloody well eyed you up all the time. Why should people like that be pandered to?.

As for , "Equality" (that favourite Starmerite word!) what is "equal" about boys running around with next to nothing on while, if they are in co-ed schools, girls are running about in quite a deal of clothing, often in the same space at the same time?"

You finish your sophistry by appealing to "tradition". If we still worshipped at that shrine, we would have press gangs in Portsmouth and young boys going up the chimneys, and the working class tugging their forelocks.

What I said about minor hang-ups refers to a teacher last week called Anthony who claims never to have been called "Tony" - I can only assume he has spent his life in the Royal household.

Damn "tradition" - we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century. You don't have an "old" name, but you sound like a teacher from the middle of the last century. Sorry to be blunt, but there it is.

Alan,
You said it yourself—these personal issues are, in truth, quite minor. Yet small matters, if left unaddressed, can become significant obstacles. If a boy feels anxious or ashamed about something as natural and ordinary as his own body—especially within a safe and structured environment such as a PE lesson—we must ask ourselves why this is the case, and what role we as educators play in either reinforcing or dismantling those irrational anxieties.

It is not the shirt that gives a boy his dignity, but rather his self-respect and confidence. In previous generations, compulsory shirtless PE for boys was not about punishment or exposure—it was about equality, resilience, and fostering a neutral, healthy attitude towards the body. Boys learned not to be self-conscious—not because they had ‘ideal’ physiques, but because they were taught not to see the body as something shameful.

As a society, we have grown overly sensitive to discomfort. Yet some discomfort is developmental. A key part of education is teaching young people when discomfort signals something to be challenged—and when it offers an opportunity for growth. Helping boys to normalise their own bodies—free from judgement or hypersexualisation—builds maturity, self-assurance, and emotional resilience.

Reintroducing a simple, consistent PE kit policy—bare-chested with shorts for boys—would be a sensible and positive step. It’s about tradition, clarity, and supporting boys in becoming confident, grounded young men who are not ruled by irrational sensitivities. Teachers' role, as opposed top to that of parents, is not solely to protect—it is also to prepare. And sometimes, that means encouraging them to shed their fears—both figuratively and, in this case, quite literally. Requiring boys to remove their shirts for PE is not about control; it’s about helping them develop a healthy, assured relationship with themselves, rather than retreating into a culture of oversensitivity and avoidance.

Comment by: Mark on 9th July 2025 at 20:43


"......Comment by: Jason on 9th July 2025 at 12:01


I agree with you that it is inflicting what amounts to unnecessary pain on yourself, but like many things people get anxious about, you can't help yourself and it's just the way your mind works. In the end it's about how people feel about themselves isn't it, and what they think others are thinking about them, and also not liking someone else telling them to do something they consider should be a more personal choice that gets taken away from them at school."........

Well said and totally agree, Mark. Everyone has their own hang-ups - like P.E. teacher Anthony last week, who had an aversion to being called "Tony". Said he had never been called that name in his life, which I found very hard to believe!. It would be a very small thing to me, but clearly it was a big problem for him.




Comment by: Jason on 9th July 2025 at 12:01



".......Butterflies in the stomach? Are you serious? Just for being made to take your top off? I just can’t believe that boys really inflict that much unnecessary pain on themselves. I’m very grateful for having been exposed to shirtless PE throughout all of my secondary schooling in the late ’90s......."

Have you ever read George Orwell's 1984, Jason?. I just ask because you reminded me of "Parsons" in the cells prior to the Room 101 section - Parsons the man so grateful to be dictated to, that he was going to thank "Big Brother" for torturing him.

Everyone, has some fear in them - it is only the fear of death that keeps some people alive. I have seen 6 foot men really cringe if they have seen a rat or a spider, even. I have seen both and they don't make me turn a hair (I worked in a basement once and you often saw rats). I see spiders frequently when I am dismantling old computer equipment, but I don't judge those whom are repelled for doing so.

You enjoyed being made to do things - fair enough - I have often said that I think those people who wished to remove tops ought to be allowed to do so, and those who did not wish to, should also be allowed to remain with a top. What's wrong with that?.

