Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

Our detentions (called punishment pe or punishment training at my school) were based on the extra (remedial) pe sessions that my pe teacher used to dole out for underperformance - usually three repetitions of two circuits in the gym (40 reps of various exercises - 5 minutes max allowed) followed by a mile run around the school (10 minutes max) but with six of the belt and a cold shower (taken at the side of the swimming pool in view of any boys in pool).
Depending on how good you were at pe (I wasn't!) you'd be lucky to get through a term without doing at least one remedial session, and a year without getting at least one detention.

Continuing the story.

From our first week at the school, we knew what a gym detention involved - it was threatened in PE/games, classmates had them, and on the way home, you saw boys our running as part of the punishment. Kit was only shorts inside, shorts/plimsolls outside - always bare to the waist.

Around 6 weeks in, I got a detention. My Mum packed my normal PE/cross country kit - "plus a nice warm rugby shirt as it's cold" "Everyone had to strip to the waist Mum" was my response. "It's your first time, you'll be allowed to wear a top" Wrong Mum !!

My school (1973-78) did PE Gym detentions, Stuart you brought it all back to me. Mine wasn't a grammar, just a modern comprehensive but a good one at that I'll admit to that. I wonder though, did your school give them out for non gym related things, mine did so. For example, I went through a phase of not completing my maths homework for my elderly teacher on time, or simply not doing it time and again. So finally havinng enough of my excuses he gave me a detention for after school the following day from 4pm to 5pm. I expected it to be classroom based at a desk but instead was told I had to report to the head PE office when school ended, which I did. It had already been a PE day that morning so I had kit on me. Basically what happened was a couple of teachers took an after school football practice and used that as cover for detentions as well, so me and a couple of others ended up on the playing fields having to jog, quite slowly, the perimeter for much of the hour while this football practice was going on. The boys football was in their team colours but those in the detention ran in only our footwear and shorts, no top and that was definitely considered part of the detention punishment. I remember a few shouts of 'get going' as we slacked and slowed. We were allowed back in when the hour ended but had to shower like a normal lesson, one of the teachers came along and made sure of that, despite protests and just wanting to slip off straight home. Meanwhile the football practice continued as they didn't come in with us. As I'd already had a PE lesson that day I got two showers in one school day. If I hadn't had my kit with me I'd have been decked out in shorts from lost property and probably some ill fitting footwear too, like one or two others did with me.

For some reason after this I began doing my maths homework on time and handing it in finished. Can't think why that might have been!

Stuart, our PE detentions were essentially an extension of an ordinary lesson with no vest, just shorts and footwear. Our "remedial PE" were always done outside and followed by laps of the field.

@ Stuart, we were at school at about the same time, 1960s boys grammar school. At my school the cane was in every day use and there weren't many other punishments other than a severe and very public dressing down. Compared to your PE detentions, I would take the cane every time not that it was pleasant in any way but you are right, it was more or less over and done with straight away although it would continue to sting and for a couple of days afterwards your bottom would ache a bit.

The stripes in the showers though were a badge of honour and they usually lasted about a week.

I sometimes think the punishments meted out today are designed to be soul destroying so again, I would opt for the cane as opposed to them, the point was made and it was over, you moved on.

I went to a grammar school in the late 1960's.

We had the normal range of punishments, although caning was reasonably rare.

We also had gym detentions - after school, workout in the gym for 45 mins, then a run. Very hard non stop workout, followed by a 3 mile run (in the freezing cold, minimal kit of course) - not that we had a choice, but I would much rather have taken 6 strokes of the cane !!

Good post there Duncan, liked the way you wrote it, you drew me right in and I felt myself there with you.

Of course he liked doing it, because if he didn't he would have made use of that punishment option far less and it would have had more effect when he did.

We all had teachers with nicknames, many teachers infact. I had a teacher (not PE) who came up to me one day and quietly asked me what our class nickname for him was as he'd heard something being said and obviously thought I could be trusted to tell him and be discreet. When I told him his reaction was amusement, not a wish to smack the culprit who gave him the name. If he'd asked me for that I'd never have told him anyway.

1965-1969. Dundee. My teachers of P.E regularly beat lads in the changing room for a litany of things. There was a permanent grey/white dirty looking and very large plimsoll permanently perched in one corner of our changing room at that time. Just one grubby old sports shoe by itself, yet it perched against a wall and was put there to look intimidating to us and remind us we could be on the end of it any moment. That plimsoll had strange powers to intimidate boys in the changing room too. With good reason, because they used it often.

