Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

Parents are known for their stock cliche comments to their children but I'm sure there is a fair collection that came from the mouths of PE teachers if anyone else wishes to share a few. Two of mine could often be relied upon to refer to our all boys class as 'a bunch of girls' with tedious regularity if there was any complaining or slacking as they saw it.

"A few kind words for children self conscious about swimming lessons" you say Duncan.

It's interesting this. Everyone always assumes everyone else is fine with things like this. What fascinates me is that I read some comments on one of the other discussions here on HW where some of the now men said they used to be very bothered by doing their PE in a bare chest but when swimming it did not seem to register as anxious for them on the same level.

Body anxiety issues surrounding doing classes without shirts, whether it be PE or swimming, or showering with full nudity were never addressed or even acknowledged for a split second when I was in school from the 70s to 80s. Are we suggesting that this would have been a good idea or would it just make matters worse in some way by drawing attention to things and therefore perhaps the old ways are still best and just be expected to get on with it and as I once heard a remark from a PE teacher to a boy in my class - "stop being a big girls blouse".

Perhaps a few kind words would be a better response to children self-conscious about swimming lessons than what the school below is proposing. There is also the extra cost to parents from buying additional items of swimwear.

Amanda, pardon my enquiring - roughly what part of the country are you in? Boys at the primary schools I attended were obliged to do PE indoors bare-chested between the ages of four and nine (in Essex, in the early nineties), but I'm surprised this happened at your sons' school more recently.

I've just been reading some of these comments with my mouth open.

Astounding stuff!

But incase you think the whole world is going nuts then I can reassure it's not. Aged 60 now, I've put three sons through their secondary education in the last fifteen years and my youngest is now almost 16. All three of them have done competitive swimming with the school in the way you'd expect it to be done, no daft ideas and prudish merging of the genders nonsense. The boys have all done lots of lessons in their P.E classes without tops, indeed their inside one the school made them do it like that much of the time but I knew this and so did they when we first went to the open evening presentation for new intakes many years ago for the first time and had private chats with various staff including the ones for their P.E. I had no big issue with it and was entitled and encouraged to raise any concerns about some aspects. They've all showered properly in school too and I've no issue with that. They were told this before they started and could have raised objections I suppose. Whether any other parents ever raised issues relating to such things I wouldn't know but I wouldn't have done.

One of them has always been less body confident than the other two and quite sensitive about how he looks dressed and undressed but all are happy healthy and intelligent with no obvious chips on their shoulders or hang ups that I'm aware of. They seem to have had much the same kind of educational experience that my own husband had throughout the 70's so although we hear that much has changed we must also remember that we seem to hear loudest those who want things different whilst a quiet majority just get on with their lives and lot much closer to the ways some of us older ones remember.

I would actually encourage the open defiance of some of these completely unreasonable rules, simple as that. What you don't do is mutter under your breath, complain to yourself and then accept them.

Are we really entering a new Puritanical era?

There is no doubt that this is being engineered by the extreme left in a holy alliance with the strong Muslim influence in Britain to destroy our society and its traditional values.

Tanya - amen to that. How about this for n extreme example:

https://japantoday.com/category/national/3-Japanese-schools-to-introduce-genderless-swimsuits-with-unisex-two-piece-design

This is all about the extreme end of gender neutrality dogma now beginning to be pushed hard in schools. It's the beginnings of a totalitarian ideology and a minority choosing to impose on the majority of society. So it leads to boys having to wear tops in a swimming pool or girls having to wear trousers, both have now been in recent media stories.

Before long there will be attempts to remove the term sons and daughters from the language in schools. Schools like Tiverton High in Devon need to be confronted not encouraged.

Mark Dolan on GB News right now (Sunday at 10pm) talking something very similar to the making everyone in the pool wear a top, he's talking about a school telling girls they can no longer wear skirts and must wear trousers like the boys because the school is fed up trying to enforce skirt lengths!

Robby - an identical story, perhaps it was the same one Norman mentioned here, turned up on a brief comment section of GB News with Colin Brazier a couple of weeks back.

