Burnley Grammar School

When I was studying sport science at university before I dropped out after the first year, Professor Davies our lecturer would invite a local well known bodybuilder into lectures but eventually he asked for volunteers from the students with more regular physiques who he would invite up and pose for his physiology and anatomy lectures. He used to get three very keen chaps from our lecture hall every time who looked like they couldn't wait to do it. I asked one why he was so keen to do it and he told me he hoped it might get him a date with a girl in our lecture study group who was there.

I was skinny as a rake, all skin and bone and few obvious muscles but being a bare chest in school held no bother to me, even when someone told me I didn't have the body for it. My schools required it at middle and comprehensive many times. I didn't care what they thought I looked like. I felt good doing PE like that and took to it with ease. How could I fear my own body for goodness sake? What a crying shame so many others allow teachers to get under their skins (excuse pun) and get all anxious over it.

I think the ofsted lady comment has been completely and perhaps deliberately mis-interpreted and mis-represented on here.

What she said made perfect sense to me and I understood the points made clearly. She was saying that a few years ago half the boys and a third of girls were at schools that showered them after sport, and that those pupils in these schools were more active and achieved better than the schools that did no longer make the requirement or do so.

The correlation is easy to understand. Schools with all the facilities available and who make pupils use them will more likely be in better places that also push the pupils more, because having the insurance policy of showering means a class can get be pushed to do more and get as sweaty and mucky as they like in the knowledge they won't have to spend the rest of the day like it and can clean after proper exertion. Schools that no longer provide these facilities are must be aware they better not make pupils get too sweaty or mucky because they can't clean properly afterwards. That's my take on the research and it's blindingly obvious isn't it.

It's not that showering at school makes you more healthy as such, but that the PE you do at schools with them is likely to be a better quality and more challenging and that schools that will provide a shower for pupils take their PE much more seriously all round. I get that.

I wasn't at school as far back as some people on here, my time was during the 90's but I rarely came in from the sports field looking as clean as I'd run onto it, or left the school gym without sweating out through my vest when I wore one, which wasn't always, teachers asked us to be bare-chested many times too which we did quickly and without discussion. The lessons were all quite strenuous and not easy going, perhaps they would have been less so if I hadn't been at a school that provided and made sure we all went in the shower afterwards.

Hello A Yorkshiredad,

Several posters were triggered by the apparent indifference to any gender bias disadvantaging boys in Christine's post. I was one of them. I hope I was not hostile to her. What I said was not intended that way.

Sorry to disagree but the idea of more minimal kit and compulsory showers actually favouring boys is ridiculous. Certainly in my time anyway boys were just treated worse. It was judged that we didn't need any consideration and we needed to be conditioned to disregard our feelings. In stark contrast to the girls. I can remember girls laughing and joking with their games teachers out on the fields. On the other hand, our bastard teacher, with his air of simmering anger and menace left us with the impression that if you dared to laugh or joke with him he'd punch you in the throat.

Minimal PE kit for boys is fine as long as the girls are held to a similar standard, (obviously with tops on, of course). I was taken aback to read Simon's and Danny C's posts about the blatant sexism in their schools, whereby girls could wear this, that and the other, even to the extent of tracksuits, but for boys it was a pair of shorts and absolutely nothing else. There are only so many times I can keep stating this before it becomes repetitive: this was gender discrimination against boys.

If having their bodies on show is so beneficial then do it to the girls as well, they deserve good health just as much as boys do.

You also state that the lessons are taken more seriously and that the boys are easier to discipline. In other words, they feel more vulnerable and so are easier to control stripped down. Why is it girls can be cooperated with but boys must be subjugated? Your term, 'forced motivation', says a lot. Seemingly nobody is forcing girls to do anything. They seemingly weren't forced to 'take anything seriously' and this is the point.

You do state that boys are have the option of doing PE shirtless. Well done to you. This is the whole point. Having the option to do so. Being granted a measure of control over your own life and body, something that our school system so often denies us. Choice is vital.

A Yorkshiredad, I hope Christine will post again here. She had an individual insight. But I suspect the criticism she has already drawn has sent her running for the hills and I think, sadly, we will hear no more from her.

'Sir, do we have to take our shirts off?'

'Yes, I want to see just what I'm working with'

'Aww'

'But sir, we..../....enough, just get on with it we haven't got all day'


A real conversation I had in fifth form. We'd never done shirtless school gym before there, not even shirts/skins stuff, we just used coloured sashes over us. The only time we got shirtless was changing and jumping in the showers. New teachers come along and are like a new broom sweeping away the old. This guy was one of those sorts, keen to make his mark, and this was one quick and easy way to make a statement. Assembled down in the gym he picked out the sporty one in our class, stood behind him hands on his shoulders making him face us all and told us he intended to get the rest of us into proper shape before we all left school next summer.