I swear that at least two thirds of the wee boys in class must have felt this plimsoll hit them over time. Some of them quite a few times. I felt it three or four times. Mum used to pack my school bag and place the kit in it. I used to check it was all okay but sometimes time was short and I just legged it out the door for the mile and a half walk to school. One day she missed my P.E socks and I got a wallop from the plimsoll for providing a feeble excuse for not coming with the right attire. That was a common reason for a belt of the plimsoll. And it was a belt too, a very hard one across the bottom, just once. It was only ever given just once but with a real hard launched swipe, and not always while we had our shorts on. It happened to boys wearing nothing straight against the skin. Mr "Gormless" Gormley was the one for this, he had a taste for swiping bare arsed lads preparing to shower while completely undressed not a stitch on oursleves. He did three or four lads like that just for noise issues, along the wall, one heavy swipe each, each in their birthday suits, how he probably liked it the best. He heard me use his nickname once and that earned me my only swipe direct to the skin of my behind. I was naked when he did so. The stinging was intense, far worse than through shorts. The hot shower water made it feel worse immediately after that. The mark lasted 10 days at least. I showed my mum that one that night back home. Her reaction was to tell me to try to stop annoying old "Gormless". I reminded her she had forgotten my socks and caused it. But it was my fault and I deserved it, it seemed. The days when teachers were untouchable pillars of society who could do no wrong even while thrashing half the lads. He was one of those teachers always on the look out for being annoyed and managing to succesfully find something every time. He didn't want to waste that plimsoll's potential. He must have swiped literally hundreds, maybe thousands of boys with that same grubby old plimsoll. It did well. The sole of that shoe felt more backsides than a foot inside it for its actual purpose. Sometimes that plimsoll would come along to our lesson and end up across a bottom but mostly it was a wait until back in the changing room if you'd upset them out at the lesson itself. There is a modern name for teachers like old gormless Gormley. It's hard to think of how many he swiped with that plimsoll. Getting it was easy, often it was no more than "I've had enough of you today", and beckoned over you'd be, that thing picked up and swipe. One of the perks of his job, he undoubtedly enjoyed.

Oh yes. The cane certainly 'changed the tune' of a lot of lads who were in any way defiant. Few came back for a second dose either.

I commend you and your friends Graeme for seeming to be way ahead of your time and for your confidence at that age. One thing that did strike me contradictory is that you had that confidence and apparent self belief in yourselves but you didn't carry that self belief and confidence into your showers and just get on with it, even though you did say you showered at first. You didn't even sound like you were bashful showering with class, so it was just the teacher looking aspect that made you play up from what you say. Fair enough it's not great to let others in on such a situation I agree if they shouldn't really be there but most of us had our PE teachers checking over us to some extent like that. I don't think you can equate your PE teachers looking at you stepping out the school shower wet and naked in school as part of your class in a lesson at 12 with your mum or dad looking at you doing the same at that age in the family bathroom. At home you'd expect a lot more privacy by that age from you parents, we all would, but a PE schoolteacher isn't quite the same thing and circumstance in my opinion. Whether you liked it or not their job allowed them to see you like that and ask you to do those things and let's be honest, just think how many they used to see every week, far more than any family doctor, so yet another class full of naked 12 year olds showering away after PE probably barely registered even if they were gazing at you. That's my take anyway. But I do have a sneaking admiration for you at the same time and I wouldn't mind betting maybe even your teacher might have done on the quiet despite the detentions. What did your school report for PE say at the time do you know?

But Andy is correct. My teenage years were in the late 1960's and my deputy headmaster also doubled as the head of PE in my secondary modern at the time. Corporal punishment was available for him to use as deputy headmaster and he would use it in our school gymnasium. He caned for smoking, spitting, vandalism, swearing, lateness and so much more related to dress and uniform and homework persistent offences. It was always discretionary but he did cane two lads one day for showing up in our lesson with no PE kit and no note of explanation. Along to the gym they went with him so when we arrived after changing they looked rather sorry for themselves and pained, and of course all that happened was they ended up stripped down to their pants and still did PE so had that indignity on top as well. But I think it was a repeat offence, not a one off that led to that, it wasn't common, that's why I remember probably. If you'd bunked off having a shower and been seen doing that you'd have probably been taken straight to our gym and given a cane stroke if you were a repeat skiver. I seem to think that there was a lad in my year this happened to for that reason. But in the late 1960's boys in schools, well my school at least, didn't seem to make attempts to avoid PE lessons by forgetting their kits or bunk off the showers, it was heads down get through it and do it even if you didn't enjoy it much, and we all know of course not everyone is going to like these things, that's perfectly obvious.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Jenny talking to her son about such things. I had three sons and used to talk to them about so much at school and definitely had chats about what they did in PE. The two youngest sons were lucky that my eldest was able to tell them a lot about what he did in school before they joined later on. Certainly it's fine to ask questions and talk. When it comes to school showers I think almost eveybody that did it had a little element of anxiety about it at some point. The key point is to make it seem completely normal and unremarkable.

