Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

Devlin, for us taking your shirt or vest off outside was normal. Football and rugby were done skins vs vests or shirts depending on which teacher it was and like you it was everyone topless
for cross country. As you said some preferred it, others less so but there was no choice when the teacher said "strip off!"

Grammar school cross country 1966-70 for me didn't look like the photo here. We always went out running with mandatory no vests on and the only times we did go out running the school cross country with a vest was if there was snow or a frost on the ground. Otherwise we stepped out even in the midst of a January afternoon feeling the air directly on our whole upper body. It was considered good for us to do that, and even if we didn't think it was doing us much good or felt uncomfortable about it we were still going to do it anyway. Going bare chests was quite the thing for the 60's grammar pupils where I went. After you'd run just one or two cross country's like this you did suddenly feel more resilient and capable of much more. Some did it through gritted teeth but nobody would dare say no to it. There was always the mandatory hot communal showers to warm up with at the end which we all shared together and if it had been a cold run we got a couple of extra minutes to hang about in them.

Chris and Gary, Our teacher ensured that the majority of outdoor exercise was performed with the class stripped to the waist. It was better than having to wear a rain soaked shirt.

I completely agree with you Jonno. Doing any kind of PE with bare chests was commonplace when I was in school in the seventies and so was going outside like it, including running around in groups and although we did quite a lot of bare chested athletics during the spring and summer, it was long distance running that took place at any time of year, mainly the less favourable times and it's quite astonishing that we could often run in weather that was, let's just say neither very sunny, bright or particularly warm to feel. Yet if you tell this to someone of school age now I'm sure they'd think you were dreaming the lot of it.

Tell me about it Joanna. I always knew we'd get sent outside in all weathers but did at least expect to wear full PE kit doing so but first rain day that came along when we were due outside and out we went shirtless in a light drizzle lapping the school playing fields in a steady jog. The one positive being at least I kept half my PE kit bone dry and was going to get soaked at the end of the class regardless anyway. School could be weird like that.

We'd see boys out on the yard or field all stripped off to shorts even in the most crazy conditions. They just had to get on with it.

So, you came back from a run in the rain to find a line of soaking wet vests on the ground. Not really worth getting you to put them on in the first place!

Vince, running with bare chests was a very regular event. Our teachers would make us change into vests but when we lined up on the school field we were all told to strip off leaving our discarded vests in a line on the ground. Only then would we start running. When it was mild it was okay but in winter it could be harsh, the first few times it was strange but then you'd get used to it and we were out in all weathers, rain, snow, hailstorms it didn't make any difference to the teachers so long as we were stripped off.

Vince.

There was a lot of cross country running at school with my comprehensive I was at during the years 1981-85 and we would run a lot of it shirtless in the milder conditions, sometimes by choice with one teacher and being told to by another. I was fine with this myself and actually rather enjoyed it. When I left school I kept up a weekly fitness routine, I still do, and would go on training runs with a jogging buddy or sometimes two and chose to run with no shirt on many times because it felt good even outside of the summer season. But even with close buddies running I got some comment about why I was choosing to run like that and one expressed concern I was drawing attention to myself.

The throwing of javelins was the cause of the only PE slippering that l witnessed during my time at grammar school. Two boys had been left to practise and broke the cardinal rule that thou shalt not throw javelins towards the school in case someone exits through a doorway or round a corner. They were sent indoors and after the lesson they each received two hearty whacks of the PE master's plimsole on the bottom in public view. They were both good boys who would never normally break a rule and one was rather a mummy's boy who was told twice to push his bottom out further. He was very red-faced and close to tears from humiliation rather than pain. Lesson learned by all of us as we realised it could happen to any of us in a moment of forgetfulness.

Mark, a p e teacher or any teacher for that matter would not dare to feel your muscles now. Assault!!

Never did a cross country in PE shirtless but going out onto the field during the summer term for track and field we did much of that sent out in a bare chest, this is how we ran track, did long and high jumping, shot putting and javelin. I remember being in a long line of boys with our javelins at school waiting to throw and see who would go furthest and our PE teacher coming along the line and feeling everyone's bicep and talking about the need for a bit of muscle to throw well. None of us seemed to have much at the time and our javelins all fell in a pile on roughly the same spot.

Barechested school running outdoors. I did this dozens of times. Don't ask me why.

(General gym was barechested for all year age groups anyway, that did seem the popular regular more normalised thing then)

I don't know whether it was commonplace but I do know it was very frequent at the secondary modern school I went to in Essex from 1968 until 1973, particularly when we got a bit older in the top couple of years as older boys.

