Burnley Grammar School

During the course of an average week at school in the 1980's I would regular as clockwork have three communal nudity showers. Two of these were after both my usual PE lessons, the gym and outside games, but the other one was on the day I had to show up after school hours for football practice. The PE teacher who always took us for practice would never let us just go home at the end even if someone's parent was waiting at the gates or with a car pick up. He always said nobody was going home to their parents without a proper shower so they went home clean. My dad used to get fed up waiting for me, but without the pressure of time constraints in the schoolday timetable our football practice teacher made us shower for longer and all over with school issue soap and if we wanted it some shampoo.

I'm of an age that remembers the Fit and Healthy school programme and remember watching many of those in that series including the one with the boys in the showers. I think a lot of people who saw it at the time will have remembered it and one or two others. I think the boys who took part in the changing room showers deserve a medal for bravery for doing that. It's not so much that their winkles were out all over the place in front of the lens but that all their faces were easily identifiable as well at the same time. I wonder if the school benefitted from the endless repeat fees on that, although the boys deserved to.

Comment by: James on 12th March 2025 at 04:11
Does this bring back any memories of anyone's school cross country?
https://youtu.be/iWC_-evE8qs?si=pNWYJrw7q2k8FaNq



It does James. That looks like many school cross country runs I endured in my time in the 70's at a slightly younger age, made to go out without my shirt on and just keep on running with a teacher up the front of us and another at the rear of us forever blasting the slower boys to keep up. We ran the school cross country like we were in the school gym, completely and utterly shirtless the whole class group. We would often get wet through rain or just sweat until our hair was dripping too. I remember boys that looked completely out of shape and finding it very hard. Sometimes when we got back from the cross country the less fit boys could barely manage to stand up straight to shower the sweat and grime off, some of us used to sit on the floor of the showers at school and just rest while the water cascaded over us. We were actually allowed to do that.

The difference between us and these boys is they look like they were sort of enjoying it while many of us were not. It was like a school boot camp existence doing the cross country shirtless like that until you almost dropped through exhaustion.

Comment by: Terry on 12th March 2025 at 15:01



Totally agree, Terry. I think the point is you can get men and women who "only" went to a state school who are just as intelligent and hard working as those who aim higher (or were aimed higher). Recent PM's of both parties have proved that just because you went to Oxbridge and got a title, it doesn't give you extra wisdom or even commonsense.



Comment by: Yours Truly on 12th March 2025 at 09:55




"Hi Alan,

I am rather surprised to hear that in 2025 upmarket schools are marketing themselves as offering 'traditional values in a traditional setting'. How traditional are we talking about here? They can't cane kids anymore so it can only be so traditional. Is it Jimmy Edwards era traditional? Or Tucker Jenkins era Grange Hill traditional? Both are traditions. My primary school was big on 'traditional values' (no caning though) back in the 1970s in a working-class area, so more fool people who are willing to fork out for this pantomime nonsense....."

One of our two "traditional" teachers loved the cane and used it until the last day it was legal to do so, the other one - well let's not go there again!.

As regards our P.M - he got free access to Reigate(?) Grammar School, something denied to others these days, and I think some of his recent behaviour shows he has no conception of what life is like for the elderly and the poor. I would also refer you to the horrible way he ingratiated himself with Mr. Trump a couple of weeks back..much they way he did with Blair and Mandelson. A "good education" doesn't necessarily equate to compassion and empathy, and plain old hard work.

I understand, to some degree why pushy parents want their children to go to such establishments, but it is more about fulfilling their desires than that of the sons or daughters. As I said earlier when I was eleven I wanted to be a bus driver. That was two years or so before I discovered the trumpet - goodbye to bus driving. I was a much better brassman than I would have been a busman. We all change a lot in our teens, and the lad concerned might well have had enough of "traditional discipline" when he gets to 17 or 18. Who knows?

It is sad that the school system is so two tier that people find it necessary to pay thousands of pounds for slightly better education - possibly. I should say a good well motivated state school teacher was the equal of a grammar school teacher. As I have never been in a David Lloyd gymnasium, I can't comment, but for children who are nervous or even scared, they will be just as scared in a grammar school gym, as they would be in the one at the local comprehensive - but these little baubles seem to play a good part in encouraging people to part with their money. A case of preferring the box to the chocolates.

I can honestly say I would have loathed any school I had been forced to attend, but at least mine lacked pretension.

Nothing perpetuates and reinforces the class system in this country more than the education system and it does that to children from an early age. I think it is perfectly fair to say that many people, no matter how brilliant they might be, are condemned to a certain life trajectory even while still in the womb.

I don't know who these people are who try to convince themselves that this is a less class ridden country nowadays, and as Starmer has been mentioned by a couple of you he was even faced with the two teir Keir comment in his face today by the opposition over criminal justice but as usual pretended we are all equal. Yes, some are more equal than others to coin the cliche.

Hi Alan,

I am rather surprised to hear that in 2025 upmarket schools are marketing themselves as offering 'traditional values in a traditional setting'. How traditional are we talking about here? They can't cane kids anymore so it can only be so traditional. Is it Jimmy Edwards era traditional? Or Tucker Jenkins era Grange Hill traditional? Both are traditions. My primary school was big on 'traditional values' (no caning though) back in the 1970s in a working-class area, so more fool people who are willing to fork out for this pantomime nonsense.