Graeme Searle

Had you been ten years older I think you would have found the cane 'changed your tune' for you on showers at school.

Jenny.

When I was 12 years old, this was in 1983, me and four others flatly refused to use the school showers like we were told to do. This of course had consequences for us and we got a number of lunchtime and after school detentions for this, but it did not stop us. We simply got dressed and walked out the changing room. Our gang of five was quite militant looking back. We were all surprisingly confident for our ages and intelligent. But what could our PE teachers do about it, not a lot other than huff and puff a lot and throw a few detentions at us which didn't work. Even in 1983 there was no chance they were actually going to get hold of us and physically remove our clothes from us and we knew it.

In the end they just gave up on us on the issue and that was that. By the age of 12 there was no way I was going to let my own family, either of my parents see me taking a bath or a shower with nothing on so I was not going to let a teacher do so either and neither were our small gang of friends.

We had showered in our first few weeks at school but found it increasingly objectionable that two of the teachers seemed to pay very close attention to us as we did so and also that they let others into our changing room while we did it. It seemed like our boys changing room became a place for other members of the male staff to be allowed to come in and look at boys changing and having showers. That was just wrong.

Kids of 12 probably don't think they hold much clout against adults but they do if they commit to a course of action and hold firm. 12 year olds back then seemed far more mature than nowadays to me. I must admit to surprising myself at my militancy over the issue in school because I was not a troublemaker and neither were any of the rest of our gang, except for this one thing. None of our parents were very pleased with us and my own thought I was being over sensitive.

Isn't it a great shame that there were not far more confident senior school age youngsters who grouped together to tough it out against some of these demands they used to make of us. A couple of our little gang did actually hate PE but the others like me were far from PE phobic. You have more power than you realise even as a kid in school who feels they are just being pushed around into doing things.

Every one of our small gang at school who did this ended up doing highly professional jobs in the legal or medical professions. I remember looking through the sex offenders register at one point and being quite shocked at just how many people were on it who were marked down as former male PE teachers who took advantage of what that job allowed them to do.

Jenny - I really hope you will be able to stop bothering your son about his p.e. attire and showering especially in front of his friends. If you carry on you will transfer your own anxieties to him and make things very difficult for him if you haven't already. You won't do him any favours by making a fuss at a parent teacher evening.
It is clear that you embarrassed him by talking about showers in front of his friends - for his sake, take the hint!
Shirtless p.e. should not bother a boy if the whole class is treated the same unless, perhaps, he has some form of deformity or is particularly overweight. Parents can cause a lot of damage by expressing their anxieties however well meaning.

Just following up the couple of posts I placed on here a month ago for anyone taking notice after I wrote about my 12 year old starting at his Warwickshire academy school. When I wrote last month he had to my surprise had his first PE lesson without a top on and I mentioned how I'd keep an eye on it and that I'd be surprised if he carried on like that. Well just to report back that today he has had his 6th PE gym lesson and so far he hasn't worn any top in the gym for this lesson on all 6 lessons so far taken with the same teacher, yet I'm still sending him with the kit I've been told to, which includes a gym vest. I'm reliably informed that it applies to everyone in the whole class he is in and that they are all turning out for gym without wearing any tops completely bare chests all of them for general gym style PE.

Now he came in tonight with a couple of new friends from school who share his lessons and when I was talking about what they'd got up to at school the PE lesson was mentioned and one of these other youngsters with my own son said he thinks this teacher is making them do PE with no top because he is particularly strict. This comment made me think back to the couple of people I have read who have drawn parallels with not being allowed a top to discipline. Perhaps I'm just reading too much into it. I spoke to all three about how they were getting on and mentioned school showering and my son clearly embarrassed in front of his friends just said 'do we have to talk about that'. I asked why not. My mum spoke to me about all these things in the days after I started my new school.

There is going to be a parent teacher evening just after half term with many of their teachers there, I'm told the PE ones will be available and so I am looking forward to the opportunity of asking what the reason is for telling all the class to go mandatory bare chests when me and other parents have a kit list telling us to supply a top to wear for gym based PE. with no evidence they are even using them six weeks into term.