The first few times we did it the conditions were generally quite favourable but we got sent out on days that I would not have expected to without shirts but although we did I remember being quite relieved how easy it was to tolerate running barechested cross country in some quite unfavourable, fresh and quite nippy conditions but the temperature threshold is different for everyone and I'm sure some may have disagreed with me.

None of the accompanying teachers ever ran alongside us in the same way. Cross country runs would involve three teachers on many occasions, and always at least two, mainly in tracksuits but sometimes shorts and a shirt. Never barechested with us though.

I have no idea how far we used to go on the cross country but it would involve a pretty solid three quarters of an hour steady running or very fast speedwalking if you began to cheat a little so it was a reasonable distance. We rarely kept together and spread thin and would always find one of our teachers had stopped and was waiting for the slower ones among us. Three or four classes would merge for cross country so would be quite a big group of boys for one specific activity at the same time. If you assume anything from 10 to 15 boys per class that could be anything from 40 to 60. It was a big school, I'm sure it had a school roll of something like 1200 at the time.

I was a bit shy about such things but like everyone else in school it's something to have to get used to quickly which happens with most of us.

We could have done all this shirted, we had proper full games kits, so I think it's definitely valid to look back and think, why did we do it like that so much, come to school with the correct kit for going outside in yet find ourselves not bothering dozens of times. That is a question for the teachers out there who took us back in the day, and in my case they are probably rather elderly or no longer able to answer that question.

'Running free' was a term I heard about doing this in school. I do know that to run barechested for a reasonable length of time did feel like it connected you to your surroundings in some way if you could feel the outside directly on your body but I'm sure that wasn't the motivation for why we did so in the least. Doing so did nothing to add to our ability to run or keep fit in any way that I understand.

I have not been tempted to take a run in this way since 16 though. Was anybody?

Our teachers always made us run without tops.Was it commonplace?

In the secondary boys school I attended 1961 to 1966 the pe "uniform" was shorts plimsolls. We never wore a top indoors and never thought anything of it. And of course as seemed to the way of schools those days nothing was worn under our shorts.
The actual lesson itself was usually a mix of vaulting horse(which I hated) wall bars(good) and various exercises, hand stands with a partner, running etc. On the whole the lesson was not to bad. The other thing I did not like was laying on the back and on command raise legs 3inches oin the air and then we had the teacher instructing "apart, together" and this carried on for some time.

Going back almost fifty years now. When I was around fourteen I was accused by my mum of starting to play truant from school on some afternoons all because our class got a brand new young PE teacher after the holidays who began taking us into the school gymnasium stripped off skinny skins up top. She had been going through my schoolbag in the bedroom and noticing my plain white PE tops were staying clean, fresh and unused had not said anything for a while before having a showdown with me. When I explained I hadn't been wearing them for a while in PE she simply didn't believe me at all and I can still see her picking up the telephone to call a friend's mum to verify if what I had told her was truthful and even then she thought me and the friend had colluded and rang around another friend's mum before finally accepting it. But she was not happy with me at all for not telling her in the first place I had been doing PE without the top for a while with the new teacher. I didn't even think it was something worth mentioning I think. Mum was very over protective of her boy. Well that teacher moved on after only a few months and we got back a previous teacher and returned to gym vests much of the time.

You've answered Colin on the wrong thread Dan!

Colin. Swimming was a joke. There wasn't a pool nearby and the instructors were rubbish. Shortly before my 9th birthday the school stopped it altogether. When I started secondary school I was relieved there was also no swimming and the school focussed more on actual physical fitness and had a mandatory stripped to the waist policy for all boys in the gym which I found helped me to gradually become more confident in myself. The lessons were structured and were never randomly put together. We also found it was common for us to show sweat during PE/Games lessons. When we turned 14 we also started to do PE outside barechested a couple of times a month during the winter but as soon as the track was painted on athletics lessons teams were either vests and skins or with everyone stripped bare top when it was really warm. Done sensibly stripping to the waist to exercise is very effective and it made a difference to me and I'm sure others too.

Ian C. I think we were fortunate in that there wasn't a choice but feel that today's boys would, if given the opportunity, welcome not having a top on indoors. Whether or not they'd be pushed hard enough to show sweat in the gym or go bare in winter is another thing.

Thankyou Tracy, I used to feel sorry for myself sometimes. I wonder if many at school now would accept their PE teacher telling them to go out in the rain running without a top on. I do think that schoolboys used to be much more grown up and hardened to accepting such things.

Ian L and Howie, yes all conditions we went out in. One thing about one or two who taught PE for me was when they seemed in some kind of bad mood day about something we would find ourselves running more or doing something more energetic and although nobody ever called anything a punishment I felt sometimes our whole class was given things like running around without our shirts on as a type of covert style discipline act. I've seen so many other people say the same thing in their schools that I don't think we are all misunderstanding and getting it wrong. It seems to be a thing.