'Felicity - have you asked the person most intimately concerned with all this "traditional values" jazz his opinion? - that is your son. If he doesn't have a problem with it, well and good, but if he does.....'

You have hit the nail on the head. At the end of the day the final decision should be their son's since he is going to be the one having his character shaped by his experiences in this school.

'I will say no more than to remind you that our current Prime Minister is the product of one of those selective grammar schools (the only difference being his parents got it for nothing and you will be paying for it). Let's just say that when I look at him, I don't feel deprived or jealous.'

Do you mean 'Sir' Keir Starmer, who graduated from the universities of Leeds and Oxford, qualified to the bar and was previously the Attorney General before becoming prime minister?

That is why parents are falling over themselves to get their children into these schools. You have answered you own question there. If he had gone to Bash St Comprehensive he might have ended up just plain Keir, with his name on a badge on his B&Q uniform shirt. The UK school system is nowadays even more feudalised than when I was a schoolboy forty years ago and it all comes down to the way in which money is (mis-)allocated. Grammar schools were always given far more state subsidy than comprehensive and secondary modern schools.

'Academy' is a confectionary term for what everybody understands was previously a failing school. Comprehensive schools are now referred to as 'high' schools because the term 'comprehensive has become so degraded after decades of slandering from our lovely right-wing media. Every concerned parent with the means is tripping over their own feet to get their children into grammar or private schools.

In this bankrupt educational climate you can hardly blame Felicity, or any other parent, for wanting their son or daughter to get a place at one of the 'better' schools. And I state this as someone who thinks that a truly good, enabling education is a universal right and that the concept of good education being only for those who can afford it is an atrocity and a criminal offence.

Comment by: Felicity on 11th March 2025 at 15:45


"Thanks for the reply. The school is excellent and not how you describe it, when we went there we were treated very well, even getting given tea and biscuits for the three of us. He will definitely come out of equiped for the times we now live in, I am in no doubt about that, it's very modern, I think you may have taken the "traditional values and setting" too literally. It's not a 1950s time capsule with wooden desks and masters in black capes.

He's quite active and likes all sports and will get to do all the ones he likes and to specialise, but he's going there for the academic first and foremost.

He is not concerned by the "no tops rule for PE" or even the showering. We were shown this area and it looked more like going into a David Lloyd Leisure Club....."


Felicity it seems to me you have no problem at all as your son is content with the schools arrangements, and if he is going to join the RN he will have to get used to the lack of privacy (when I was eleven I wanted to be a bus driver!)

I would just make the point that the grammar school is a business, and they are asking you to pay thousands of pounds a year for something that you could get elsewhere for practically nothing - therefore the Crown Derby and green tea and biscuits was merely PR - they would hardly give you three chipped mugs with a Lidl own brand teabag in each. It seems an expensive way to get a Rich Tea. I just hope that their "traditional values" are not the traditional values a couple of my teachers used to practice, but good luck to your son anyway.

Does this bring back any memories of anyone's school cross country?

https://youtu.be/iWC_-evE8qs?si=pNWYJrw7q2k8FaNq

Jason Bray your excellen shower take was a thought provoking one I must say. You're right too. That's a very clever analysis that not many people make. It's actually quite weird when you put it like you did there. So true!

Felicity, looks like he's set for a good school. Don't even give the no shirts in PE rule a second thought, it's not worth it, even more so if he doesn't care. He'll be just fine, a young one his age who is already wanting to be in the navy sounds very well adjusted.

Yours Truly, your not the first person to talk of rite-of-passage regards school showers, I've seen that comment before from others and I agree with that too.

Craig I really love hearing your latest bareskin updates and how well that's going. It really does sound like it bonds you lot there. Twenty nine of you in one go must have been a picture. I look forward to seeing any social media you do in future about it.

I'm very pleased to hear that you are very pleased with the grammar school your son will soon become a new pupil at in a few months time Felicity and my advice is to always keep abreast of his education but without looking for problems that don't really exist such as the one you have described, especially as your own son seems mature and well rounded as you descibed and shows no outward concern on that requirement. Some schools set the rules in a more precise manner than others so that everyone knows exactly where they stand and others are a little more flexible. Both are equally valid. PE without tops is not old fashioned and remains an aspect of school for boys, from schools that require it full time to those who may ask it just once or twice a term. It's still uncommon for the 11 to 16 age range to go through their entire school time not coming into contact with some kind of top free situation.

Thanks for the reply. The school is excellent and not how you describe it, when we went there we were treated very well, even getting given tea and biscuits for the three of us. He will definitely come out of equiped for the times we now live in, I am in no doubt about that, it's very modern, I think you may have taken the "traditional values and setting" too literally. It's not a 1950s time capsule with wooden desks and masters in black capes.

He's quite active and likes all sports and will get to do all the ones he likes and to specialise, but he's going there for the academic first and foremost.