I do worry if this might be upsetting them in any way, especially after reading some of the comments on this forum from time to time because I'd never quite realised how sensitive boys could be to this kind of thing until reading what the now grown up boys had written on here. Obviously such things didn't apply to girls in school like me but we did still have to shower just the same as the boys and form a girls point of view I'll say now that we nearly all hated it with a passion. Whether the boys felt the same at my school only they know.

George asked about sharing of the genders in the lessons and it's all been boys only so far. I presume it will remain that way although as a mixed sex academy school perhaps I should not just presume it, but then I did presume he'd be wearing in PE the full kit I've provided and he's not doing so but turning out for PE in the same way his dad did at this same school thirty years ago.

I'll dip back in again.

Re Comment by: Caleb on 10th October 2022 at 10:51

"Some even spoke of trying to cross their arms to hide their nipples."

Was it their nipples or their man-boobs that they were trying to hide?

Greg, you mentioned some girls got touchy feely in tasks. How would they touch you if the teacher was around? What kind of tasks were these?

You said some girls were really not so nice. What did they do? Did it ever rise to harassment? Did you ever complain to your parents or would it have changed nothing?

There were several older comments that spoke of being embarrassed by the forced exposure of their nipples in PE, which they said was exacerbated by the presence of female classmates. Some even spoke of trying to cross their arms to hide their nipples.

Can more recent commenters weigh in on this? Did anyone else feel the same way?

What a great positive PE teacher story Miles, even with his cackhanded way of trying to deal with any possible nerves among you at school, which is quite amusing you have to admit. I don't think boys in school ever needed the teacher to give permission to check each other out anyway. Your teacher giving open permission is a laugh I agree. It reminded me of something I saw on TV a few years back about raw army recruits to do with national service when they lined up naked for the ball inspection routine or something like that and one of them was being all weird about how they were and got pulled out and told to take a look along the line at the lads privates to get his urge to look out of his system and then got shoved back into line. I wish I could remember what it was now.

Good story, perhaps one teacher like that was more than enough. He was well named wasn't he. Getting given choccy bars out of a PE teacher seems a bit counter intuitive, perhaps they were just freebies from the school tuck shop he never paid for!

Greg says -"School showers, now thats another discussion entirely and one that always seems to get people going doesn't it."


It does indeed Greg, and I've got something worth chipping in with from my early secondary days, like so many on here from the period of the mid 70s. Was this the very worst time to be at the mercy of your PE teachers, it often comes over that those of us taught PE (is taught even the correct word for it?) in that era had the rougher end of the deal at times.

One of my PE teachers, who I really liked, was very different in his style to any of the others who took us. A really lovely chap who actually behaved like he loved his job and those he took for his classes. He stood out a mile compared to the others at school. But he was also incredibly eccentric with it and could sometimes do things that seemed outright weird. His name was Mr Starr. I think he was probably in his upper 30s or so. Let me explain a couple of points.

Mr Starr took my first PE lesson that involved a shower after arriving at secondary school. My first 30 second impression of him was highly positive and we had a great lesson that I remember taking place on freshly mown and smelling grass on the school field in the early autumn sunlight. It's odd what you remember because it's some of the green grass staines on our white kit I can still see if I close my eyes amongst many things of that lesson. We did mostly light athletics stuff, and something that I remember feeling a bit judo like, getting thrown over, hence the grass staines on our kit. I think it might have been the first sign of his eccentric ways.

Shower time afterwards and Mr Starr must have picked up on an air of apprehension, or otherwise this was how he began the school year every time with the new intake lot. Everybody who went up to their secondary schools at that time knew full well what the set up was, that you showered at school after the age of 11 when you did PE, that should never have come as a surprise to anybody at school. We even got told that while still in primary school when one of the teachers visited us. So the memory is being told to take all our clothes off ready to shower. The PE class seemed very large to me, I'm sure it was more than 30. At this point came one of the first unorthadox aspects of Mr Starr's character because in trying to reassure us I think he actually had the opposite effect. We were all sitting on the changing room benches, nothing on, wondering when he was going to flick the shower on for us and he stood among us and told us he wanted to get any anxieties we may have out in the open and over as quick as possible, telling us all to stand up, look around at each other and actually check each other out openly down below, have a good look (at the willies) he said! It was probably less than a minute doing this but it felt like an hour and was perhaps the worst thing he could have done and didn't feel like any kind of reassurance on what we all looked like underneath or clothes. He'd have been better just letting us get on with things without creating our enforced school nudity as an even bigger deal than it needed to be. It was a very well meaning attempt to overcome any anxiety among class but just fired it up to me. Mr Starr was just trying to convince us there was nothing wrong with nudity and that none of us should feel concerned by it among each other and that we are basically much the same. One thing I will say is at least he acknowledged the fact head on with us when it's clear most PE teachers don't do so. My other PE teachers were nothing like Mr Starr and more like the mould you expect them to come out of for that job. One actually smoked openly on the playing field one afternoon when I was a bit older. Great role model he was (not).