But I was quite a hardy guy in school and it was going to take a bit more than my PE teacher sending me out in the rain, even stripped to the waist running, to get my gander up in any way. I knew one guy who deliberately didn't bring his entire kit on very bad weather days who enjoyed the alternative punishment of writing meaningless lines in a warm corridor by himself while we all went out. I'd always have rather got wet and a bit cold doing PE than sit alone in shame in a corridor like that even if it kept me dry and warm. But each to their own.

The two Ian's here.

I used to sit nice and warm on the second floor of a Humanities block at school which had a full view of the entire school fields. More times than I care to remember I would be distracted by the boys out on PE like you both described. I used to feel sorry for them when they appeared outside with no shirts on regularly running about the place. I couldn't believe they got treated like that but liked looking, but the staff at school didn't like us looking, the blinds came down sometimes or we were told to pay attention to what we were doing, not what was going on outside.

Ian C, I also had a hard taskmaster PE teacher in secondary in the 60's also in Scotland. I remember well the sensations of freezing winds and driving rain, even sleet, on my bare chest.
We also did runs around the school - hideously embarrassing as it felt like everyone in school could see you and was looking, having a giggle at your expense.
Punishment runs were also done at the playing fields. The total perimeter ,including a couple of fences separating pitches, where you had to double back, was one mile. A convenient measure for my PE teacher. You'd also earn a stroke of the belt for each mile. If the weather was freezing it would really sting on your hands.
There was also a bank about three or four metres high where you'd have to lug medicine balls up to the top. The teacher, or more likely a prefect (of course, well clad against the weather) would kick the balls down.
He blandly called it "toughening us up".

Ian C yes outdoor PE/Games really were in all conditions. Though out kit included a rugby shirt we only allowed to wear a vest on outside and normally after a quick "warm up" we'd be told to strip off for the lesson, not too bad when it was dry but when it rained trying to strip off a sopping wet vest quickly without being seen to dawdle was awkward.

Comment by: Blake on 3rd February 2023 at 18:08

Craigie High School pupil Dundee 1980-86.

That option wouldn't have been available at my school where I was out running cross country without my shirt many times in actual drenching rainfall under one hard taskmaster we had on the school roster who took my P/E lessons. We would circle the school perimeter, inside the grounds, about a dozen or so times on these runs. They did feel like punishment runs when we did them. Not proper cross country because we did that beyond the school fence.

He was one of those cocky kind who had stock phrases ready and waiting, one of his favourites was the 'that won't do you any harm' line.

Tanya.

I should have made my point clearer, the answer to your question is yes. You've got to remember that when in school you are not under your parents rules you are under your teachers. Within reason of course. Some people have a different interpretation of what seems reasonable, that has never changed though.

And what did you do then Peter, overrule the parent? You failed to say the important bit there.

Answering the Leon Rix question.

The teacher would be in loco parentis on school grounds in school time and so would be perfectly within their own rights and responsibilities to decide for themselves what they expected of those under their charge, so in the instance of the hypothetical written letter asking for a shower excusal for somebody with no reasonable explanation they could simply set aside any such letter quite lawfully and ask the child to take a proper completely disrobed school shower as they themselves see fit, and would fully expect their decision to be complied with without further fuss.



I was put in this very position myself a couple of times. (ex P.E-teacher, retired)

It's extraordinary that someone would be prepared to get into a scuffle with a teacher who wants his class PE taken without shirts in order to avoid doing so themselves. The PE teacher had the right to ask it, it's not unreasonable is it? I never saw anything as extreme as has been mentioned here but did see someone pleading desperately once to be excused showering as a new boy after PE when coming from a lesson we did where he had already been a skin like me in it on a team. Pleading to be excused the showers always fell on deaf ears at school and teachers made clear they wanted no parent notes asking for such excusal.

I have no idea what the legal position would have been with a teacher overruling a genuine parent note making such a request if it had happened.

Referencing Blake, at school summer term we did many things outside without shirts, sometimes we chose to do so but often we got told. I even spent lessons doing cricket practice in the nets with a group of full on bare chested guys in school while wearing the big white cricket shin pads on my legs, a rather odd look. You were lucky if you avoided any shirtless outside PE but you gave no hint to your years of school. I was at school in the late 1970s.

You should never be ashamed of the way you look but there were teachers in my day who could pass judgement on appearance which could be taken to heart far too much by those with thin skins.

Blake, you're fortunate your school didn't make you do cross country or other outdoor activities stripped off.

I used to be that desperate not to do PE without my shirt on like your story Thomas. It came as quite a shock going up at twelve finding I was forbidden from even bothering to put a shirt on for PE when we used the games gym. For that reason I preferred the other outside lesson even if it was cold and wet.