Burnley Grammar School

I do not young boys worry about having their tops of in a pool. As a complete contrast to Tanya's comments, On Sunday we were at a family event in my sister in laws garden. There were children form our families present, and there was a paddling pool. two girls aged about 6 or 7 had brought swimming costumes the boy about the same age had not. Not problems his parents took off his shorts and he went in in his pants. he was not bothered just wanted to enjoy the water.
Interestingly enough, I notice that when we go on holiday to Spain, when we are on the beach there are many families where the children run a round without a stitch on and these are sometimes a bolder than infants.
covering up must be a "British thing!"

Tanya, surely the reason for boys to wear t -shirts in a garden pool on the hottest day of the year is protection from UV radiation. The sun doesn't shine very fiercely in an indoor swimming pool!

Countering your observations today Jim and there was recently a chat about a school making the kids, boys as well, all wear tops in the pool. Peering across to my near neighbour this afternoon she had a large pool inflated with all the kids around. All the boys were in the pool in t-shirts and shorts, not one of the 5 or 6 of them was how you'd expect to see them. It made me wonder why and if she's been infected by some of the stranger ideas mentioned on one of the other threads recently. Such a massive contrast to what Harry wrote here last week about his own childhood. I don't believe all those boys at the age of about 10 were all crushingly shy to do that. It must have been an active adult decision surely.

To Fiona's point

Coming back home mid morning today the two homes across the road from me had three bare chested window cleaners doing them, at the same time as a refuse lorry came along and two of the four chaps on that were shirtless too and then what looked like an unmarked parcel delivery driver put something through next door, no top on and then a cycling young man went past without a top. So I made that an astonishing 7 guys at the same time where I live inside a couple of minutes. I know it's very hot but that's quite unusual. I bet each of them probably loved a shirtless PE lesson when they were at school if the can work with their top off so easily.

Comment by: Grant on 8th July 2022
I saw the comment about middle school showers and wonder if anyone can beat the age I started to. I was 8 years and 2 months old when I started middle school.

Possibly can do that. Uppingham Junior School September 1971. My birthday is in August and we fully strip showered at that school before the end of the month I started, so probably I was about 8 years & a month or so. A couple of p/e lessons per week, Monday late morning and early Friday afternoons. I still have a yellowy old timetable for the 71/72 year, and later ones. I don't remember ever getting very messy doing junior level p/e or getting pushed to any extremes. But we always came back to the sound of running water and filed in line into the showers and stood around under the running water under male supervision until told to exit and dry off. It was just a warm water shower, no products, soap or anything very noticeable from memory. We all used to hang our p/e kits up in our cloakroom and just leave them there all term unless they went home for a wash, and that included the damp towels which would in my case go home just once a month and sometimes hang on a hot radiator to dry in the cloakroom. Nearly all of us used to leave our outdoors p/e footwear in the cloakroom for the entire school term without taking it home until holidays.

Another thing from there was they had a latrine style urinal in the same room and some of us would go up to it for a quick wee entirely naked before our shower, never afterwards, completely unabashed about the whole thing. Maybe getting stuck into these things early in life helps foster a healthy self worth and body image rather than waiting until later on when it looks like problems begin developing for some at an older age suddenly facing the demands of the school showers.

This goes back to the late 70s and if you deliberately left your games kit at home in order to miss doing PE outdoors, especially on a wet day the punishment was to strip down to only your pants, sit outside at a desk in the corridor near the main PE office and gym area of school and do written work like that while everyone else went outside. This happened to me once alongside about four others on the same day and it was a great deterent to me but it did not seem to deter one or two hard core types who repeatedly got shunted into the corridor in their pants to work at a desk. I never understood the few that refused to learn the lesson and laid themselves open to that.

If that isn't the very definition of taking clothing off as a punishment/humiliation effect then I don't know what is. It seems an open and shut case of it to me and it was a favourite sanction for boys at my school.

If you forgot kit on an inside PE day without a very good reason and a note then it was down to just your pants and get out there for the lesson itself, which made it far worse than doing the lesson properly in the first place in regulation shorts and striped vest. Yet despite this I well recall a hardcore bunch who set themselves up to face this sanction and never learnt and always seemed to expect a different outcome rather foolishly.

A good example of using being shirtless to belittle. How inappropriate. Some of those who say that they think shirtlessness was used as punishment or control are not wrong. Add plain and simple belittling to that list now. Actually the teachers I disliked the most myself were never part of the PE dept but the academic subjects I took. It would have taken more than a mars bar to entice me to get my top off in class, they were bought rather cheap. What a weirdo chemistry teacher he sounds but it does sound par for the course for the kind of crap some teachers got away with back then.