He did this, and my final year before leaving was the busiest, fastest non slacking gym I'd ever done, and the first we did compulsory shirtless ever. I was surprised when I began to really like it this way and feel better all round. He was a bigger taskmaster than our other teachers but did seem to get results out of us a bit late in the day.

Some of you are being very harsh to Christine Sanderson for her very informative post. All she seems to be saying is that in schools where showering was not seriously implemented , activity levels in PE were also not seriously addressed. This particularly applied to the girls. I find this very easy to accept and it means the boys were being treated in a preferred way with the better outcome, not being prejudiced against.

She also gave her own opinion on boys PE in just shorts which again I would largely agree with. If there is any justification for continuing the practice of occasional bare chested PE for boys it is that it can be motivating. In my own classes I have noticed out of the corner of my eye, even the youngest kids sometimes showing off their barely existent pecs and biceps to each other, they clearly have a concept of body image and want to be seen as physically fit. Having their bodies on show to each other makes them more aware of the need to exercise, self-motivation. Additionally I think the lessons are taken more seriously and discipline easier to implement, forced motivation if you like.

In my own classes a shorts only policy this summer went down very well, so much so that it has been decided that the boys have the option to work that way throughout the year if they so choose. I hope Christine Sanderson will post more on this site, I am sure she has lots of knowledge and experience she can share.

Comment by: Will on 21st November 2024 at 23:25


I think your comment Will shows the need for more privacy for boys as well as girls in school locker rooms and showers. Sadly kids will make fun of any difference they are too ignorant to understand (there is no such thing as an "average" penis any more than an average anything) - everyone varies, and nobody's life should be made a misery. It is no consolation to say that in the USA it would have been they who were in the minority. It was also the case that the teacher was just as ignorant in joining in, or by silence, condoning what they were saying. It should not be impossible, given the rise in the school leaving age, and the use of cheap plastics these days, to arrange individual showering arrangements as they do in modern sports centres.

Comment by: Simeon on 20th November 2024 at 19:59

I understand your guilt Simeon but the real guilt here should belong to your teacher who witnessed what were obvious harmful marks on the body of one of his boys and did sweet FA about it and made a joke of it to threaten others. Moron. That is unforgiveable. Perhaps your classmate Michael had made excuses to the teacher about what had happened. I got a shin bruise once at school from a kicking I got from someone and it was noticed at home but I just made an excuse for it that I'd hit a brick wall with my leg. I didn't want to admit that someone, who was meant to be a friend of mine would you believe, had actually taken a shot at me with his boot.

School showers and shirtless PE does have this great advantage that you can at least be seen all over so injury cannot be masked but that's no good if a teacher looks at marks and pretends they are nothing to see is it.

I know it's somewhat off topic here but if i could just go back to the comments that brought up circumcision from a few people, one from Danny about his friend matches things up with me big time.

I was done when I was two years old on doctor advice to my parents. They say it was preferable and I can only take their word for it, I'll never know for sure.

When I went swimming at school in my middle school I always changed with the towel around me while some boys didn't. I never noticed anyone who had been cut. At the upper school being discreet was not an option any longer, like others we all had to shower after PE and so my dangly bits were there to be seen and I could see all the others, and noticed I stood out very differently. I didn't share with any other cut boys in class that it was easy to notice and i got more than enough regular close up looks out the corner of my eye, or even directly often enough. Not long after I started secondary school age eleven and had to bare all for PE there was another boy who came up to me and said I'd got what he called a 'silly willy'. I knew what he meant. Cackles of laughter at me and eyes right on me. My difference had been pointed out horribly loud. It was worse because my name is William, but my family and friends always called me Will which I preferred. This kid who I barely knew saddled me with the 'silly willy' tag for a very long time and I couldn't shake it off and I also kept getting greeted like that in PE and if I went to the shower I kept hearing 'hello silly willy' and them looking not at my face but straight at my cut penis. Kids can be so cruel it's unbelievable. Even the PE teacher smiled at these comments when he first heard them. I wanted to look like the other boys I saw. So I'm not a fan of circumcision even though I was cut.

Even today in many schools physical education resorts back to all the predictable stereotypes about what boys and girls are expected to like and do, with little wriggle room to veer from this.

In my own area I know a family with two children, aged 12 and 14. The elder girl has not long ago taken an interest in football and joined an under 16's girls team, whilst her younger brother is a member of a club where he does ballet and dancing, and they are both happy and enthusiastic young people with parents that have helped them in those direction. But I've heard that back in school both of them receive the usual expectations on physical education, and even raise comments about what they like doing from others there.