I'm not sure that my initial PE class was any more bothered by school showers than any others around the place. As I say, a lovely PE teacher but not sure we needed him to actively invite us all to look at everything we were born with. I've told this anecdote, and the smoking one and others from my schooldays at a couple of dinner parties over the years and it always creates such a laughing reaction followed by others talking about PE and this kind of thing.

It's quite something how the simple act of having a quick wash and rinse is this quite big deal from school, so much so that years and years after many of us long left where we went we still easily get taken back to our PE gyms, playing fields and showers as if we left just yesterday.

I'll stress that my own memories are mainly positive ones.

A couple more little eccentricities that made Mr Starr stand out as a very different PE teacher to all the others. He would often have a sports bag full of chocolate bars, and would dish them out near the end of various terms to those who did well in his eyes. Just before we broke for Christmas in my final PE lesson of the year I impressed him with my overall attitude so he gave me a pack of 5 chocolate bars which went home and proudly sat under the tree for a couple of days I was so grateful. That was just so different to what you expect. I was clearly going to need a couple of vigorous PE lessons just to burn the calories back off after eating them.

I also remember Mr Starr for telling us not to just sit down doing nothing on our school holidays but to get up and do something every day to remain fit, a long walk, or use our bikes a lot or to go swimming or use a leisure centre with our families. He also used to tell us to get our parents doing more to keep fit too. This was basically a PE teacher who actually gave a damn.

A lot of people at school do arm wrestling at some point and I was no exception. Mr Starr would sometimes get us doing this in little competitions which got very competitive. Something about that makes boys determined to win. But another aspect to him being different and a bit eccentric was when pairs of us had to pull out a mat onto the gym floor and lock feet in toe wrestling as he called it. Like so many others, we did gym with nothing on our feet. This toe wrestling thing he did with us was another one of those end of term things he did. We would be in divisions like boxers and their weights but paired with equal sizes against each other. Let's just say I preferred the arm wrestling but it was all done with good humour even if it was at times somewhat embarrassing stuff to end up doing.

In our normal gym activities I actually think his approach was an overall winner and got the best out of us, certainly it did with me. I actually wanted to please Mr Starr in a way I didn't feel about many of the others who took us. He even did our PE lessons without his top like us when we went skins every other lesson and most of the others never did that either.

I hope he's alive and well and still smiling. I am as I write down my thoughts about him and his style in those ever distancing days behind us.

Every school should have had a Mr Starr on the staff.

Great memory Greg, so much like my own PE experience I thought I would reply. I also reached 11 in 1976 and entered the one small local comprehensive in the rural town I was lucky to live in. There was only two classes in each year so I guess about 300 kids all told in the school.
Uniform was strictly enforced, black blazer, white shirt and grey trousers to school, white rugby top and black shorts for games and white cotton gym shorts for indoor PE. Indoor PE was always done only in shorts from the first class at age 11 to when it was no longer compulsory in the 4th year at 14. PE was done as a whole class and there was only one gym hall so indoor classes were always mixed. At 11 we also exercised a lot of the time together. The two teachers worker together and felt no need to segregate us at all most of the time. In that way it was just a continuation of junior school. As the years progressed there was more segregation of activities but it was never total. When doing gymnastics for example it was just as likely to be a girl supporting you as a boy. Such intimate contact when so sparsely dressed was quite embarrassing which I guess is how come I remember the experience so well. And the girls being more emotionally advanced at that age were definitely enjoying checking us out.
To conclude the details. No underwear allowed, at least for the first couple of years and always compulsory naked showers. Indoor classes were a mix of games, gymnastics and fitness, with the occasional indoor football. Outdoors rugby, athletics and cross country.

Nothing new about this, my own school did just the same at the tail end of the 70's. The only difference, we didn't get it covered. Good idea this. Swimming should be compulsory throughout schooling.