Going back to spring 1985 time. We had a rather weird chemistry teacher at my school. He took my lessons for a couple of years. I say weird because he was a really old fashioned curmudgeon even though he was not really all that old. Bearded with national health circular specs and never seen taking our lesson in anything other than his long white lab coat he hung over his suit and tie. He always came across as permanently exasperated at everyone and everything.

He also ran the school tuck shop and had access to a lot of sweets which he would use as currency to buy pupils acquiescence to certain requests he would make from time to time.

One time I was in one of his chemistry lessons and we were all gathered around the main desk up front to view some experiment with a heap of equipment set up. The kind of stuff that always involved test tubes, bunsens, gases and liquids changing colour or making a right pong.

Before he got going he asked for a "strong volunteer with muscles" to hold some of the equipment aloft for a period during the experiment. Some hands went up and I remember a lad called Gary getting picked. He went up and then got asked by my chemistry teacher to prove he had strong enough muscles to hold part of the experiment up for a minute or two above the desk. Next thing he's actually telling him to undo his tie and take his shirt completely off while he does the experiment demonstration. You didn't tend to argue with this chemistry teacher of ours, the look on Gary's face was a picture and he quite clearly didn't want to but reluctantly got his shirt off in the chemistry lesson for the next five minutes, to much amused mocking from quite a few and wise cracks from a girl or two in the mixed class. A few moments later he wanted another volunteer "with muscles" again to hold another part of the experiment up alongside Gary still doing his part. This time no hands went up and so he resorted to using his tuck shop currency to get another lad from class up and someone was brought off with the promise of a mars bar to get their shirt off as well while doing this chemistry experiment. It was very weird to see these two from class standing there aiding an experiment in a chemistry lesson without their shirts on as we all looked on. It kind of distracted from the actual purpose of what we were doing. I remember Gary who'd volunteered first ended up with a couple of chocolate bars from the tuck shop.

A very weird teacher who used the tuck shop to bribe boys to get their shirts off like that. I think he may have just enjoyed embarrassing people and know he had no problem belittling anyone in various ways all the time. What made his request all the stranger was he made both lads he called up to aid him wear large protective clear goggles over their eyes at the same time as telling them to remove their shirts to prove their muscle strength, thus leaving their bodies completely unprotected from any chemical mishap that might occur.

Trying to get inside the heads of some teachers was an impossible task.

Trevor - and not just "men and boys of all ages". Round here, - English East Midlands- many women and girls are out and about in front of males with their tops off. "My bra is enough" seems to be this summer's fashion statement.

With this hot weather now starting up no doubt there will be many boys and men of all ages taking off their tops in public. Are we supposed to ban that, in the way some schools now want boys to cover their bodies in swimming lessons?

You didn't need to re-explain yourself to me Robert, I think anyone sensible would understand things exactly as you've gone on to explain them. Just old fashioned good old common sense which isn't as abundant as it used to be with some among us.

Luke - are you against boys in school stripping their tops off in school in front of girls? Is it really such a big deal to do that at such a young age or even a bit older. The boy with the scar may have felt different I'll give you that though.

If you had a big scar or birthmark on the upper body or other disfigurement should that have always meant in school anyone should have been allowed to remain covered in situations where they would have been expected to wear nothing on top, such as PE? Speaking as someone with an appendicitis scar I had at a young age.

I saw the comment about middle school showers and wonder if anyone can beat the age I started to. I was 8 years and 2 months old when I started middle school, born in late July and by mid September of the year I started middle school, 1975, I had my first shower after a P.E lesson at school and continued doing so most weeks thereafter.

I never knew it was going to happen until it happened, nobody had told me. I just remember one day we finished our lesson, some running and jumping outside, and the shower in the corner of the changing room was switched on and we had to go and use it with each other and we had to dry ourselves with our P.E tops or a paper sheet because we did not have a towel that time. I also remember a boy having a really big cry about being confronted with it and getting let off that once. The teacher was female that year. I didn't seem to mind very much and got used to communal class nudity from an early age which at least prevented me getting any major hang ups about such things later on. The teacher would stand at the door ajar half keeping an eye on us all.

It's amazing just how normal it all seemed. It was just another one of those things you did in school without giving it much thought. Everybody was doing it, both boys and also girls. I'm now 55 and there surely can't be anyone my age, or perhaps from about 30-35 who went through school, whatever school they attended, state or private, wherever it was, who didn't shower weekly as part of the P.E aftercare routine. It was literally all of us wasn't it and can anyone say they ever saw people refuse to do it?