The trouble with school PE, was/is that they try to put too many square pegs into too many round holes. Like some others on here, as a schoolboy I had no interest in football at all but enjoyed being active. I would dread being dragged out by the PE teacher to stand on the pitch and of course when I didn't make the effort he wanted I'd be bellowed at, but he could shout all he liked, he wasn't ever going to big mouth me into liking football however hard he tried.

Hi Brian,

I agree with Alan on this. The indifference to the gender divide in Christine's post stood out. No comment on more boys made to shower than girls. Approval of topless PE (for boys only of course!). For all of her dispositioning on school showers she never even addressed the communal shower/ stall shower injustice. And in all her years as an Ofsted inspector she must have seen hundreds of both boys' and girls' showers.
As I have stated in my previous post, if it gets put up, women tend to be dismissive of gender differences concerning males whereas they will be critical of anything that seems to impact females.

Terry,

Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I am a new poster, as of last week I think.

Simeon,

That is just despicable. With a lot of hard men there is an inherited ethos of, 'well, the victim must have deserved it in some way' going on but your PE teacher, just going on that one sentence sounds more passive aggressive. What spineless vermin.

Brian,

While ad hominem attacks are of course wrong Alan was responding to the seeming indifference in Christine's post towards double standards. As I myself also did but hopefully more politely. I am speaking about her instead of to her now since it's my guess she won't respond further here, especially not if she thinks she is just going to be attacked for it.

I have noticed a micro-trend over the past decade or so wherein it will be reported ever so occasionally, usually in one of the nation's bleating tabloids, that PE disadvantages girls. Apparently PE imposes unique problems on girls, with reference made to periods (completely understandable), embarrassing kit (I always thought the girls' kit at my school was just a bit embarrassing although they always seemed to be laughing and joking so they must have taken it in their stride) and things that make them get sweaty.

The whole point of physical education, at least when I was at school, was to be made to do things that got you sweaty. If you decide that girls mustn't be made to sweat then you have to implement a two-tier system whereby the boys are made to do strenuous activities while the girls do other, easier, fun stuff. I have read posts from other men on here describing exactly that regime at their schools, which is disgusting. Over that same period I can remember precisely one article addressing inequalities towards teenage boys, a Guardian article from maybe 2015 written by a teenage boy where he stated (not an exact quote) "I am sick and tired of being forced out onto the playing fields to rack up multiple injuries playing rugby while the girls get to do trampolining in the gym".

There is this pernicious duality in modern feminism where when a gender difference disadvantages women/ girls it is an injustice that needs to be called out, but when a gender difference advantages them it is addressing an issue unique to women/ girls and we must all be made aware of this so that we can respect it.

It is important to be mindful of this since so many of our journalists are nowadays women and will therefore be more likely to lean into this narrative and replicate the fiction that women/ girls are always the only victims. Women have always been dismissive of men's issues. They think we can just take more shit so, no issue there. All men need to be mindful of this and examine the news they receive critically.

I just say all this because there was evidence of a clear gender divide in Christine's post which she stated without any concern at all.

Comment by: Brian on 20th November 2024 at 18:29


Brian, If I may say so, I think Christine produced some ludicrous arguments to back up her stats. Can she PROVE that boys who don't shower are less healthy and active than boys who do?. That is why I dismiss a great deal of what she wrote. It is opinion not fact.

The problem with statistics, however well and cogently they are presented, is that they can be manipulated to "prove" whatever the individual or organisation wishes to prove.

Let's take a current case, which does not affect me, or I hope, you. Our wonderful "caring" government decided in it's infinite wisdom, to withdrawn the Winter Fuel Payments to senior citizens. A whole stack of statistics proved, to the complete satisfaction of Rachel From Accounts, that pensioners were, and would be better off, due to an increase in their pensions - next April. They forgot one statistic, and that is that in spring, the weather is warmer than it is in November, December, January and March, and the tariffs will go down. One statistic they thought it prudent not to mention is that 50,000 pensioners will fall into poverty this year due to the withdrawal, and that in 2025/26 that will rise to 100,000. Don;t take my word for it, here is a report from the BBC which is usually an ardent supporter of the current government:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80l9lde5yjo


Christine clearly paid no heed to the discomfort and embarrassment caused to many boys - scars which still linger many years after the event, as has been proved in the past few days on this site.

Hi Darren 1968,

I'm just a bit younger than you. I had a tomahawk, which was the small kids' version of the chopper without the three-speed gearstick.