Comment by: Jason on 9th July 2025 at 12:01
'Mike,
Butterflies in the stomach? Are you serious? Just for being made to take your top off? I just can’t believe that boys really inflict that much unnecessary pain on themselves.'



It's true though isn't it, have you seen how many have been on here in the last few years saying just this in their own way. I think it's also important to think about the context of when it was done and where. Not everyone was doing it just in the school gym for example. Some people say they ran cross country through streets shirtless, others did PE alongside girls shirtless, some people did sports days shirtless with an audience. Some people have even come on here and said they did other lessons shirtless too, drama class has been cited by at least a couple of people.

I agree with you that it is inflicting what amounts to unnecessary pain on yourself, but like many things people get anxious about, you can't help yourself and it's just the way your mind works. In the end it's about how people feel about themselves isn't it, and what they think others are thinking about them, and also not liking someone else telling them to do something they consider should be a more personal choice that gets taken away from them at school.

But Jason, don't tell me that if I was to tell you to come shopping with me around the local shopping centre with me tomorrow and you had to remain shirtless for the entire hour we were doing so that you would not get a bit anxious about your shirtless state!

In the end, many just don't really go for baring the upper body very easily at all and instant anxiety kicks in with it, and the place it happened to most of us was in school when we had touchy feelings about it.

Mike,
Butterflies in the stomach? Are you serious? Just for being made to take your top off? I just can’t believe that boys really inflict that much unnecessary pain on themselves. I’m very grateful for having been exposed to shirtless PE throughout all of my secondary schooling in the late ’90s. I learned not to be afraid, to stick out my chest (literally), and to be proud of my body—even if it wasn’t perfect. Boys and men should be educated to feel at ease being shirtless, and this might mean going through a phase of imposed shirtlessness to help them move beyond their limited comfort zone.

Hi Alan,

If you ask me schools fetishize other practices as well as PE kit. School uniform being the most obvious one. Plenty of European countries don't have uniforms and their pupils perform just as well as ours - and often out-perfom ours - academically, without any seeming spike in discipline problems.

Sixth form dress code is another one, with the formal dress insistence seemingly nowadays universal. In my days 'staying on' as it was then called earned you certain entitlements, one of them being the right to wear your own clothes. This modern insistence on dressing as if you were going to an interview is just increasingly anachronistic in a time when many offices are switching to smart casual or even fully casual dress codes.

Of course the biggest one of all is religious indoctrination, but I better not get into that one here.

Until I discovered this forum I had no idea that many schools were still pressing this shorts-only regime for boys. I was vaguely aware it was widely used in the '50s and '60s, the era of postwar austerity. But I had presumed it stopped after that. Stripping teenage boys like that and then forcing them in in front of the girls who are allowed to wear a lot more is not just the height of insensitivity but also blatant sex discrimination.

Comment by: Matthew S on 8th July 2025 at 07:56


What makes me so angry is that we know we have P.E teachers amongst the readership on this forum, unless they are completely insensate they will have read of the discomfort, distress and humiliation that they put pupils through. Many people as adults have mentioned their discomfiture, which must have been even worse as children, yet some of them still continue with this practice. It is a miserable disgusting situation, hyet they still can't rid themselves of their fetish. Truly appalling.

Butterflies in the stomach is apparently a very common sensation that boys had when they were told but didn't want to take their shirts off for PE.

The thing about parents coming to sports day at school in the seventies or eighties was very few dads came along back then, it was all mums and generally female family, with a rare man who was off work in the middle of the day, but most dads were in no position to actually get time off work to sit watching their kid prance about for a bit at school. My dad never came to any of mine because he had to be at work like most of my friends dads. Our mums seemed to all come though.

That was at primary school only though. We did sports day at secondary school but nobody was invited, it was all kept within school, no parents were invited.

At primary school in front of all our mostly mums we were nicely presented in our regular PE kit which was white socks and trainers, blue shorts and either a vest or tee-shirt in blue or white.

At secondary school general PE for gym was done shirtless in black shorts and bare foot. The sports day was trainers, black shorts and shirtless. As it was summer our PE tops were considered surplus to requirements and they simply made these decisions for us and that was that.