I didn't much care for being asked to remove my own top in the school gymnasium sometimes but even those of us with that kind of natural bashfulness about our bodies would have found going swimming with a t-shirt on to be a step too far and let's face it, it's not the natural way to do it is it, just in terms of comfort alone. Given a choice I'd never have elected to swim with a t-shirt although given a choice I'd never have elected to do main gym PE without one.

Boys/men swimming is our top half bared, always has been. These maddening ideas must not be allowed to take hold and become considered normal, they are not.

Oops, made a mistake. Dando copied:

https://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/puericil/www/2019/Reports_Forced_Nudity_06to08.html

Boys being made to wear t-shirts to swim to cover their chests while girls are wearing thongs and string bikinis?
I can't believe this, have we gone to such extremes?
Boys in the past were made to swim naked at school while girls wore decent one-piece swimsuits.

Why is the concept of being shirtless/barechested in school seen as so alien to so many now? You'd be lucky to get through any week in the school calendar without having to do so back in the 70's or 80's. It was what boys had to do and were expected to do, simple as that. Citing a fear of doing so back then would have invited very little empathy. I spent more time during timetabled P.E periods in school not wearing a top than wearing one and that includes going outside to run at almost any point in the year. Our choices were always made for us whether we liked it or not and our own insecurities about how we looked didn't amount to much in the great scheme of things. Is it really so bad in the end?

LOL WTF!

I could not believe it when I heard about that school point blank refusing to let BOYS go swimming properly with upper body uncovered, their chests bared. What is even worse is there is no half decent GENUINE explanation for that policy.

We've gone from a situation decades ago where some men say they swam in schools with nothing on at all, stark naked on demand to a situation now when swimming in places is expected almost fully clothed on demand.

It's a kind of social engineering.

I heard Brazier mention something along thre lines of what you outlined Norman.

William, after reading what you said I spoke to my daughter-in-law who said she watches GB News with Michelle Dewberry, Mark Steyn and Dan Wootton in the evenings a lot. She tells me she will email all three. I'll leave it with her and see what happens.

Although I completely agree with the comments about children wearing T shirts in the pool I suspect it may be part of the H&S theme that has children wearing 'rash suits' on the beach and in pools.

Whether or not this is needed or just a fashion I leave other people to decide. Have look at

https://www.splashabout.com/blog/product-guides/rash-tops-what-are-they-5-reasons-you-should-consider-a-rash-top-for-swimming/ -

Jason

If it;s the toe-fetishists they are concerned about, then yes to socks. If it's equality, then birthday suits would be cheaper to source, and no chlorine to rinse out afterwards..

Norman, Your daughter-in-law might object but anti-woke media outlets, such as Telegraph, Mail, Express, Piers Morgan on TalkTV, GB News, would love to get their hands on a story like that, so as to support common sense parents in challenging the school.

Next requirement Fiona, well surely at a school as dumb as that they might as well go for socks too. I better not joke, it might just happen. Real world is way beyond parody nowadays.

I'd suggest that school forgets doing swimming lessons completely.

But the school isn't requiring the boys to wear one-piece swimsuits as I would imagine the girls are wearing. They are demanding that both boys and girls wear t-shirts and shorts, which seems rather overkill as swimwear. Whaat will the next requirement be? Full-cover wet suits, diving suits with helmets?

Let me get this right. A school is doing the equivalent of a wet T-shirt event! If it's all about equality then why not let the girls be like the boys, not the boys like the girls. Seriously though, are they attemting to teach people how to get hang ups now? Any self respecting boy should feel far more self-conscious wearing a T-shirt in the swimming pool than not wearing one. We hear stories like this ten times a day now and that's the worry, stupid ideas are getting normalised and accepted without much pushing back.

I'm staggered Norman. What kind of mindset thinks like that and tries to impose such nonsense. Do good for nothing liberal retards.

They're telling them Mike.

I had to call my daughter-in-law and ask her to message me a copy of the note so I could quote it accurately here when you asked.

There is a line in the note I saw from my grandson's primary school that I will quote precisely here: 'we want to create a safe and secure swimming environment for all our young people who take part with confidence and offer non-discriminatory lessons to achieve our schools aims and achievements'

It then goes on to say: 'we ask and require that all boys and girls attend with swim shorts and a close fitting, not loose, t-shirt to be worn while in the pool'.