He is not concerned by the "no tops rule for PE" or even the showering. We were shown this area and it looked more like going into a David Lloyd Leisure Club. I think showers are probably sensible and offer a certain discipline. For an eleven year old he has quite a mature head on his young shoulders and his ambition is to join the Royal Navy in a few years time and so obviously things like personal space and privacy would be compromised on a ship if he was ever to do that and realise his ambition.

The school has some amazing reviews but like you do when checking further for yourself I have tried to find ones that might not be so glowing and haven't found any other than one that made brief reference to the no tops rule they employ there.

While I'm not against it, my first reaction was to think it was a very old fashioned way of doing things and when I saw the picture from the 1950s when I brought up this forum that rather reinforced what I thought. I suppose what brought this to my attention was that this school made a point of mentioning this in the way they did by talking of it "as a rule".

Hi Graham D,

I am replying to your comment on 6 March.

I can't find the comment to make sure but there was a recent comment here by a man who remembered a boy in his year actually being forcibly stripped and hurled in tears into the showers by two male PE teachers who would have none of his very real inhibitions. At the same school girls were not even made to shower at all. This level of discrimination is an atrocity.

Really, this insistence on making boys shower is strange. Especially if they do not subject girls to the same requirement in the same school.

You shouldn't have had to endure that inequality with the girls gloating. And the fact that the head and deputy head at your school were both women just makes the injustice even worse. We are always told that women know better and are more sensitive to these issues. This just isn't true, is it?

We live in a time when a certain narrative is being pushed, and pushed aggressively. Gender discrimination is real. It is very real. It always was. The fiction is that it only ever affected one sex.

A recent poster here referenced a book called Self-Made Man, which documented the experiment of a woman journalist who spent eighteen months living as a man, because she had always believed men have all the advantages. She ended the experiment after eighteen months because she could no longer endure living as a man. Shortly after she voluntarily submitted herself into a mental health facility. Going forwards she stated that the experience had made her much more sympathetic about the men she knew.

How telling that I had to come to this forum to even hear about this book. Although this book was published in 2003 I had never heard of it before. Self-Made Man was a feminist book written by a feminist journalist but it did not meet the narrative and so it was excised.

Women have always been just as guilty of lazy stereotypical assumptions as men. But we have yet to reach the stage where they are made aware of that and it is taking a sweet while. During World War One it was the suffragettes who instituted the 'white feather' campaign.

I have tried several times on this forum to enquire of women posters as to their feelings about this double standard but it has been my experience that every time they just go silent. After a century calling men out on their very real prejudices it seems women are unwilling to address their own.

Hi Jason Bray,

'our teachers gave themselves more rights over our personal privacy than our parents had over us. It kind of feels wrong when you see it like that.'

It does seems weird when you express it like that. I said before that school showers, looking back, seem like some sort of 'rite-of-passage' that everybody - or every boy, at least - had to be subjected to when they passed a certain age. During my first year Games was the last lesson of the day which meant we could just have gone straight home and showered/ bathed there. And we never had to shower after PE, only Games, which means hygiene was not really the issue. It just felt like a particularly cruel thing to inflict on eleven-year-old boys, most of whom barely even knew each other. And more so on teenagers with all of their self-consciousness issues.


Hi Alan,

Yours is a question I have already asked on this thread, and pondered myself, and still can find no answer to. As a first-year in secondary school I just accepted that our PE teacher was a tyrannical bastard. I had no choice but to do so. All these years later I discover that seemingly every man remembered a teacher just like him. Why is it that so many male PE teachers had exactly the same personality, with the same seething, barely-repressed anger? I really don't think this phenomenon can be explained by training alone.

When you think of it, PE teachers really are at the bottom of the pecking order in schools, aren't they? They take a non-academic subject and (although I may be wrong) never, ever seem to make it to headteacher, do they? Maybe that contributes to it but even so I just can't understand it.


Hi Robert,

'I'm heading into my mid sixties and still remember that and many other things from my school years as if they happened a couple of years back. Something about school memories seems to stick.'

It's not for nothing that those years are often referred to as your formative years. All the more reason for the adults around them to act professionally and with consideration.

'I disliked the football and rugby but so do lots of boys and men, that's not unusual, it's actually very common.'

I'm glad you say this. Growing up I seemed to be surrounded by other boys that all loved football.

As for being slippered for not wanting to shower, well - what the fuck was wrong with Why did not one of their fathers go to the school and punch that teacher out?

Of course if they had been girls not only might they not have had to shower in the first place but they could not have been slippered for it at all.
All I can say ism thank God I did not go to secondary school until the 1980s.

Comment by: Jason Bray on 10th March 2025 at 02:28



I think you make some very good points, Jason, very cogently reasoned. I agree with every word. It makes you pause to think that it seems that this enforced intimacy is still going on for twenty first century schoolboys, which brings me to....


Comment by: Felicity on 10th March 2025 at 21:46


"I have discovered that the school my son will be going to in six months time operates what they call - traditional values in a traditional setting - as the school ethos. It's a selective grammar school and we both had a look around it last week and were very impressed by what we saw........"

Felicity - have you asked the person most intimately concerned with all this "traditional values" jazz his opinion? - that is your son. If he doesn't have a problem with it, well and good, but if he does.....

