Burnley Grammar School

Worth highlighting the following line I think;

Comment by: Andre on 19th May 2022 at 18:10
Any humiliation was what the teacher and kids said to you but not the mere act of showing up in just your shorts in itself.

Clearly very prickly Alan, you didn't read closely what I said either did you. Just chill man!

Don't be the victim - be the victor.

In an ideal world where nobody said anything negative and all was friendly and full of positive encouragment would you still have found your situation humiliating just for being asked to wear a shorts only kit Alan? Is your view that being asked to do PE like that is the humiliation itself, just so I'm clear.

We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and I defy anyone to say they didn't compare themselves with others around them either favourably or unfavourably. It's automatic.

Every single school seems to have its clique of undesirables doesn't it, those who just love to make others feel bad about themselves. The story Richard told from the swim lesson really makes the blood boil because you just know that those three louts who did that probably thought it was one big lark and funny in their own warped minds and yet 27 others had to suffer the consequences even if they got booted out of school.

I wonder how many adults are ever prepared to admit to being school bullies, not too many I bet you, wasn't there someone on here recently who met one in denial at a reunion or something.

Andre: I will be kind and suggest to you, that you did not bother to read my last post. My teacher habitually made remarks about me (and one other lad - me for being too thin the other for being overweight) on a regular basis, every week - if you do not think that is humiliaing for a self conscious teenager, frankly there is no point in talking to you. Have a nice life.

Liam = at least one ladybird book depicted a lone boy, minus shirt and vest participating in "music and movement" with a number of girls clad in vests and knickers,

https://www.flickr.com/photos/larkingabout/392753573

Can't find any pictures where the girls had their vests off as well.

Richard - another way in which my PE experience seems to be rather different to most reported here is that at neither school was there any concern as to whether or not we wore anything under our shorts, or even under our shirts in the non-topless situations. The nearest we came to any form of teacherly concern as to our underwear was when I was twelve or thirteen. Following an incident in which one of my classmates, going commando at the time, as most of us did by choice, received a blow in a tender location. The teacher stopped the lesson to let him recover, using the hiatus to advise us that we ought to at least consider wearing some form of supporting garment. A certain item was mentioned, but as none of us had ever heard of it, the message probably passed over our heads.

Alan how can you possibly accuse your school of humiliating you just for asking you to dress in a way that is perfectly within the norms of physical education? Any humiliation was what the teacher and kids said to you but not the mere act of showing up in just your shorts in itself.

A little story of mine about schooldays humiliation.

If you want to know what horrible humiliation is at school then I can help out with this. Back around April/May 1980 two boys my age, 14, got a month suspension and a third ringleader the same age was expelled from my school for 'attacking/humiliating' another boy in a ground floor changing room after a swimming lesson at our local leisure centre. With our teacher absenting himself briefly they pushed a large swing window wide open and got hold of him while naked taking his swimming trunks off and dangled him upside down outside the window by the ankles before letting him go. Trying to climb back in they slammed the window shut while some other boys attempted to re-open it and a minor scuffle broke out between sensible lads and these other class idiots. I was one of the innocent bystanders to it. The boy they hung out the window had to make a walk back around into the building with nothing on. This could be seen from the nearby busy road with people about, the reason they did it to him, and also other users in the leisure centre. The boy was in bits afterwards and did nothing to deserve it. It was completely random and unexpected.

The management of the swimming pool noticed what was going on before our actual teacher did and were absolutely furious at this behaviour and although it was only three idiots out of 25/30 of us our whole swim class for the rest of the school year was cancelled and we couldn't go back for the whole summer ahead as planned. Our school took it very seriously and even though I'd done nothing every single one of us in that class was made to write out a written apology in a separate letter in an exercise in collective guilt by association, which was a humiliation for us as well I suppose. Most of us hated those class idiots for wrecking everything for us and were very pleased with what happened to them.