Ahh, the wonderful world of childhood accidents. I had a friend who seriously gashed his forehead on the wing mirror of a parked van. He was playing cowboys and indians with another kid and was running down the street looking back over his shoulder as he filled the other boy with lead. He turned around . . . just in time to collide with a stationery van. Being nine or ten, he was just tall enough that it was his forehead that took the brunt. The glass shattered and he had to go to hospital.

Apparently the nurses were incredulous. They kept on asking his mum, "but how could he get run over by a stationery van?" He said he could hear them openly sniggering while they stitched his forehead.

To be fair on the showers issue, our teachers never stood over us watching, at least after that first trial by bare balls. In fact they used o make a point of turning on the water and immediately disappearing into their broom cupboard of an office, leaving us to it, even that horrid old bastard I have talked about below.

The more I read on this thread from other men of my age and older I come to realise that I was actually relatively lucky in a lot of ways. I never even got my arse flicked with a wet towel, and I got picked on a lot.

Didn't feel lucky at the time though.

That is a super post you did there Darren. I hope you get a lot of replies to it. I can just see you out on that Chopper carefree like that. They were everywhere at one time but I had a racer. I liked speed, not iconic brands like that.

Welcome back to the forum Danny C, I remember your older posts too. All good reads. I've never forgotten your description of shirtless school drama plays in particular, on top of all that PE, maybe we could hear some more about who you reunited with recently if it's worth saying. I was last here six months ago.

Some other good ones from you Yours Truly too. I think you are a new forum person are you not? I don't remember seeing your name before on here. Once again, nice posts, well written and speaking for many as you can clearly see from the repsonses. I agree with you a lot.

So Christine you worked for Ofsted some time ago and inspected PE tuition and facilities, who knew. I wonder what they would have said about some of those places on here if they'd existed to inspect them in those days, or the teaching practices. Who inspected our schools before Ofsted? I don't have a clue and don't know any time I saw important looking people checking my school over, or being told anyone was coming to watch us. If I had been an inspector a number of my teachers would have failed miserably, I can think of two who were obviously not up to the job, so bad that even a child could tell they were useless.

Mark, when I was in secondary school in the late 70s and early 80s, all of us boys had to do PE wearing just green shorts—nothing else was ever allowed. However, I don’t think this was done to check for signs of physical abuse. In fact, I know that wasn’t the case because we had a boy in our class, Michael, whose father used to whip his back with a belt, leaving awful marks that we all saw from time to time. Our PE teacher, however, never said anything—nothing was ever addressed, and nothing was ever done. Just once, when we were slacking off, he made an awkward joke, threatening to have Michael's father get us moving with his belt. It fell flat like a stone, and I still remember it to this day. I actually feel guilty for never speaking to Michael about his father, for never trying to help him, and for just keeping my mouth shut like everyone else.

Comment by: Alan on 20th November 2024 at 04:05
A politician once said that "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics", and Christine, bandying about statistics in true civil service style reminded me of that.



Just because someone provides some factual information to support a position you don't like does not mean they should be directly attacked like this and dismissed.

Everything Michael writes on here from his time about 45 years ago hits the right note on every level with my own experiences, it really does.

Getting physical and exercising ourselves through P.E followed such a similar pattern in all our schools at that time didn't it, right down to the exact minutiae of almost everything, and it looks like the majority of us held the same general view of it all as well, whether we liked the subject, were ambivalent or were not keen.

In my own case I was struck by the similarity to Michael which is why I've decided to add something. I was at school at a broadly similar time to you Michael, a mixed secondary school in Southampton. My parents had four children, I was the only boy, the second child, so I had an older sister and two younger ones all close in age covering eight years oldest to youngest, so I was used to a very female dominated homelife. We all attended the same school.

They always got away with much more than I ever did!!! The list of things I could run off is too numerous to mention. Even at home my sisters were given privacy in our bathroom but mum would burst in on me, even dad. We were not allowed to lock the bathroom door, if my sisters were in there they were left alone, if I was in there this was not the same. Even after puberty if I was taking a bath my dad would think nothing of bursting through the door to use the toilet in front of me, force me to listen to his tinkling sound into the pan while I sat in the tub. At 15! Mum would never dare do the same if my sisters were in there.

I just want to make clear that I don't think I had any excessive modesty issues going on in those formative years, any more than the average boy over the age of eleven or twelve going on to sixteen or so probably did. I've got a little white scar on my left shoulder from riding my Chopper bike along the pavement too fast and catching myself on a neighbours tree branch sticking out that gave me a nasty little cut that bled down my arm badly because I was riding along top free when I was eleven years old. Boys would do that sort of thing and our parents didn't care, nobody was getting worked up that some little old kiddie perve might be looking out at us from behind his nets somewhere along the avenue we lived in.