It is a bit like joining a club or a group, - you have to take the whole package, you can't just have bits of it. May I ask why you want traditional values (and you don';t have to read far in these pages to see what some of those "values" are)?. Your son will be loving in the modern world of the mid and late 21st century - he will have been educated at an establishment that likes to dream it is still 1959. Will he be a square peg in a round hole?. They used to say that in the good old days, that life was better in every way - but was it?. I will say no more than to remind you that our current Prime MInister is the product of one of those selective grammar schools (the only difference being his parents got it for nothing and you will be paying for it). Let's just say that when I look at him, I don't feel deprived or jealous.

Have an honest discussion with your son, that's my advice, and please put his wishes before your own. Better to be happy(ish) and at home in a state school than unhappy and miserable at the grammar, with the snobbish old relics who will be teaching him.

Felicity, My parents both fully backed my school having me me go barechested knowing that it was for indoor and outdoor sessions all year round regardless of the conditions or time of year. As a parent I'm supportive of boys experiencing as much as possible. The school may have an expectation for athletics to be performed barechested too, or with half the class wearing a PE vest. It would be worth checking with the school, perhaps even visit and see a PE group in action. I've found if you're nervous about certain aspects of the sessions your son may well pick up on it too. Hope this helps.

I have discovered that the school my son will be going to in six months time operates what they call - traditional values in a traditional setting - as the school ethos. It's a selective grammar school and we both had a look around it last week and were very impressed by what we saw.

Over the weekend we were discussing the things we are going to have to provide later in the year, uniform, books and of course a PE kit. This school appears to operate what they themselves call a "no tops rule for PE" for the gymnasium there and this is all mentioned in the prospectus. He will be expected to shower. I was quite surprised by the no tops rule for PE though and decided to do some further research using the trusty google search engine and found this here.

I can see these grammar schoolboys are doing PE with no tops but that's a very long time ago. We both been keen for him to have a good solid traditional education but this is one thing we didn't bargain on.

Would anybody like to offer me some thoughts? Thankyou.

Greg2 (on 6th March), thank you for being kind enough to comment in reply.

Though it was the summer term, I don't think it was an extremely hot day - the young men themselves had said nothing about the temperature - and I remember the teacher's words given as an instruction, not a suggestion.

School showers - my take on them.

Think about it like this for a moment. Your own parents, your next-of-kin, would not dream of standing in the bathroom at home watching their own teenage son (or daughter) post puberty, at the age of 13, 14, 15 years old, having a shower (or bath) with no clothes on, naked.....

.....yet come to school and that whole dynamic gets turned on its head and your teenage self is not only forced to shower and to do so with no clothing on but that mere teacher is permitted to have a good watch at you doing it and in most cases did so.

Like me, your PE teachers have probably seen more of your young teenage self than your own parents ever have done. Few of us as teenagers allowed our parents to see our naked selves with pubic hair, but our teachers saw the whole development of us all as we passed through the senior school PE years.

Our teachers considered themselves to have the absolute right to see all our naked teenage bodies while our parents would not ever say that, so our teachers gave themselves more rights over our personal privacy than our parents had over us. It kind of feels wrong when you see it like that. If your own father insisted on standing watching you shower or bathe as a 14 year old while naked, even though he was your own family, your dad, you'd think he was a bit weird to do that, but we accepted those teachers, sometimes men older than our own dads, doing this with us.

When you think of it like this it does seem a strange doesn't it.

I never gave the school showers much thought until recently and I left school 35 years ago. But I now think, leaving out privacy and shyness out of it, that they placed lots of us in a terribly vulnerable position where not everyone had our best interests as priority and the communal mandatory nudity on teenagers going through puberty was excessive, unjust and damaging to a significant number of people and should only ever have been a voluntary arrangement at least with better safeguarding against voyeuristic teachers, of which I definitely had two.

The question I now ask myself is why did it take me over 30 years to think like this and decide that what I was made to do at school was in so many ways not the right way to go about things.

We've had an unexpectedly fabulous past week on our bareskin running group and done four runs of various sizes since last weekend and today was amazing, we got 29 of us out for a whole afternoon nearly half marathon distance run of more than ten miles or so around a local beauty spot we agreed to arrive at by car, although where possible we try to not meet up by car if we do things closer to our homes but with more people some now live a little further afield, but all within 10 miles and most within 4 ot 5 miles of each other and me.

It really was an amazing achievement to get so many together, but after the dull winter I think the recent sun and now a bit of warmth made a lot of people keen to get out at last, although I myself have been running all through winter in small groups on shorter distances in the evenings.

We've now got 65 members on our bareskin whatsapp group, having gained more than ten new members since the new year and five in the last two weeks. Word of mouth is helping our numbers now and it's snowballed a bit recently.

In the past week I've done bareskin (fully shirtless + shorts) runs in groups of 3, 5 and 9 men on distances ranging from a couple of miles right up to over ten, an early morning one, a couple of evening ones and today's all afternooner.

I did a 6.30am one with three friends for half an hour early last week when the temperature was actually hovering around or just below zero. Not for the faint hearted and one for the seriously committed but nothing like as bad as you may imagine it to be. Anyone is capable of running without a top on in those conditions for a short period with the right attitude. It got my week off to a really good start to do that with two others just as the sun was coming up.