School sets up swimming pool in playground.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-birmingham-63117155

Hi George,

I've seen you ask that kind of question before. Not sure why it interests you quite so much, did you have an experience like it or what? Anyway, you might like to hear my recollection of such things.

When I joined my comprehensive school which I attended between 1976 and 1981 we always had at least one mixed PE lesson each week, primarily the one we took inside in the school gymnasium. Class was the usual 30 or so, in sets much of the time based on ability. Three sets and I was in the middle one.

In the first year no real notable problems I can remember being mixed class. There seemed to be a lot of girls in black tight fitting leotards but others in tight shorts and a t-shirt. Uniform wasn't too strict. Boys came in dark shorts and a t-shirt or a vest and in the first year aged 11 and 12 that's how it was.

Everyone was expected to walk into the gym in their bare feet, apparently in previous years too many had come along with dark soled trainers and scuffed the floor and they got funny about it so decided to get rid of that problem the easiest way simply forbidding any footwear, or that's how I remember the explanation given to us. Some did complain about the barefoot issue and it's nor something all children enjoy or like. I liked trainers myself. My memory of the gym floor was that it didn't exactly look the greatest in the first place and that any scuffing would barely notice.

At the end of my first year at the comprehensive a couple of the PE teachers left, one retired, the head of the department. It got announced in a big assembly a week before school ended for summer when they thanked all those who were leaving. I can't say I thought too much about them leaving, there were about 6 men on the PE roster at least that I remember the names of.

When I came back in September of 1977 for my second year I expected things all to carry on much as before as I was well bedded into the new school twelve months in and it had been an okay first year all round, even in PE which came with a bit of reputation.

Well there is a phrase about new brooms in organisations coming along and changing things to make their mark and that's just what happened to PE for me.

The upshot was that after a year of PE gym lessons, we found out at the end of our first outdoors PE lesson back that when we did our gym one next time we could leave our t-shirts at home. Like a fool I remember shouting out - 'what are we wearing then?' and getting the answer back 'you're not'. Gulp! That I think was a Thursday and next class was Tuesday. Suddenly a shirtless PE realisation. I was very anxious but I can think why precisely I was, but girls did play a factor I'm sure.

It left the weekend to contemplate the impending prospect of my first ever school PE lesson not wearing a top and going full on shirtless, bare-chested or however people like to refer to it, and of course the lessson was taken alongside about 15 or so girls which really added an extra dimension to think about.

I didn't really want to do PE without any top but could deal with it. I suppose many regular boys at that age think along similar lines.

I do remember the first class we did like that because the girls had already arrived in the gym before the boys got there from our separate changing rooms and they clearly had no idea we were going to do our lesson lacking any kind of top on our upper bodies. I remember some high pitched laughing as we walked in, whistling and general joking until things settled down and generally a memory of a lot of smiling girls faces for a while.

That was how it was from that point onwards every gym lesson. Not sure what led to that sudden change like that, I used to ask a lot of questions but that was one I didn't ask.

One thing I will definitely say is that it proved a distraction for sure, certainly. It's hardly surprising is it at that kind of developemental age around 13 or so. When I was 13 the last thing I wanted to be was completely shirtless around the girls from school I was in class with. It came with a very enhanced sense of vulnerability on the part of (some/many) boys that girls didn't face. A purely same sex lesson of PE would have had a very different feel to it if we were all the same anyway.

I heard a girl describing someone's body from our PE group one break time. Another day in the months after we began doing PE bare-chested there was a wet break time and we all had to stay inside and a discussion developed about some of our bodies they had seen in the gym earlier that day and comaprisons who looked the best, had the best this and that. Some can handle that kind of gossiping, others find it mortifying. I kind of fell halfway between the two. There is literally no hiding place if your PE teacher insists you do his mixed PE lesson like that.

When I was between 15 and 17 I did actually go out with a girl from class who not only liked me for my looks and personality but told me she fancied me from the moment she saw me in PE with no top, although it was a further couple of years before she did anything about it and plucked up courage to say anything.

You can imagine what it would be like if boys could do PE with developing girls and see their assets.

Some people might say, well you surely went swimming at school with girls didn't you, and I say yes I did, at a younger age from 10 to 13 and not later and also there were far fewer swim lessons than actual gym lessons and the whole feel of going swimming and being submerged in the water feels completely different to gym itself and of course it's natural and obvious to be dressed right down to go swimming anyway. The swim classes we did in school, with girls, brought none of the issues that the regular gym lessons did.

So it's obvious from my own first hand taking of shirtless PE in a mixed lesson that it is something of a distraction and in my case doing normal PE with my top on for a year and then being thrust into shirtless PE one year into comprehnsive school kind of added to the intensity of it.