Hi Jerry,

I always hated sports days but at least we were allowed to wear tops. Your harsh, unsympathetic teacher sounds exactly like the screeching harridans of staff I remember from the 1970s. Surely she was breaking health and safety rules by leaving you by yourself? But then they were quite casual about things like that back then.

Neither of my parents ever attended sports days or school plays which now feels negligent to me. But whatever.

Jerry, I sympathise. In the latter two years of infant school, I was frequently unhappy and in disgrace over my reluctance to take my vest off for indoor PE - even to the extent of forcible undressing at times (although I never did PE bare-chested outside). Don't mind my asking, but what did you normally wear indoors for PE when you were ten?

Hi Ronnie,

'"the most socially-retarded, gormless boy in the year"

I can't believe YOU are describing YOURSELF like this Yours Truly.'

I'm just calling it as I remember it being. It was a very difficult time and it ended in the worst way possible and I really don't like to remember the pathetic individual I was back then. It's been half a lifetime and I suppose I'm working something out by posting about it on here.

I was a nerd back when nerds were proper nerds, before the term was reclaimed and reframed to mean geeky clever kids. (And I was one of those too). Back when 'nerd' was an insult that meant a social reject. That is exactly what I was.

Since you ask.

My primary school wanted me to go outside for sports day in the early 70's without my top on when I was 10. I remember crying about it, and instead of letting me wear something the teacher refused to let me take part at all and I had to spend two hours sitting all alone by myself in class as a punishment just staring at the walls. No family had come to watch me so they got away with it as I wasn't missed by anyone.

When I was 10 years old I hated teachers telling me to take my top off at school like that. By the time I was 20 I couldn't get my top off quick enough when the sun came out and it got warmer. A few years of secondary school finally knocked some sense into me I think!

Comment by: Danny C on 4th July 2025 at 00:43

Fantastic films there from the YFA of Roundhay Park, Leeds Children's Day.

Could that be the World Record, or at least UK record for the biggest PE lesson ever, and even the biggest bare chested boys PE lesson ever? Although it was hard to count I'm sure there must have been anywhere from 500-700 shirtless boys doing that gym, before you add the girls with them. They really were a fit lot weren't they, and another thing I noticed was their very smart well kept haircuts even when doing that. When I watched it I was wondering how many of them had the issues that get described here, there must have been a few even in the fifties. It was film from what I always think of as the last of the old fashioned decades.

Great photos from your school too Samuel.

Ian, when our class got shown around our new secondary school on a visiting day for the soon to be new intake children in 1977 we were walking around the outside grounds and I suddenly noticed lots of people doing a PE lesson up on the sports field and realising that all the boys, and even the teacher were shirtless on that day. I wasn't too sure what they were doing though. We walked around the school itself and I could see through a window into the gymnasium there that there must have been another PE lesson going on and many of the boys I saw there were also shirtless. When we waited in reception to leave the school I was browsing a board with school pictures on it with lots of team images including swimming and cross country teams and many of these seemed to show boys shirtless with folded arms.

At that age I was unused to being shirtless for PE and had never done so at middle school and was not a shirtless kind of kid in other respects much either, so there was definitely a tinge of nervousness anticipating ahead.

This was exactly the case for boys I discovered when I began, it was a largely shirtless PE environment at school at that time, not because boys elected to be but because shirtless was instilled into us as the way a lot of PE was done. The elite boys cross country team always ran shirtless, and posed for photos that way. Infact I was on one of the elite cross country teams at one point, and there was also an elite girls cross country team as well, and we had a combined photo taken, boys shirtless beside the girls with the posed photo arm fold men and boys do in sports pictures like that.

The sports day at our school in 1978, 79, 80 and 81 was definitely compulsory shirtless for boys as I have the evidence in full technicolour on slides and other snaps taken by my mother at the time and much like the film clips from the Yorkshire Film Archive that relate to Timothy in the mid 50s at that impressive event, in none of the many photos I have of my own summer sports at school do any of us boy pupils there at the time have a top on ourselves, we are all there shirtless, including one young teacher in a few of them.

I went to school in Ireland.