Some of the guys are like me and saying they are surprised how addictive they are now finding it, how great it makes them feel and how they love the camaraderie that goes with bareskin running with others. I absolutely agree.

What I want to repeat on here is that a lot of those on our group are men who are trying to prove something to themselves and are going beyond what they always thought were their personal boundaries, some quite openly have said how anxious the thought of going bareskin running made them at first but still wanted to try. Those now on our group are mentioning it to others and egging them on to give it a go. There are definitely many men on our whatsapp group who have gone running with us who would write similar things to some of you guys on here about your shirtless school memories.

We've now got a couple of 18 year old friends joined the group and their 72 year old grandad, and the old boy was the one who encouraged them. The 72 year old is actually a GP in our area and looks amazing for his age, doesn't look a day over 60 and would put some men of 40 to shame with his fitness and physical appearance. All three were out with us today. The remarkable thing is the wide age range who have been attracted to bareskin running since our group was set up.

We're thinking of setting up a social media page sometime by summer or even a YT channel as well to record some of our bareskin running activities so if and when that happens I will gladly provide this site with the means to check us all out!

Out of interest, would anyone else here ever consider setting up such a group themselves or joining one if the opportunity arose?

Comment by: Terry on 16th February 2025 at 21:33
ITV Schools - Good Health - Fit & Healthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRRw-k7cGJs&list=PLv1UpvxmZIp0ZOOyeGcqnj7ELr3U-tkT8&index=1




That's something I remember seeing at primary school, my word that series takes me back a bit, although I didn't even begin my primary school until 1984. Lots of things we used to watch on the tall telly on wheels in those days used to be old programmes made a few years before so must have done the rounds a fair few times on repeat.

Everyone's different I suppose but I would have taken part in that without being very bothered and would have volunteered, even for the showering part to camera there if they wanted, because I'd have seen it as a bit of fun and actually quite a daring thing to have a chance to do and I always liked being a little daredevil. It's not the kind of thing that happens everyday in school is it. If I had done and now saw myself in the buff from my primary days I'd have a very good laugh at it and treasure it as a keepsake. I see it as totally innocent and maybe naive.

Respect to anyone who disagrees with me though.

Robert.

I had a man take me for all manner of PE in the late 70's who sounds roughly similar to your one. One of those men with plenty of mouth, as you said, which produced a lot of hot air about nothing very much. A keen whistle blower and also hand clapper at us. A very hands on individual who thought nothing of physically touching people, and he also had a pair of black sports shoes that I never saw him wear but that got used against us.

PE in the school sports hall was done shirtless for me in the 70's like with so many other boys, and I was in my second year at comprehensive school aged thirteen when I had a run in with mine.

I remember telling my dad at the dinner table that my PE teacher Mr Collett had smacked a couple of boys in my class across their bums in a PE class I was in with the sports shoe, including someone who didn't deserve it who was a friend who was always round our house. He made me promise to tell him if anything like that happened to me, and I promised him I would, he even made me repeat my promise to tell him which I did. I wasn't too concerned because I didn't see how I would ever do anything to warrant such a thing against me, I kept my head down, always turned up and did what was required to the best of my ability.

But I was wrong. I wore a brace on my teeth at the time and often ran my tongue around it in my mouth because it could irritate me a bit and make my teeth ache. The PE teacher saw me doing this and thought I was chewing on gum and said he'd been watching me for a while doing it. He stopped the lesson, made me walk over to him and open my my mouth wide and stick my tongue out while holding my head in both his hands. He accused me of just swallowing the gum that didn't even exist as I was going up to him. This sent him absolutely nuts and he got another lad in our class to pick up the sports shoe from the side bench of the gym and hand it to him whereupon as I stood there he smacked me three times with it on the bum, which did hurt, but my pride more. The act of doing it I found worse. When he did that he gave me a final smack right in the middle of my chest at the breastbone with the plimsoll by flinging it at me while holding it, onto my bare chest, and told me that I'd better not be chewing gum in PE ever again because it was very dangerous to do so and I should know better.

He wouldn't listen to me and no amount of trying to explain got through that I was simply feeling my mouth with my tongue because of my dental brace, which he could clearly see. Totally blind to reason.

Anyone who ever got a smack with the sports shoe in PE you could see trying to notice any mark from it when we were in the showers afterwards and I was no different, there was a mark on my chest but nothing too obvious on my bum, but I couldn't strain easily enough to see anyway without looking very obvious. I went into a toilet later to have a better look a break. The sensation maybe lasted an hour or so from it.

If I had fully deserved it for something I think my dad would have let it go, like most of our parents at the time did.

So after this I remembered my promise to my father if this happened at school to me but despite this I just couldn't bring myself to tell him, at first. I was fairly quiet for the rest of the day after that happened and when I went home. At the dinner table that night when we were all talking about what we had got up to, it was my turn to say what I'd done at school and don't ask me how, parental intuition, they both sensed I was not myself and my dad actually knew it had been a PE day and asked if something was up, eventually dragging it out of me that the teacher had hit me four times with a sports shoe, three times on the bum and once in the chest. By evening there wasn't anything to see on my bum but he asked me to take my top off and show exactly where he struck the shoe at me and there was a slight red mark remaining, nothing much but it stood out.