Another thing when you do PE in a mixed class like that, some girls suddenly discover their touchy feely side a bit too much in tasks and it was a good way to discover who the genuinely nice girls were and who the really not so nice ones were.

My comprehensive also gave girls optional showering choice and the boys compulsory showering. That difference always bugged the hell out of me as after PE in the follow up lesson the girls would often be sitting at the desks ready for the next lesson or even working whilst the boys like me trailed in with wet hair and late to a tutting teacher annoyed that PE was encroaching into their own lesson. My French teacher once had an open row about it with one of my PE teachers becuase boys came straight from showering after PE late into her class with damp hair all the time. She was often complaining to us ourselves but what were we supposed to do about it!

School showers, now that another discussion entirely and one that always seems to get people going doesn't it.

George, generally speaking, PE was gender segregated. However, from time to time when a teacher was absent, we might have had a lesson together with the girls. Usually this meant that the male teacher also taught the girls along side us. I cannot remember ever having been taught by a female teacher. Most probably it was considered that they might have been too lenient with us or not able to cope with a bunch of boisterous teenage lads who were used to an extremely strict regime.
What struck me as odd in the rare mixed lesson which weren’t really co-educational as the two groups never worked together but stayed at opposite ends of the gym or the playing field was the different teaching approaches. Whereas us boys were not allowed to talk at all and were used to a strict regime and to following the teacher’s whistle code (1 short blow meant ‘get started’, 1 long blow ‘stop’, short long short ‘get in line’ which btw was too be done according to our height and it was expected to stand to attention) the girls were used to be spoken to and were allowed to talk amongst them within certain limits. This usually meant the teacher stayed nearer the girls explaining various activities to them while at the same time continuing to teach us from a certain distance blowing into his whistle while us boys obeyed like sheep. Sometimes he might call up a boy to demonstrate a set of movements to the girls or just to point out the way muscles worked or were supposed to be trained through an activity. This was obviously a golden opportunity to make fun of a boy as we weren’t allowed to answer back and just stood there listening to his jokes on our expense with a bunch of giggling girls looking at you.
Generally speaking, their lesson was much more cooperative and ours much more competitive and focused on muscle building exercises. Then of course the difference of kit was striking with us boys always in white shorts only with bare chests whereas the girls wore a black leotard and black leggings inside and a black tracksuit outside. Especially outside during colder weather we would sometimes look with a bit of envy over across the playing field to the girls in their tracksuits but gradually, as we got older, we developed a certain kind of teenage male pride as the cold didn’t bother us or at least we would pretend that it didn’t.

Simon, you mentioned mixed lessons, what did girls wear in those? How did they react to your attire? Was there ever teasing or banter? How did it feel being dressed like that around girls?

For anyone interested I got through and popped up yesterday afternoon, 29th September, for a five minute chat on the phone at 2.25pm to presenter Ian Collins on TalkTV, the Talk Radio/TV hybrid that you can get both on radio and television now. There's a catch up available and it streams on You Tube if anyone wnats to hear what I said. The discussion was about the obesity crisis but I brought PE into it and would have liked to have gone further if the time had been allowed before they moved on.

Alex, you pose an interesting question about why we were treated as men when still boys.

In my case it was only our PE teacher who did it and after that first half term when I know I lived in fear of him and although I enjoyed PE/games, I felt quite sick at the prospect on one of his classes and his ever ready cane.

After that I liked the way he challenged us to do better and better and although the word was never around at the time he was definitely 'inclusive' in that no lad was left out and no lad was left behind and no lad was ever belittled by him which may have accounted for why he was so universally popular.

He always began a class once we were all changed into our shorts and plimsolls with 'right men, today it's circuit training' or whatever. In the gym, if you were struggling with something, he would come and help and show you what to do as many times as he needed to while still keeping an eye on what was going on with the rest of the class. Back in the changing room it was 'right men, into the showers for a refreshing cool down'.

So while he called us men, he guided us pretty carefully and helped us develop our skills and performance.

No other master called us men, the most usual group term used was lads from when I started and was still used when I was in the upper sixth though by then one or two had started to call us 'gentlemen' as a group which by then was fair enough.

I guess for me at eleven begining addressed as a man made me feel a bit more grown up and responsible, there was a tendancy when we were addressed in PE in a line up to all adopt the military shoulders back, chest out, stomach in - not that there was an ounce of fat on any of us back then and we were a bit puffed with pride. As a nine year old I think I would have felt different about it so not surprised you did.