In secondary school P.E I had a schizophrenic attitude to it, a love hate relationship. I liked the outside, the team games, especially hockey which was considered a girls sports at my school but boys did it sometimes too. Cross country was okay too. Only in winter and we wrapped up warm for that, not a hint of going shirtless on that one, quite the opposite. I can't imagine being asked to or how we might have reacted to such a demand. Shirtless field athletics through summer term was common though, sometimes it was voluntary by boys but mostly if the group was shirtless as a whole it was because a teacher had demanded it of us that day. I was never keen on being stuck in the school gym however and looked on the horse in there as an instrument of torture, a really pointless item and it caused me another minor injury when I misjudged it. Down with the gym horse! They still make them use it to this day though. Some things never change.

When it came to the P.E kit for school gymnasium whatever teacher took us the vast majority of the time the class was expected (I mean told!) to remain shirtless for the duration. This came as absolutely no surprise to me at all, wasn't it exactly how most of us would have expected it in those days anyway, plus I'd already come from a primary school nearby that had regular as clockwork had a teacher take us for our P.E lesson and insist the boys there did not put a top on of any kind for P.E, leaving us only in our shorts, and primary classes were always shared by boys and girls with each other, but primary age boys don't seem to play up and feel as much about it as much as secondary boys. It might have helped me that I did plenty of shirtless primary P.E in a mixed setting before I reached secondary and the more sensitive and sexually aware years. One thing I do remember about that primary school was the boys changing room had what looked like a shower area one end of it but without any means to provide water to do the deed, but there was a llittle shallow area which someone told me was a foot bath, but we never used it if that's what it was.

So coming into secondary is where I match up with you Michael, and can also also add more evidence to the comments of 'Yours Truly' on two tier school gender treatment and prove Christine correct too on those statistics.

I remember asking my eldest sister a lot of things about the secondary school before I went there, about all the teachers, the subjects, the grounds, the school food, everything you could name, and of course the P.E which was a top interest. I heard our mum say to her one afternoon, 'have you had a shower today' and I thought, of course she hasn't she's just got in from school. I didn't realise she meant had she had a shower actually at school. Oh wow I thought, that's really interesting. Big sis said she hadn't had a shower, they didn't have to. This moment between big sis and mum was when I first found out the secondary school must have had real showers unlike the thing in our primary that gave the appearance of a shower area without actually being one. I remember asking big sis if she knew what boys did, but she didn't, so I asked her to find out and she did. The boys in her class showered, she had asked one on P.E day. In the end it turned out she did take a couple of showers at our secondary but not very many at all. I never noticed her at home taking a towel from the airing cupboard and sticking it in her bag, or taking one out when she got home, whereas when I began this was a two times a week action of mine.

So I was still a couple of years away from secondary when the above discovery took place. When I joined the secondary school I was well prepared for the experiences ahead. Big sis had proved very useful, but a big bro might have proved even more handy.

P.E there was intense. Team games were highly competitive. We were expected to make total effort at everything. Lack of effort was not put up with and often punished, with doing something even harder that required even more effort. Sudden push ups were common. A common feature of our winter team sports was mud, and more mud, on everything, our kit, our boots, our skin and even our hair. Watery mud, thick mud lumps, you name it. A real mess. That was fine, I didn't mind such things myself.

If you're in a school without showers how can you play serious competitive team sports over winter outside without getting grubby from the ground you're on, even well kept saturated green grass makes enough mess if you slide on it.

I associate shirtless school P.E only with the school gym indoors and the school summer athletics season outdoors. It wasn't a huge deal to me but I did definitely prefer summer athletics done shirtless more than doing the gym in winter that way, probably because I rode the Chopper often shirtless through summer around home anyway so it felt very natural to me. I did not have a problem with the girls in school seeing me without a top, because if I had done I'd not have spent a day outside at home like it where there were loads of girls my age from school always about.

Back to school though, and Michael's similar comment to my school. As big sis told me, we had to shower, they were mandatory. Unlike for big sis who could pick and choose. So there's your two tier treatment yet again. I'd mentally prepared myself to shower but was still very nervous indeed even though I didn't suffer, as I said above, excessive modesty problems about how I looked. But being shirtless is rather different from being naked, being told you must be naked whether you like it or not, and waving your developing genitalia about amongst others. For seriously shy boys this must have been deeply problematic and worse that they would not have been able to say anything about it to anyone in those days.