The next day the school was telephoned while I was at school, and before the end of the day I was called into the headmasters office where both my parents were along with the head to explain what had happend to him. The PE teacher was then invited in with us and had to explain. My parents made it quite clear that the behaviour he'd seen me doing was something I did a lot at home since wearing the brace in my mouth and also that I never ate chewing gum. My headmaster told my PE teacher he might like to consider his response to me and he offered both me and my parents an unconditional fulsome apology 'for any misunderstanding'. A bit rich that last term, which suggests we were both at fault not just him.

None of this stopped him sometimes making use of his sports shoe to chastise people in PE though, but it seemed to happen less and with me he suddenly became a lot nicer which I thought was hilarious because everyone else noticed it, they absolutely loved the fact my parents had forced our PE teacher to say sorry like that.

Like Robert and so many others who have opened up in these pages, you have to wonder why P.E teachers behave like a cross between the Kray Twins and an old army drill sergeant, and I can only conclude that even today, it must be something to do with the training they are given at teacher training college. Perhaps they have lessons in how to be obnoxious and how to humiliate boys. Perhaps it is the character of those men involved - probably bullied by parents when they were children themselves into being the best at their sport (you often read of fights breaking out between parents at amateur Saturday matches in the local parks), and need to stop trying to relive their childhoods through others. Any teacher must surely realise that there will be boys who don't like their subject, whether that is geography or history or P.E and the interminable games of football, rugby or cricket. They should realise that by shouting at them and demeaning them, they are not going to get any better results. In other subjects, teachers realise that not everyone is going to enjoy everything, but their attitude is one of acceptance (one hopes) and you just have to realise that it is not a personal slight. The attitude of some of these games masters is very petulant and self defeating. It seems to be the one subject where the teachers are just a little too demanding, and over ambitious. Not every lad wants to be a professional sportsman, or join the Royal Marines

Perhaps instead of "teeth brushing" lessons for 3-5 year olds, they should give lessons to PE teachers in how to behave.

Thankyou Greg and Christine for the comments.

I'm heading into my mid sixties and still remember that and many other things from my school years as if they happened a couple of years back. Something about school memories seems to stick. You're right, the teacher I commented on was very overbearing to everyone he came across, but I wasn't exactly a tiny timid little thing though and he made me quake as I described. I think most boys would have taken the man's plimsoll across them rather than being dumped into the girls class, and without the shirt too. Teachers tend to stick together though Christine don't they, they like to avoid open disagreement in front of the class.

Someone at school described our school gym as a depression chamber to me, a turn of phrase that seemed very powerful to come out of the mouth of a young mind about 12 or so. None of this damaged me though, I just thought my own one was a bloody idiot and an insufferable pillock. If he was still about he'd be about 80 by now I think and if I came across him I'd fancy smacking him on the nose! Call it the interest payment he's earned over the past 53 years.

Greg I disliked the football and rugby but so do lots of boys and men, that's not unusual, it's actually very common. It did not make any of us girls or feminine because we shied away from enjoying those sports. I liked doing summer cricket for example, was alright for large parts of the school gym and could climb and do all that stuff quite nicely and confidently, more so than most, the school long distance cross country was a doddle to me and away from school I went banger racing with my uncle to watch the stock cars, even did some canoeing at one point, did swimming a lot, liked playing darts and snooker, so was into many sports even if they were not school PE compatible ones. But if you didn't like football especially that the PE teacher dictated every boy MUST like then you got the girl tag. It's quite daft really isn't it, and I'm sure my teacher was far from a one off like that. Thanks Greg for the supportive comment and to you Christine once again.

Ian W is also a good point, I think that's why there was shower resistance too. I get exactly what you are saying. People never like being ordered to take off what they are wearing by someone else, it does feel different I agree. This may account for why many people had issues with the communal shower regime school would expect of us and I see there are many comments about this subject too. That doesn't surprise me in the least if my own school is anything to go by. It could be a very unpleasant experience for some people and I saw lots of very inconsiderate behaviour by the teacher I already mentioned when it came to school and showers. I saw boys regularly hit with the teacher plimsoll very hard for next to no reason other than being relucant to shower or even taking one but not doing it properly like the teacher wanted, it was like swatting flies.

Robert I just had to say something after reading what you said there. I deplore such behaviour. There is and there never has been a reason to treat anyone in that manner. A good teacher should always know the limitations of their pupils in any subject and work positively to overcome them, none more so than a physical education teacher. What disappointed me more about your story was the acceptance of the other teacher to your teacher's request. A stronger teacher would not have done that, which suggests to me that your teacher could possibly have been quite an overbearing member of the staff against his colleagues as well as his pupils. I've never been an actual teacher although working in education but I would not have accepted you into a class I was in charge of under such circumstances. I've heard many stories over the years about the teaching profession and many about PE teachers but I have never heard one where a teacher made threats to place a boy into a girls PE clothing. When I hear stories like this it concerns me what more such a person may have done, and you said this man was young so he could have had a long time ahead of him to act similarly to many others. I condemn his actions and if I had ever been aware of anything such as this while going through an inspection process on my teams then I would have made sure it had consequences and there was hell to pay for it using all available options given in the job.