I used to have two P.E lessons each week at middle school and then three at comprehensive, plus we were encouraged to attend regular after school sport club events which I did when older in comprehensive. Even though these were after the school day had ended and sometimes on the weekend on a Saturday, we would still be told to shower even though technically it was in what was effectively our own time. Nobody seemed to complain.

I stayed on at school and did two years in the sixth, and would often use my free periods in the sixth to do P.E or even help supervise or take part with younger years. In the sixth if we had taken part voluntary with a P.E lesson we could be asked to supervise the changing room and as a 17 year old I remember two or three times sharing the shower with third years about three years younger than me even though it was not something those in the sixth had to do anymore but I was more than used to it. Doing P.E and not ending it with a shower didn't feel normal or clean to me, it was automatic just to do so.

I saw the You Tube clip that has been spoken about a lot on here. I would have done the same as those boys did in front of the camera and not thought a great deal about it. If I now had the ability to look back at myself on film like that as a kid from my own middle school age 8/11 and see my undeveloped body with me and my friends tiny pre-pubescent willies wiggling as we walked out the shower I think I'd be having a good smile about it all, certainly not getting too upset at the sight and thinking how dreadful they made us do such things like that back in the 70s.

Let's not demonise all this kind of thing too much. Nearly all of us over a certain age did all this and nearly all of us came out of it just fine and are not feeling mentally scarred for life by it, even if lots have strong memories of doing it and how they felt.

I think it's the clammed up attitudes now that are more of a problem than those a few years ago on the 20th century methods.

Let me clarify myself as I knew some of my previous comments would cause some annoyance on here for some.

In a hypothetical situation if my class had been the one the film crew had as their subject matter like on that Good Health edition I would have had no issues with the filming exactly as it came over on that video. I would have expected everyone in that class that day to have behaved exactly the same as they normally did irrespective of the camera being present. I would not have expected to have gone around asking each boy individually if they were alright about it and gain their active consent. I would have simply told them what to do and expected it of them all with no fussing about from anyone.

I would have told them all to get on with things, ignore the camera and the crew, change and shower as normal and that's it. Some have interpreted this as me actually choosing to force boys in a class of mine to shower naked in front of the camera like in that video of Good Health schools televsion.

That is NOT the case.

If any one of my own class in that situation, or a number of them, or all of them, had expressed their concerns and desire not to be placed in such a situation in front of a camera for a programme intended for broadcast mostly for the school community, albeit on national televsion for anyone to view, then I would never have pushed them into doing so for a moment. Anyone would have been able to speak freely and tell me, or anyone else connected to it, the film maker or whoever else, that they did not wish to appear. It would have been respected.

Now that probably happened at the school in question in that video. I sense that there is a good chance that some boys might have declined to be filmed naked in the shower or in the changing room, or even the gym and so we never saw them at all and that there wishes were respected. I'd also say that was probably extended to the actual PE lesson itself, for both the boys and girls in the gymnasium.

What I'm not saying is that those who took part in Good Health were volunteers, they probably were not as such. Rather that anyone would have actively had to make a decision that they did not wish to take part and give their reason if they didn't and having done so I'm quite sure their wish would have been respected without pressure on them.

But do you know what, I would be very surprised if many, if any at all actually piped up an objection at all. I bet most of them loved the fact they were going to end up on television, yes even with their clothes off. At the ages of ten or eleven those ages don't tend to think ahead too deeply about these issues.

So I can assure anyone reading that nobody, not me, or anyone would be using compulsion against anyone in that situation. Compulsion was only used in normal lessons and there is nothing wrong with that. Showering and being made to do it against the will in school does have a long hold in many ex pupils memories I've long realised.

There are a number of these on You-Tube, all featuring the same cast of kids, some indoors and at least one outdoors. A boat in the background of the stage seems to be a common feature, as does the caption in Chinese, 2020?????????????? ? ???, which Google translates as "2020 Coconut Oil Elementary School Ethnic Experiment October Results Published - Grade 3".

I wonder if the dance action depicts some form of maritime expedition, with the scantily clad boys representing warriors or seafarers, stripped for action, while the more modestly dressed girls are the "stay at home" mums, looking after the kids while their menfolk are away.

I'm sure someone came on here some months ago and mentioned doing something like that at school on stage against their will didn't they where all the boys were stripped off like that in front of everyone else. Can anyone remember the details or who it was?