Like Michael said, I was often watched by two teachers as I showered in school. There was always someone looking in at us, and very often two. The showers had two open ends and were a long design. A teacher would stand either end. One end we would all be counted in by a teacher with a tap on the left shoulder as we went, on my scar shoulder, and when showered we would be counted back out by the other teacher the other end. The 'exit' watching teacher would operate the turn on tap and water temperature. He'd wait until we were all in and lined up ready, so if there was a sluggish boy taking time to undress then the rest of us were standing there waiting without water looking a bit awkward. I suppose we are talking 20 of us in this situation on a normal day. We had to share one shower head to two boys. If you tried to keep your head dry you'd be told 'head under'. The exit teacher sometimes changed the water temperature while we showered, sometimes it was too hot and sometimes it was too cold. We had to use this strange glycerin like soap the school provided, it looked a similar colour to the stuff that came out the hand washing dispenser in the toilets. Whe the PE teacher on 'exit' duty turned the tap off we could file ourselves out past him back to our benches and a towel, which we didn't take to the shower area. There was one sick teacher who liked to turn the water to ice cold before turning it off and letting us file out. He maintained he couldn't help it but he was lying. All my P.E teacher were fine by me but there's always one in any school isn't there.

I don't mind school showers as such, or the required group nudity they involved, which is unavoidable. They were necessary if we were going to get stuck into P.E properly. For me it's not about doing such things, but the whole manner in which they were done. Just a little bit of dignity and respect wouldn't hurt, and I just think that the manner I had to take school showers, even though the teachers were basically sound, lacked a certain dignity about it, as I described above. We didn't need two men standing guard over us all incase we dared escape or something, almost imprisoning us until they allowed us to leave the situation, or ordering us exactly how to shower ourselves, and then some clown finding it a lark to freeze us and get a reaction for it. Just let us get on with it and stand aside, a nothing to see here kind of approach. Unless done sensibly such a not unreasonable situation can be made demeaning quite easily.

So there you have it, two tier behaviour at my Southampton secondary. A common type of story that can be told across the country from hundreds of thousands, if not millions of men, with or without sisters to compare with.

Thanks for reading this long post, I'd appreciate any feedback or similar accounts from others and will read with interest.

Hi Michael,

I can hear the anger coming through in your post.

You may have touched on another important detail. While the girls had to shower at my school I don't know how often or regularly they had to. Funnily enough it wasn't something I ever checked out with any of my sisters.

What I can state is that the atmosphere between the girls and their games teachers seemed much more to be one of genial collaboration in stark contrast to the borstal boys atmos engendered by our senior games teacher.

This teacher hated me by the way. He called me back and had a right go at me just for walking between him and another teacher he was talking to when I was trying to navigate a crowded corridor filled with kids in transit between classes. The same day it was my year's first ever games lesson and when he came to my name in the register he just had to remark, in front of every boy in my year, most of whom I didn't know and felt wary of, "We've already met, haven't we?" Later on after that same lesson, experiencing my first ever school shower, I tentatively stuck my head under the hot jet of the water. I turned to see him glowering at me. "Never mind your head boy! Get the rest of yourself under there!"

I was not a badly behaved kid. In fact I was a particularly shy, timid child who was striving to mind his own business and yet already drawing the bullies. But that wasn't good enough. I can only speculate that that made me one of those 'namby-pamby' kids that men like him lie awake at night grinding their teeth over.

It wasn't as bad as what you describe but I am sick and tired of this poisonous old trope that boys need to be toughened up. Some boys are simply tougher than others. And as I have remarked in a previous post, plenty of the boys I remember from secondary school didn't need any more 'toughening up'.

Honestly, male PE teachers were a breed apart. Every man above a certain age remembers a PE teacher like this. What did they do to them to make them so angry? It's like they were raised in cages and poked with sticks to make them hostile, like those Daily Mail devil dogs.

I do wonder whether a painfully shy schoolgirl would ever have been treated that badly. Then or now.

Our gym teacher's "office" was in a cage in full view of the communal shared showers. Mandatory communal showering, which they forced me into completely naked each week was traumatic for lots of boys (and girls too, I'm sure), particularly for kids who are gay, unsure of their sexuality, late or precocious developers, insecure in their self image. What a stupid thing to do to kids at that age like us.

A politician once said that "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics", and Christine, bandying about statistics in true civil service style reminded me of that. Or perhaps one of those 19th century "water cure" quack doctors, who opened up their own spas in their back gardens. So boys will be healthier, stronger and fitter by taking the water cure. As girls are not forced to, what does it say about their state of health, as many, apparently don';t have to submit to the schools whims.

I agree with YT that this is discrimination of the most blatant sort.