Robert this happened you said in 1972 and like so many other comments on here what comes across is how these type of memories from school, even if an isolated case on just one day, remain so stark enabling many people to relate them to others in such fine detail such as in your case after more than 50 years has elapsed.

Comment by: Matthew on 15th November 2024 at 23:41
We had an examination one day in middle school where all the boys in our year had to assemble in the hall and get down to only our underwear and then go and sit in batches of boys about ten at a time on chairs along the corridor waiting outside the medical room to be seen. Once inside we were given an eye test by looking at a book and covering one eye at a time. That was it. Back to the hall to pick up my stuff and dress again. I could not understand why they went to such effort and made us remove nearly everything we had on, shirtless and barefoot, just to do an eye check on us. Very weird. I think I was 9 or 10 years old. That took place around 1976 or 1977.
Does anyone have anything like that?






Yes Matthew I did, so I hope you are still reading. Almost exactly the same as this, a bit later than you in 1978/9 it would have been and that would make me 10/11 years old.

You're right, quite a strange one. I remember hearing from a teacher that we would be getting a 'check up' but that was it. I knew little more than that. I think we knew the day before, there must have been a note home I would think.

Like you, the same here, we had to go to our repsective boys or girls cloak rooms and change. Once we had done this we had to go to the hall and sit on the floor and wait. The boys were told to take everything off and just leave our pants on, the girls I think must have been in underwear and kept their blouse on. It was a school with uniform. I remember coming into the examination room and having to stand in front of a desk and answer some questions with two people looking at me, and finding the whole thing quite unnerving. Walking through a door in nothing but your underpants and seeing two complete strangers as a child that age feels very intimidating to say the very least.

I remember being told to turn around and sit at a smaller desk with a book and one of them got up and came over to it with me. This was an eye test, one of those colourblind things. There was also another one with letters of the alphabet. That was basically it in a nutshell. I was surprised there wasn't more to it and expected there to be.

Nobody even touched my body in any way during this 'check up' but they must have been looking at it obviously. But why were boys told to take all our clothes off bar the one pair of undies just to stand in front of a desk and answer a couple of questions and then sit at a table and look at a book. We didn't even have to turn the pages of it, that was done for us too.

Nobody needed to change at all for this 'check up', so what was the real purpose you have to ask yourself? Looking for signs of domestic home abuse or something without making that clear to any of our parents? But then the girls kept their blouse on, unless they had to remove that in the room when they went in for their go.

The ways of school and days like this shall forever remain a mystery!

My take on shirtless PE was this;

I didn't mind being shirtless at home on my terms but I did mind someone telling me I must be at school.

Did anyone else feel similar to this? It makes a difference.

Robert on 7th March
That was an absolute disgrace how you were treated Robert. I really hate enforced humiliation of children, usually boys, when in front of the opposite gender. It’s such a heartless thing to inflict on one so young that it’s just wicked. It was just as much an abuse of your right to receive respect for your dignity as the way I was treated by some nurses on a children’s ward. I’m not sure how I would have coped with that at that age, but thankfully unlike you it sadly seems, I was able to lose myself in sport such as football, rugby, cricket, as I was alway a competitive and sporty kid; though not so much in gym as I never intended to become an acrobat! What a swine he was, and being male too he would have known how much shame and upset this could bring you. It seems boys often didn’t stand a chance at times, as it could be some females or males who might show complete disregard for your feelings, by being so insensitive to deliberately enforce lasting humiliation. Children can be really hurt by this. Didn’t the girls’ gym teacher find it in herself to feel sorry for how you’d just been treated in front of herself and her girls? She could have at least just let you sit the lesson out I would have thought? Such horrible people it seems were in charge of boys so often in the past. Just awful, and I feel for you.

Recently discovering a photo I'd not seen in many years of my primary school that I had forgotten about there was an official school gym photo featuring me and fifteen others, neat white gym shoes and white ankle socks, tidy white shorts and all bare chests and folded arms. I was so upset it shocked me to remember so I tore it in half. What a relief to destroy it, because although we were smiling slightly I never enjoyed the primary school gym and that teacher we surrounded. I would prefer not to say any more though on that.

The other memory that came back was senior school the boys school was next to the girls school separated by a wire mesh fence. The girls had a netball pitch which was next to fence . After school had finished for day I would walk home . Practice for netball was held after girls finished classes. This was 1960s. I would wander past the court looking at these pubescent teen girls running around in there airtex vests and navy blue cherub school knickers. No skirts allowed believe it or not. No wonder we boys took so long to walk home. Bouncing boobs and bottoms. Those were the days when anything was possible in school.
Some of this thread shows the misery of PE for boys and some girls. There's a myth that boys and girls in the 1960s were alright about showers. That's rubbish, most boys I knew in the 60s did not really like it and couldn't do it fast enough and get out, we just put up with it and got accustomed to doing so, that's very different. But it depends from whose viewpoint on general PE. Girls just hated all PE I always thought. But many boys loved watching girls doing it if they saw them. Girls liked watching running shirtless boys on our playing field and using the climbing frames we had on the grass that we swung from. I think those days are gone now and they look after pupils a lot better now.