I think also back in the 1960s, early 1970s there was an agenda still around of preparing us for military service, the risk of another war was real and the PE teacher in question had done National Service and I think among his generation there was an overspill of that into the rest of their lives and it coloured their outlook on whatever they did next. For a PE teacher, the link back to military fitness was obvious and perhaps to a point they treated us as they had been treated as men starting National Service even though they were usually eighteen when it happened.

Alex.

There was a discussion on the other Burnley forum a couple of months ago about those who were introduced to school showering earlier than most in primary or middle schools rather than how most people remember with upper school at 11 plus. I don't know if you saw it.

Quite an interesting take on your own introduction to such things.

Joe, why did so many teachers keep on at us in school about being adults? We were children. In my case I was still at primary school when I took my first ever school shower completely out of the blue without any warning at all. I'm talking 1978 here. We were all just 9 years old and the man who took us for our PE kept on about treating us as adults, at just 9 years old. Why were people like this trying to steal our childhood away from us well before time like that. Taking a shower in school was considered "adult" it seemed. This was disconcerting because I'd never even done a PE lesson where I had my top off up to that point and suddenly we were presented with an instruction to get rid of everything we were wearing and wash together. No soap at first, just the hot water. It did not make me feel like an adult. I heard him say the comment "be brave" as we prepared to shower. We dried off on paper towels from a dispenser and binned them all. They did a good job actually. It wasn't even the start of the school year or anything, it was many months into it around about spring. We had been outside doing a baton relay and other similar activities on the grass. It was quite the surprise. The shower was always partitioned off and not in view when we used our changing room. Nobody had ever suggested we would use it, then suddenly one random day we did and it became a thing we did for the remainder of primary. Because we were only 9 and thrown into a highly personal and different situation and were a class of generally friendly boys in that year the memory remains of our collective curiosity with each other and there was no pretending not to look at each other. The shocked snesation of a churning stomach remains with me that first time and a few afterwards. I think one or two of us needed a bit of encouragement to get on with it. Being told we were being treated as adults when none of us were even close to puberty yet, so at least we were all much the same. When we finished it was always the job of one nominated boy, a different one each week to get the mop from a cupboard and wipeany wet from the floor were we had walked, a quick job but a bit of a liberty but I guess that was also an early lesson in adult repsonsibility. But at 9, I ask you!

Boys London Grammar School beginning in 1970. I remember our first PE lesson very well, we were collected from the classroom by a man who was enormous but who also looked extremely fit and led to the changing room.

Once inside he started to talk about PE, gym work, rugby, cross country and then on to cricket, athletics and so on that we could expect to do in our first year, he made it sound like fun.

Then he started to lay the law down about behaviour beginning with 'your men now and that's how you will behave' and he reeled off a list of requirements which included a cold shower after every lesson, take off your vest and underpants when changing, keep kit clean and well presented, always obey instructions, they are for your safety, when I say jump, jump and so on and then from the row of pegs above our heads he produced a cane and warned that any lad not obeying the letter and spirit of the rules would get a bare bottom caning of at least four strokes. The cane looked nasty and he warned that he was not bluffing, he could guarantee its use.

Over that first half term I reckon most of us fell foul of the rules at some point, in my case, I had failed to apply that whitener stuff to my plimsolls and they were scuffed and dirty. 'Shorts down and over for four lad' was the response and I got four absolute stingers but it turned out not with the cane he had showed us, with a much lighter one that really did sting but the marks were gone in 2-3 days although at the time it lit the fire of hell in my bottom.

Having established who was boss by half term he became a much more reasonable man and the cane very rarely made an appearance and after the end of the second year I only saw him use it once more after a lad in my class threw a javelin in anger at another lad and caused injury. With the agreement of the lad's father we were assembled in the gym and the lad in question got a bare bottom twelve over the horse, we were there to see what the consequence of his stupidity was lest we ever feel inclined to try it. I remember how he howled.

The PE teacher in question though was a popular man among the lads, I and many others stayed in touch with him and when he died back in 2018, there was standing room only in a very big church for his funeral so he must have done something right.

Quoting Craig - "Communal group nudity like that felt a bit like it was meant to be a full part of the learning process to me."


Good line this, and pleased to see someone articulate this rarely spoken view that I share.

What with PE lessons being forced to go bare chested without your top, often for no obvious reason, (outside cross country - why?) I concluded that a lot of the time this was some misguided attempt to force confidence into us which didn't really work and in many cases did the reverse.