I have to emphasize that both then and now, I make a practice to shower every day, twice in hot summer weather, but what Christine and others probably don't even know, is that there are still far too many "Mr Quinlan's" and "Mr Roberts" around, who get sexual gratification from looking at naked boys at their ablutions. I have mentioned these two charmers before, so I will not rehearse their behaviour here (in the case of Mr Q two criminal convictions, several years apart). If you go back over my posts earlier this year you can read of him if you so wish. Suffice it to say, he enjoyed looking at boys so much he locked them into the school swimming pool and made them swim sans trunks.

Perhaps local government pen pushers would do well to consider those sorts of individuals behaviour before making their rules and recommendations, and ensure privacy for boys as much as they seem to consider the feelings of girls..

There's a lot of sense to the thinking that we had to remove more clothing than was necessary so they could do secret check ups on whether our own parents were beating us black and blue.

In recent years you always hear strories of parents hurting their children, perhaps it's easier for them to get away with it nowadays if more children are not doing things the way we used to which involved removing most or all of our clothing regularly at school. It makes it easier to hide bruising or cuts over the body.

Agree with so many comments on here at the moment regards double standards and circumcision.

Re: Christine stats, and Yours Truly on double standards based on gender.

Why were boys expected to shower in school more than girls? The stats posted by the ofsted lady from ten years ago at 47% to 32% in favour of boys in school supports my own first hand knowledge at school in the late 70s into the early 80s when boys year on year had to shower whilst girls could avoid it easily or not even be asked. That's fact as I lived it and saw it. Boys in PE knew the girls got away without showers and that their teachers went easy over it and basically didn't enforce it very often, but my goodness we boys faced showers all the time, every time and not only that we were watched over sometimes by two teachers at the same time as if none of us could be trusted to do it. Just going in was not good enough, we had to do the showering bit right or not be let out until we had. I definitely know we put a lot of effort into PE and didn't slack off any time, because we weren't allowed to. We always got pushed to the limit, making us pant with exhaustion and my body would frequently ache after it all and be in a state where a shower was essential. So I guess my school's boys had good cardiovascular health then.

Alan,

Whatever. You could still just clean it regularly though. Job done.

Christine,

Yours was a very scholarly, sociological post.

Just one question: why was the imposition of a shower requirement discretionary? The problem with discretion is we all know which gender that 'discretion' is much more likely to be directed towards. Your own statistics bear this out, where almost half of boys had to shower but only a third of girls.

The same with the bare chest rule which you express approval of. A similarly minimal kit should be extend to the girls (with tops of course!), ie polo-shirt, shorts and bare feet and a equivalently minimal kit outside. Not the blatant PE kit inequality a couple of posters have recounted here.

Fairness is vital. Unfairness is something young people are very quick to pick up on and lingers as another bad memory, of school PE or whatever.

Christine thankyou for providing that valuable information on here, I found it fascinating and I think I agree with your points. It all sounds logical to me.

If you know nobody is taking a shower after the gym at school or outside on the playing fields then maybe those places don't make the youngsters go full pelt at whatever they are doing, perhaps deliberately, so they don't either get too sweaty, or a bit mucky and sweaty outside, whilst if you know you're getting showered at the end of it all then it doesn't matter you can work out at full max, sweat through or dive onto the dirty ground and know you'll be clean at the end of it all.

Most of us here when we were at school had to take showers after any type of PE, and even if you weren't shy or insecure about yourself I don't think many of us would go as far as to say we loved doing it but it did at least seem the sensible thing to do looking back, and schools had a more common sense tough love kind of approach. It was good for us even if we didn't think so in the moment.

Do you have any knowledge about the points Matthew makes about teachers making discreet observations of school children in PE, showering or even school check ups for signs of family domestic abusive behaviour?

Hi Mark,

Thank you for your reply.

The procedure you describe only goes to reinforce my lifelong impression that there was huge variance in the presence and administration of these medical exams from school to school.

In my case there was no disrobing in front of anyone else - well, apart from my girl classmate, who really shouldn't have been allowed to be there.

On the other hand my pants definitely did come off both times and stayed with the rest of my clothes in another room.

I see another poster down below (sorry can't remember your name) has stated that they had medicals every year in secondary school just like this friend I remember. Again I was not that unlucky and the thought of a full intrusive medical exam in my teens absolutely makes me shudder.

As regards that woman examiner who was curt with you, well I wish I could say that surprised me. I'll bet she was nicer to the girls the next day. Women have always been harder on boys than on girls. Primary school teachers are a case in point. I look forward to the day when women are called out publicly for their endemic sexism the way men (rightly) have been for decades. But it is so endemic in their natures and the gender focus in the media and academia is so turned on men that that day will never arrive.