I wonder how well that individual now remembers that, because I still do and it didn't happen to me directly. We all know kids have boisterous fun but all I remember was how determinedly nasty they were in this instance. That lad was humiliated badly, so were the rest of us and also the whole school felt humiliated too.

Your school change left you completely the opposite way around to me Chris. There was a big difference in my two schools. It kind of makes you wonder what makes varying schools behave so differently from each other where one insisted on a full and proper kit and another insisted you get it off and keep it off. I see nothing wrong being pro-choice with the whole thing and I applaud your own approach, but it seems the only pro-choice decision was our former teachers who liked compulsion one way or another.

Not so unusual Andrew. Infact I've got an i.t.a early learners reading book from about that same period when my oldest sister began school which has a lot of pictures in the style they used to do them in the well known ladybird books and on one page there is a drawn picture of a small boys and girls PE class with ten of them together all topless with lady teacher, the drawing makes them look about 6 or 7, and they must be a mixed class because I'm sure that half the boys were not going to school with pig tails in the 1970's even if some have top knots and fancy styles now that look quite androgynous. It's really no big deal is it, or at least it shouldn't be. It wasn't then but some would cast doubts in this day and age and find problems where none exists.

Well I can lay claim to doing mixed P.E class without my top on with the girls too. Okay so I was only five or six years old at the time we did this back in the mid seventies but time and again our rather severe old bag of a teacher who looked 80 but was likely 40 and had a horrible looking large grey bun on her head took the weekly P.E lesson on the floor of the school hall and none of us, either boys or girls had any tops on, topless the lot of us with nowt on our feet. We all changed together at our tables and put our clothes in front of us and just walked out the door and the hall was not too far away. This was how P.E was for the whole first year of my schooling. That seemed unremarkable then and who knows if any of our parents even knew that's how we did P.E with each other, I've no idea, but that's how we did it together, bare chest and foot. Some of it involved physical contact too, with piggy backs and linking up as well as using hoops and balancing along beams, throwing bean bags and so much more. If boys or girls didn't have their P.E shorts to wear on the day for whatever reason then it was just pants or knickers instead or possibly something found out of lost property if it was available. If I close my eyes and think back I can visualise these lessons so clearly in full colour and almost feel the atmopshere of that hall, the smell it gave off and the aroma of our teachers perfume. What I can't remember is anyone being bothered doing P.E like that.

Alan that's awful of your teacher to pass comment and lay you open to further comments from others in the class. What is a man like that thinking, and the trouble is that those who are sensitive get massively damaged by it while those who have thick skins can bat it away assertively. I'd have been the latter, I took no prisoners at school and gave as good as I got in anything, including PE. I was nothing like as confident as I probably looked but I tried to project otherwise and I think it worked.

To Chris, some girls can get envious of boys ability to strip off everything. I'll admit to being a bit so myself although even if it was possible I doubt any of my girlfriends in school would have been brave enough. Anyway there were lots of girls in school with me that found the bashful boys rather endearing, we don't all go for the over confident cocky ones with ripped torsos you know.

Dylan and Robbie: It is humiliatimng when said teacher makes personal remarks about your physique, to a classful of lads who take up the remarks. I don't want to say any more about it. That is how I felt and no hyperbole

"The one size fits all attitude is the problem."

This works both ways. When I changed secondary schools at age 15, I moved from a school where topless PE had been ithe norm for two or three years without any obvious opposition from pupils, to one where tops were absolutely required for all forms of physical activity bar swimming. A group of us who had come from topless-PE environments, and who were all anxious to continue the experience, tried again and again to get the PE master to let us take our tops off, but to no avail.

There is a vast difference between feeling humiliated, as Alan says he felt, to feeling self conscious or embarrassed if you ever got told to take your shirt off and have a bare top half of the body. Humiliation is a very strong word, why humiliation? It sounds like you took it very personally but I guess everyone else was exactly the same alongside you, or were you deliberately confronted with what you yourself looked like by others?