PE gives me some very mixed recollections and a very unwelcome memory of one lowbrow moment.

Boys at school were only allowed to wear one pair of plain white shorts, no underwear beneath, in the gym. Although not exactly keen it was at least better than the other stuff of PE, the football and rugby that was the main sport outside we always got made to do. I hated both a lot. My young PE teacher knew this and one day told me I'd better make a lot more effort or else. I just couldn't be bothered though.

Next lesson when we went out for rugby he flipped on me and told me if I didn't like football and rugby perhaps I better go and get a leotard on and join the girls instead. He told me to mend my ways or he'd get a spare leotard from the girls PE office and make me put it on in front of the boys and wear it. But he didn't, it was all mouth.

It didn't make me any keener on football or rugby though. It was purgatory for me to do that, wet and mucky and cold, out in the rain, it always seemed to be raining when we played or blowing a gale.

Anyway he had a go at me along the same lines the next time again for not getting stuck into the rugby and throwing myself about like he wanted or chasing that bleedin' oval ball, and sent me off the pitch, came up to me and said he'd had enough of me and he was sending me off to the girls gym class where I obviously needed to be, and he left the boys briefly and marched me to their gym, told their teacher I was joining them if she'd take me, she agreed to that, and although he didn't force the spare leotard onto me he did make me change on the side of the girls gym class while they watched, out of my entire rugby PE kit and into just my shorts, black ones I wore for rugby and nothing else, everything off, I protested this but just got big gob earache off him and I remember feeling sick to my stomach as I took the kit off and had to join the girls gym class with only my shorts on and no top, shirtless, no footwear and a male PE teacher who said to the girls PE teacher I'd prefer to be with her girls. That bit was completely untrue, I wasn't soft or a girly lad at all, just hated football and rugby and that made me a girl in his eyes. It was a humiliating half hour or so and I really didn't know what to do with myself, my heart was pounding away and I felt faint with nerves and was actually shaking at times because of it and the total humiliation. I don't think those girls or their teacher understood how bad I felt, and my own teacher didn't care or he wouldn't have done it to me. Most of the girls seemed fine with me, but what a thing to do to a kid of 12, to make one boy by himself shirtless in the girls lesson just to make a point to a non rugby liking school pupil.

The real trouble happened after that lesson when I was made the butt of jokes during the rest of the week. It was not something I ever dared tell either of my parents because they'd have both been up that school wanting answers immediately and much as I'd have liked to see the PE teacher answer for what he did I just wanted a quiet life and to forget it. I would have rather been hit with the PE plimsoll in his office a few times actually, like some boys received.

It was a really nasty thing to do and was meant as a shock to make me wake up and put more enthusiasm into the rugby and football but it didn't work and he kind of bellowed a few more threats over the next few weeks but gave up eventually. That PE teacher tried to make me out to be a troublemaker but that was as far from the truth about me as you could get.

Year this happened was 1972.

Go down to 12.57pm on this live update on BBC News over the unexploded WWII bomb today in Paris and you can see a big white sign behind the police on a wall with a great big showerhead symbol on it which I noticed. I put the words into google translate and it was what I thought, a public shower facility in Paris, and I provide the website for it below as well as the item. We don't have anything like this in London or any other major cities or towns in the UK do we.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz6l257gnjqt

https://www.saintdenis.fr/bains-douches

I couldn't agree more with you Alan, but I still think it's worth being available for the reasons that Terry mentioned a couple of days back.

The little lad you mention who got named, and some of the other prominent faces, you can't tell me that many of them didn't get a right old ribbing over this. We all know what kids are like, especially at school. We were them ourselves once. They'd have all been keen to see this and it's a sure thing they would have been shown it when finished, probably at school even before anyone else saw the broadcast, or if not then when broadcast. If you got filmed for something at school of course you were going to want to see it and the school was probably going to want to show it. Can you imagine sitting with that as a school group, boys and girls watching back at what they shot and that little lot coming up at you. That almost certainly happened. You can't tell me that those boys in that film didn't end up getting some mickey taking over doing that from some quarters, they just must have, and seen by their female teachers too. There's a comment underneath where someone mentions a class reaction to it and someone, I think it was an old teacher was on here a week or so back saying she got reactions with various classes looking at that, understandably, and these weren't even the ones involved. Even if the girls in that school did not see it, word always slips out about things like that, especially in school, and some would have made every effort to try and see that somehow because if I'm perfectly honest if I'd been at school and known the girls in my class or just the school had been filmed naked in the school showers I'd have been quite eager to see it, it's human nature, especially as a child.

I see the poster named Yours Truly has mentioned double standards a few times. Tell me about it! The double standard at school between myself and my own sister was not hard to notice even when we were so young. There is one thing about this double standard that makes no sense to me. Boys are treated as if they shouldn't care or be modest and have no right to be and have no sensitivities, while girls are treated the exact opposite to this. But go and read many peer reviewed articles on psychology and they will concede that boys have a general tendancy to be the most sensitive sex at the ages were are talking about, school age 10 to 18, but this is not reflected in the attitude and treatment of them, and us as we once were too.

Someone in the comments under it said the boys looked relaxed about that. Coming out the shower they looked anything but, very nervous to me actually and who could blame them.