To Yours Truly and Danncy C, I would just respectfully point out that millions of American men, and, indeed Israeli men, in both the present and the past have undergone the procedure and it seems to have done them no harm whatsoever. I know the Americans, especially, do have a loud "Intactivist" minority, and use terms like "mutilation", which no doubt does have a detrimental effect on some men and their mental health, but it remains the normal procedure for a majority of the population there. I am sure if it wasn't that neonatal procedure that upsets the minority, they would find some other cause - having brown eyes instead of blue, perhaps.

I was an Ofsted school inspector for a number of years. In 2014 one of our reports we published on the subject of physical education provisions and implementation practices in various school sectors for those aged 11 to 18 throughout the North West of England including the urban Manchester area and surrounding towns discovered that as of that point in time 47% of schools still made a requirement to shower for boys, and 32% did the same for girls. As of 2024 all state and independant schools that cater for intakes aged eleven and over must by law maintain such a provision in full working order, and this gets checked. Usage is entirely a discretionary matter at individual locations.

What we did find was that in locations where a showering facility was not encouraged or made use of that these pupils appeared to be less physically active than in those where pupils did so, and also that showering after PE was less common in the more deprived areas and much more common in better off more affluent locations, and that these pupils were also more generally active and engaged.

We also found in eight schools in Manchester and Bolton that required showering in 2014 that those pupils had a much better reported cardiorespiratory fitness level that was self reported to us. Lower rates of showering, especially among girls led to lower rates of cardiorespiratory fitness in those girls.

We actually discovered that in the 47% of schools where showering remained for boys at those ages and the lesser 32% for girls, that these schools were physically more active during PE, significantly so, and that showering at school brings considerable health benefits to those that do it. We had a report citing effects on 4000 boys and 2000 girls. I believe a subsequent report elsewhere in the country reported broadly similar findings in line with the NW of England ten years ago.

If you think about this, it makes sense. Children many years ago were definitely fitter and more active in school and just taking the state sector alone 50 years ago, my generation, almost 100% of boys and girls were expected to be placed in the showers on completion of PE by their schools, and they were a healthier, fitter and less overweight generation, and happier too.

Whilst I have no information about the effects of shirtless physical education I think it's fair to state that it goes hand in glove with what I've already said, and that it was largely considered the healthy option that fostered the best results overall in terms of activity levels. I frequently observed such physical education taking place across schools our various teams visited across the NW England during the 1996-2014 period.

Today in 2024 if you are a pupil in any school in England or Wales and are aged eleven and above and go to a school that does not openly require showering or even states this as fact, pupil or parents are legally entitled to request availablity to shower after a physical education class and do so and this has to be delivered. In practice however this rarely happens.

Snipping non consenting children for non medical reasons is grievous bodily harm in my book and abuse that should be deplored. Nobody, not even the parents, should have the right to alter such a fundamental part of another male human being's body like that. The hygiene issue is a red herring. My mother taught both me and my brother about hygiene down there at a very young age. It's not difficult to maintain is it. I had an annual underwear only medical at secondary every October and the first year I was there I had to lower my pants to my knees for about 10 seconds and "prove" that I was in good working order, which I was. A very uncomfortable and unnecessary moment. I'd proved many times to my own mother to her satisfaction that I was okay in that department and if she's been concerned the family GP was easily available circa 1981. The idea that a school GP would think I needed a procedure like that and put the idea in my parents minds disgusts me. I saw someone on here say just that a couple of years back. Luckily I know my parents would have ignored such a thing and always respected my wishes. So I agree fully Yours Truly with your view.

At school I only knew one person among all the countless numbers I knew and saw who had been circumcised and he was one of my closest friends. I remember feeling very sorry for him and I didn't think it made him look as nice as the other boys and me, and he was always very self conscious of the difference he had to show to us all and I was aware he would try to cover himself down below in the showers at school, or even when we went swimming and shared just a cubicle with me and him to ourselves.

The 1970s and 1980s might have had much more liberal standards of modesty or chastity than they do now. My guess is that had at least in part originated with the free-love revolution of the 1960s before them.

Because you will notice how both 70s and 80s films tend to have much more gratuitous shirtless shots in them especially in scenes involving sports-lockers though so I am sure the movies sort of reflected that aspect of the time.

I did continual shirtless gym in school, through the whole of primary and secondary, so quite a long time. I accepted it as something normal I had to do but disliked mixing it with girls sometimes because there were definitely boys around me who liked being shirtless a lot and even more when girls hung about with us, it was obvious some were showing off at times because they had their bodies on display like that.