I never thought there was any real need for my teacher to tell our class to all take our shirts off for PE on a regular basis. We could have done it just as well with our tops on no problems. Some of my teachers were the shirts off kind and a couple of others weren't.

The one size fits all attitude is the problem. You get a class of boys and tell them all to do the same thing and some won't mind and others will. Shirtless PE is a great example of this actually. But you'd rarely get boys openly complain that they had to do a bare chest class like that would you and I strongly suspect that even you Alan who felt humiliated didn't give rise to your concerns either did you.

Dylan, I'd say it depends on whether shorts only is the regular kit for boys' PE, as it was at your school. If that's what you're used to in every lesson then I agree it probably wouldn't feel humiliating.
My PE teacher (early 90s) would sometimes make boys he caught misbehaving in class take their vests off and do the rest of the lesson in skins. That happened to me more than once and it did feel humiliating to be only boy in the class with his top off. Which I'm sure was the intention. It was effective because it made me feel like the odd one out, as well as impressing on me a connection between being barechested and being punished. Did anyone else feel that was the case, or just me?
At least when we did team sports as vests and skins - and I got chosen as a skin - there were plenty of other boys who also had to take their vests off, not only me.

@ Alan: Why did you say it was humiliating to wear shorts only? I suppose we are talking about an boys only class with all the pupils the same, i.e. barefeet and barechested? In my secondary school in the 80ies we wore white shorts only for all indoor activities and it never occurred to me that this could cause a feeling of humiliation.

There is a comment just yesterday from someone who saw a group doing a PE lesson as 'skins' Alan. It's on the Clitheroe school board. It was written as if he was surprised to see it.

To Jim: Shorts only, nothing else, which is humiliating when you reach your teens - and we are not talking about just after the war, though we had an ex Army teacher - we are talking about times when people were meant to be more informed and sympathetic to the feelings of others. This is the reason I get angry when I read on here of some teachers almost boasting about what they did and what they got away with. It is also the reason why I am glad kids don't have to go through the same draconian behaviour today. The YT video (depsite not being allowed footwear even a decade ago) shows a more tolerant teacher who isn't seeking to embarrass or belittle the pupils.

Chrid G - (Chris?)

I checked that video out. I think the judgement was probably being made based on the age of the boys in that gym. By their age I think you might expect them to have developed a bit more confidence in those gym tasks. I know I would have been expected to do much of that before I arrived at the big school.

Alan - you said the style of that video lesson would have made you comfortable. What made you uncomfortable in such classes out of interest? What was your gym class uniform/kit and how well did you manage?

Tony said:
"That gym lesson from 10 years ago, laughable. How many boys were trying to help someone over that horse? Aren't you meant to do it by yourself?"

Would you have been able to perform that particular vault st the first time of asking?
And I suspect the inevitable "elf and safety" would have intruded somewhere. This class was obviously learning a manoeuvre, not giving a polished display.

Jack I feel your frustration as it was for us too "one rule for them and another for us" we were required to be barefoot for our indoor PE classes but the teacher was always wearing nice trainers but if anyone dared enter the gym wearing anything on their feet they were sent back to the changing rooms and told to return barefoot.

You have to push a bit or you don't get very fit. In the end that's the point. I'd have hated that lesson because it looked like there was mostly a lot of standing about doing nothing very much whilst one or two at a time did things. Have a really good look at that 2012 gym and it becomes clear quite quickly that nobody is doing very much at all. Mind you even the old photo with this thread shows the boys standing about a bit. In my own gym/PE classes we got there and got stuck in right away. I don't remember very much standing about gazing at other in them. Most times as soon as we had all assembled it was a case of darting from one wall to the other about ten times as rapidly as we could, so we were gasping, already sweating and out of breath even before the main lesson had started properly. I wouldn't call it a 'drill' though.