A while back, there was a comment that spoke of Taiwanese schools forcing their male students to strip to the waist in the presence of their female classmates. That comment provided photos as proof. Now, there is video evidence to corroborate, though this may not necessarily be the same school.

https://youtu.be/idcPPqXSf5c?t=103

This seems to be a dancing choir of boys and girls. While the girls are appropriately clothed as expected, the boys right next to them are all stripped to the waist and to the hip, wearing nothing but a skimpy loincloth even though the room appears to be air conditioned. One of the boys standing barely an inch away from his female classmate has a prominent scar on his abdomen, yet he is stripped to the waist all the same.

Given the fact that he spends a lot of time staring down at his exposed scar, could this indicate discomfort with the way he's dressed? Did he or the other boys agree to this?

Re: Good Health - it surprises me that none of the pupils in that have yet searched it out and written a comment underneath, especially some of those boys, now men of course. I don't think I'd forget the day that TV came to school in those circumstances.

I agree with Hugh and Jason. I think that Robert has been unfairly criticised. When I first saw the TV programme I couldn't really see much wrong with it. I do believe that the critics have applied today's standards to the past. The answer to the question Jason asked in his first paragraph is surely an increased concern with child protection plus a touch of traditional British anxiety about nudity, which would have been absent if this conversation had taken place in those northern European countries where nudity is regarded in a more matter of fact way.

I was at a boys' grammar school in the '60s. We had a decent lot of schoolmasters who expected us to do as we were told. We didn't think we had rights so we didn't worry about them being infringed. By today's standards it was tough, but having to get on with things without making a fuss made us resilient. As for communal nudity, we quickly got used to it and didn't pay much attention to each other, which helped me to be less self-conscious about my skinny body.

If I had been mistreated my parents would have been the first to complain; but if I had fussed about nude showers my kindly father would have just laughed. But then he had a wartime soldier's perspective of what did and did not matter in life. In retrospect, how right he was.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 30th June 2022 at 23:52

Thank you for your informative post, you have encapsulated perfectly what I was trying to convey and done a much better job.

I think too many here don't understand the scale of change that came about starting initially in the late 1980s - remember back then, no one believed that children really were abused in any context at all. I can remember being very sceptical when I first heard of doctors finding cases and that was the Cleveland case in 1987 where there was much wrong with the diagnosis and it was found after a judicial investigation that the case was flawed however it remained around and people became more alert to the possibilities.

To suggest that anyone really had a concept of child abuse in the 1960s, 1970s and first half of the 1980s is living in cloud cuckoo land, it just wasn't true.

When I moved from the navy to general practice, an old and very experience GP who is long dead told me that a lot of children were 'shirkers' and very few parents had anything but their child's best interests at heart and teachers the same. If he had a lad in front of him who was shirking, he wasn't averse to writing 'six of the best' on the prescription and handing it to the lad's father. I suspect on most occasions he did that it's what happened.

There would have been a few who were not well motivated, parents, teachers and strangers but they were a few. I doubt many PE teachers even noticed naked lads being naked - to try to explain, when you work in any environment you get used to it and for anyone working in healthcare, bare flesh is quite normal. You really don't notice after a while and I would imagine in the world of sport it's very much the same, you just get used to it.

So while there are those who might be uncomfortable, you are in a small minority, most would really not be that bothered and most would not have the problem you are verbalising. Try please to get used to that idea.

Harry, i like your final paragraph. Brings back memories of going to the fields during the school holidays. Taking lunch with us . A group of mixed aged boys stripping of and jumping into the nearby lake without a stitch on, and not worrying about who was around at the time.
As far as I know our parents thought that as we were all together there was "safety in numbers" and no one ever did bother us.

I'll go along with everything Robert said. Knock me back if you like for saying it. I saw nothing wrong with that programme either. Nudity was always expected in schools as part of the whole P.E regime at senior level and even some primary levels as some have pointed out just recently. When did it start to become such a big deal and more importantly why did it? I'd see no reason to put up with lads getting worked up over a camera taking a few seconds of film. I don't think the mere fact of nudity in itself should preclude boys from doing what they are told in that kind of situation. It's all above board. I'd make them do it, not offer choices and start negotiating. They're in school and it would actually be a good hard life lesson to learn that you have to do things in life that you don't want to or that make you uncomfortable.

I always thought having a shower after P.E was a good physical education in itself actually. It gave me the opportunity to see others and notice that while we are all basically much the same we also have differences in our make up that are all quite normal. One thing I've noticed is that nobody ever dares admit to like using the school communal shower as an experience, so let me be the first to break that taboo, and no I'm not same sex orientated.

Any teacher of any subject, not just the physical one, who was indifferent to what his/her pupils thoughts and anxieties were should simply not be in the profession and would be a bloody fool.