No colours are specified.

Adding further: 'Pupils who fail to bring with them the required items to the standard expected will not be permitted access to swim'

It looks like they are trying to erase the difference between the genders and homogenise them all the same regardless of boy/girl, male/female.

So my grandson and other boys in his class could turn up and not be allowed to do their swimming lesson because they haven't got a top to wear. They have effectively barred swimming as we all know it and did it. What is this madness. So his mother now ends up with a chlorine smelling wet t-shirt coming home for a wash that needn't be. She's been doing this since September 2021.

This is a primary school and my grandson is only 10. What kind of messaging is this exactly? Is a 10 year old boy supposed to feel ashamed of his body now. Are we considering these children as sexualised or something and needing to be protected?

Many of these same boys go swimming after school in the usual manner anyway. I'm very tempted to fully name the school here and give the name of the headteacher but my daughter-in-law told me not to go that far.

Are they asking them or actually telling them to do that and for what purpose? I think I've heard everything now!

I remember having to bring pyjamas to swimming class in primary school to pass my survival badge. You had to jump in the pool with them on swim a couple of lengths then tred water while removing them. I passed , still got the badge to prove it. Guess your grandson is going to earn lots of survival badges. Seriously though it just sounds plain dangerous to be so politically correct.

One of my grandsons goes to his primary school where they now ask boys to wear a t-shirt top while doing weekly Friday morning swimming according to a note to home his mother showed me the other day. Why is this happening, as neither of us think its sensible and the lad hates it.

Why would anyone doubt barechested school PE still exists, why shouldn't it?

Derek sounded as if he'd spotted a UFO landing on the playing field rather than seen an everyday lesson.

Quite unusual to do that level of x-country at primary school like that. Expecting average ability ten year olds to run that kind of distance is pushing the limits I think, and I preferred going running over other things, although in my primary we just ran around in circles within a painted lanes oval course on the grass. Running appealed to my one-on-one competitive streak against one or two others who I enjoyed beating.

I like the way you talk of your teachers placements around the course to stop short cut cheating, yet at the same time they are driving around in cars, the ultimate cheating! They should be taking part themselves. In my primary we had a dreadful teacher who would never take part in anything at all and just stand there watching as if she was a spectator in her coat and do literally nothing. Teachers should get stuck into their PE lessons in the lower schools as well as in the higher ones.

In the 1970's at my middle school from age 9 to 12 we did cross country runs once a month thoughout the year. They were nearly always on footpaths and as we had a double games lesson they could be long. Looking at a map and from memory it looks like they were typically 4 to 5 miles in length. For a 10 year old of only average stamina and quite heavy build, (though never overweight), like myself 4 miles seemed a hell of a long way. I would be tired out by the time I finished which no doubt has put me off running distance all my life. The teachers would never join in but instead positioned themselves around the course to make sure no-one took a short cut. They took their cars out to the distant positions and I do remember sometimes lads would be rescued by car if they suffered sprains or illness or in the case of the least fit just exhaustion. Our games kit was designed for rugby not distance running. A thick blue long sleeved collared shirt, thick black shorts and blue knee length socks. This was great for a cold windswept rugby pitch in winter but you can imagine how hot it would have been running that way as the weather warmed. Only the most self concious kept their shirts on, most including myself would leave the top behind and voluntarily run bare chested. It was never manditory though.
As you can tell my cross country experiences were much less happy than most who post here. Distance running suits only the fittest boys and 75% I would guess struggle and for that reason cross country was the most widely disliked of all games lessons. In the more inclusive ethos of the present I would guess lessons like mine have disappeared.

For anyone doubting schools nowadays do things how many of us remember in the 70s or 80s literally an hour ago I walked past the perimeter of the local academy high school near me in Gloucestershire (basically a secondary as we remember them) and there was plenty of games activity going on throughout the sports field and a group of what seemed about twenty five boys having what looked like a very casual group run together and all were bare chested with navy shorts and white trainers on. Whether they had all chosen to get out like that or been told to is anyone's guess. Looked like they were staying in the grounds and not leaving the boundary.