I see two other here called out George G yesterday. I'm not sure whether George was being deliberately provocative because to have read through that comment by Richard and then elected to come back with that question beggars belief. I agree with Tanya that it has become very creepy and obvious to some of us here why this happens. I don't know whether this George is the same one who Ambrose sent a link back to 2013 with recently and claimed to be a PE teacher, I'll guess not because no genuine PE teacher on here would go around asking things like that, but then again maybe George would be the kind of teacher, if he were ever to have been one, who was one of theose who lined boys up and pulled out their shorts to look down and check their underwear status for a thrill like some have said happened in the past. So George what motivates you asking such a question please?

You have to push a bit or you don't get very fit. In the end that's the point. I'd have hated that lesson because it looked like there was mostly a lot of standing about doing nothing very much whilst one or two at a time did things. Have a really good look at that 2012 gym and it becomes clear quite quickly that nobody is doing very much at all. Mind you even the old photo with this thread shows the boys handing about a bit. My own gym/PE classes we got there and got stuck in right away. I don't remember vert much standing about gazing at other in them. Most times as soon as we had all assembled it was a case of darting from one wall to the other about ten times as rapidly as we could, so we were gasping, already sweating and out of breath even before the main lesson had started properly. I wouldn't call it a 'drill' though.

Mike and Tony. Regarding that You Tube, with all due respect, like in our time at school, not all boys are naturally gifted at gymnastics and at least those boys look more relaxed and comfortable, than the header picture here, or other examples we have seen. I don't think these days there is any need to drill them as if they were going through basic training in the military - most of those lads will work in shops, offices and the few factories that are left. Things have to be more relaxed these days because society, on the whole is more relaxed. Of course, for lads who are very gifted in gymnastics and sport there are loads of out of school clubs and gyms they can join, free or at discounted memberships. This 2012 school looks like one I would have been comfortable in.

I played the clip left on here by Mike from that gym class. It brought back memories readily. My teachers seemed to work on the 'Boris Johnson orthodoxy of making the rules and then not abiding by them themselves. When I looked at that ten year old You Tube gym clip the first thing I noticed was that every single boy without fail was not wearing trainers. Just the same as my gym classes in the past which were no shoes and socks all round. I so hated that! The second thing I noticed was that unlike the boys there the gym teacher was wearing his trainers. Just like mine always did too, but when we sometimes asked if we could wear our trainers it was always a no. Despite the default gym footwear being no footwear I had this really irritating fella who as soon as we walked through the changing room door would get his stopwatch out and scream 'barefoot in the gym in 2 minutes', just incase anyone dared wear some decent pumps. One rule for them, another for us.

Thanks for that info Duncan. Handy to know.

Simon, if you wanted to suggest photos of your own for the website, the gentleman, Brian, who runs it encourages people to contact him, either by making a comment on the "Guestbook" page or by e-mailing him (his e-mail address is under "Contact Us" in the far bottom right hand corner of the home page).

Why George, why that question again, why do you have a need to know that, why?

I agree with you Andy. When I first saw that record breaking post from retired Robert I thought it might get a negative reaction. Good to see it treated positively. I learnt something worth knowing from it.

That gym lesson from 10 years ago, laughable. How many boys were trying to help someone over that horse? Aren't you meant to do it by yourself? Just compare that sorry spectacle to some of the olden days 60's to 90's lessons of the past and weep. Such a huge class too, far too big and just one teacher, unless the one filming was also one. That did not give me a favourable impression of a modern PE lesson. I hope it wasn't typical of the past few years or even that school. Quite why they wanted to post that on You Tube I don't know.

Just look at the state of this lesson from the North East of England from 2012 and what looks like a complete lack of fitness, ability or co-ordination. It doesn't begin to compare with how we did things in school at that age where even the worst of us was better than this lot.

https://youtu.be/pBzVRD82lM8

Here we go again trying to drag it back to that, give it up George G, don't you realise how creepy your question sounds?