I don't think Robert you are that fool. I think you are writing in more general terms of back in the day rather than a personal own view but clarification would be ideal either way.

Robert Coulson - thank you for your helpful and accurate contribution. Clearly both you and Hugh were not only around in those dim and distant days as was I but you both actually remember how things were then. It is sad that some people still want to judge times gone by by todays standards.
I, too, have often wished we could combine the best of previous eras with the best of today though I'm not sure how much would come from either.

Our teacher contributor on here said the following;

"The concept of personal privacy or private space will not have even come into the equation, neither will the individual personal thoughts of any of the boys to any great degree."

You are effectively saying the youngsters had no voice then by implication, even if asked to undertake something so significant revolving around their personal selves, their privacy and how they would be seen well beyond the school gates, in other schools and homes around the country.

In your workplace do you think your own privacy and personal space and thoughts were irrelevant too? No they were not as an adult so why should they be as a youngster. Surely that should be even more important, not less or non existent.

The same words in the same post yet people can often interpret what they read quite differently. I refer to Robert's excellent last contribution, and the belligerent tone of Christy's response to it.

First of all, who can argue with such direct honesty.

I didn't read Robert as saying he'd actively force anybody to do anything. All I read was that he would have expected the class to do so without making a fuss and follow his instruction and as he said 'just get on with it'. But that's not the same as assuming he would have forced any boys in his class to take a filmed shower for a TV show if they objected. Of course he wouldn't even in the dark ages as some think of anything before about 1990.

I may be quite wrong here but I think if he had some in class who were very unhappy he would have set them aside completely. If the whole class had the same view then the programme makers would simply have had to do something else and drop that part. No film maker was going to want under age subjects placed into such a situation they were very unhappy about and I'm sure no teacher would either, even in the days of the 70's and 80's.

I hope I'm not being naive in saying that. Perhaps Robert would like to agree with me and clarify my reading of his comments. If he comes back and says he would have compelled a class of his to provide the kind of shower footage from Good Health against their will if some or all had resisted it then I condemn that without a doubt.

Another thing worthy of a mention is that back then in school we did all seem to just get on with it a lot of the time and we did bow to authority figures and accept what they said to us unquestioningly even if many of us quietly to ourselves didn't like something. The days when we respected teachers, police, doctors. Looking at the Lodge Middle School video of them all I'm sure that's how it was with that lot, they got their heads down and got on with it and trusted their teachers. There are probably quite a few other examples out there of that kind of thing, undiscovered or forgotten about.

Very many years ago when every summer seemed to go on forever and the sun always seemed to shine brightly, or so our memories think, I would go along to a nearby weir close to home with a group of others, sometimes up to a dozen or so, some a bit older, some a bit younger, some siblings, ages around 8 to 14 and we'd kick everything off and pile it up and go bathing and splashing about in this weir with absolutely nothing on. Just local lads from our area, not even all at the same schools or anything. It was actually rather a dangerous weir but good fun. On a couple of occasions we got shouted at to all get out by whoever looked out for the area but the next day would often go back and do the same. We couldn't wait to get our stuff off and jump in. It was a public area, anyone could see us. We didn't get in trouble for being naked but for doing something in a slightly unsafe place. It was the kind of thing I always thought most boys were all about, having fun and not giving a damn.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 30th June 2022 at 23:52

Thank you for your candid appraisal of times past, it's what I remember more or less exactly.

Again, I see snowflakes who want to apply today's standards have already started whining and whinging about how things used to be. Give up and save your faux outrage, you can't change the past and it wasn't as bad as you would like to portray it. We grew up, healthy, happy lads.

Quelle surprise!

It's just ex-teachers proving everything we thought about some of them. He proves the words in my last post perfectly.

It is what he's saying though. Troubling isn't it.

It's not teachers like Coulson who are on telly like that though is it, repeated ad infinitum and now online.

Let me get this right, I've read it through a couple of times, is this teacher (Robert Coulson) actually saying he'd have mandated (let's just say forced) his own class to do the same as in that schools health tv show during those years. Just hang on here a minute, you're employed to provide an education, a PE lesson or whatever else you teach, not to provide real life stripped off showering extras for tv companies and then tell the kids they have to comply (naked on tv!) to some director/producers wishes over and above the education you are there to provide. You'd be exceeding your permitted duties by a mile and have no right to make such demands. Diabolical! If you'd done that to me against my wishes I'd be up for taking some retrospective legal action believe me. I don't think any of the boys in the tv show were forced to do anything they didn't like and I'm sure they all chose to take part like they did. I just cannot get my head around the prospect they might have been forced by that teacher into the showering scenes.