Burnley Grammar School

To Adam, my dad was an English teacher at the secondary school I went to. Luckily we were kept apart and he never taught me English. But school PE had a set up where other teachers in other subjects could sometimes stand in for a PE teacher if needed or simply come along as an assistant in certain circumstances. At various times my geography and history teachers did this, and so did an English teacher, my damned father. Take it from me Adam, it was a real pain having a father on the teaching role at the school you went to and when that father plays sidekick for an afternoon filling in as per the rota and ends up standing in your PE changing room as you change and shower as a boy of 13 you really do want the ground to swallow you up rather rapidly. Plus he gave me a deliberately hard time in the lesson trying to overcompensate for being who he was and not looking like he was favouring me. Then there was the crap from classmates about it.

Replying to Adam,
Our male PE teachers often took their tops off whilst taking lessons in the gym and whilst supervising and refereeing games outdoors. The mandatory barechested PE rule was brought in by many Education Authorities following accidents involving lads wearing vests whilst using wall bars and other apparatus. It was considered a sensible policy to keep lads safe. Most lads got used to the new shirtless rule very quickly.

At my grammar school way back in 1965 when I was a mere 12 years of age our main gym master had a rather unique manner of making sure we showed up with the correct clothing. If two boys came to gym without the exact gym outfits they would have to do the lesson in its entirety minus their vests, and if the two boys threshold like that was met then because of those two boys the rest of us got the same punishment for their lack of care in coming dressed correctly, so we all discarded our vests. It was designed to get us all into line and turn out properly with what we were supposed to and for peer pressure to work against each other to make sure we did so. That was the theory. I seem to recall it fell apart quite quickly when some boys decided they liked doing gym without a vest and deliberately came with non conforming clothing. Our gym master cottoned on after a while that his little ploy wasn't working and gave up on it. We ended up no longer doing gym in vests at all.

Another thing. Those of us who performed and made a decent effort got rewarded with a lovely hot shower. Those who underperformed had to wait and take a very cool or cold one. Incentives and all that. But nobody is good at everything, all have strengths and weaknesses. I got one of these cold showers a few times but rather took to them. The last thing the gym master wanted was someone who could tolerate and enjoy a chilly shower. I still take cold showers today and believe in their health benefits. My gym master accidentally led me onto a lifestyle choice for decades to come.

I'll be 70 in January and still jog lightly, take long walks, ride a bike many miles each week, swim and use a small local gym a couple of times each month for an hour or two. I like to think I have the appearance of somebody 20 years my junior.

I think the old ways were the best for both physical and mental wellbeing even if they were tougher. How many more times are we going to hear about the obesity crisis while at the same time gym is so badly neglected in school now with less and less time for it and what they do offering less and less real effort.

I think shirtless gym is a good healthy discipline to expect if you are serious about giving a proper physical education.

Roger.

John, your point is well made and my place did things like that back in '83. Quite often we did indoor barefoot-football in the school sports hall and none of us wore any tops while doing it (we were not allowed to) but simply had a blue or red armband or wristband to set us apart.

There were no skins versus actual shirts.

I think I must have been at one of those tough love kind of places that did the get your shirts off and show off your bare chests at most available opportunities.

Every now and again the girls class would mix in with us and we'd do some teamwork versus each other and the lesson would be double headed by our male and their female teacher. One of the girls in my class at the time told me she looked forward to these joined up PE games close up with boys, because she could see us moving about shirts off. At least she was honest. Of course it felt bloody awkward at that age, raging hormones and all that, talking 13-15 here.

I think boys fit into three categories with this. You get the ultra confident, peacock strutting ones who love how they look and enjoy it or think absolutely nothing any different between shirt or no shirt. Then there are those in the middle who are somewhat indifferent either way, not bothered too much but not over keen either. Then the third lot who it affects quietly and feel dreadfully self conscious but try to hide it but outward subconscious body language seeps out. I sat in the middle group.

I'm not sure I truly get why there was so much deliberate emphasis on boys doing their PE and demanding mandatory bare chests all round for everyone. Peak shirtless PE seems to be around about the 1970s and 1980s from what I can ascertain, so my era. Can't think why these same teachers didn't want to take theirs off in our PE. They sure didn't practice what they constantly preached to us.

Don't even get me going about the mandatory school communal large group showers of the time. I didn't mind sharing those with the boys and my mates, kind of fun checking each other out initially but having your PE teachers standing so close and watching you all as you lather and rinse yourself off together was the bit I could have done without.





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Very interesting comment on this site which I completely agree with. I am extremely grateful to have had teachers who always insisted on bare chests in PE.

I am often critiscised for boys working on characters who may be shirtless, as in Lord of The Flies, and indeed many schools now would avoid such dress, in the same way as shirtless team sides and gym PE would unlike the past exclude it.
But the purpose of such roles and characters is to help produce a confident self aware young actor and child, not burdened with self doubt and shyness.
And the important thing is it works.
https://act4wardworking2018.act4ward.uk/Play-acting/

Replying to Alex 1968,
I think the problem with shirts vs skins situations is that to many lads it seems unfair when they get picked by the PE teacher to be on the skins team and have to take their top off. It’s much fairer certainly for indoor PE to have all lads shirtless and give lads coloured armbands or sashes to distinguish teams, that’s what our PE teachers did. Indoor PE was always strictly shirtless and no lad ever got out of this rule.

Hello Yee! You can actually post a picture here but you have to host the picture on another site. I would love to see how P.E is done in Taiwan.

First timer on here, looked on with interest for a few days over this and other comments.

Confession time I suppose. Between the ages of 11 and 15 the school I went to had some teachers who were always keen for boys PE to be done without our tops on, leaving us bare-chested. At a guess I'd say between those ages anything from about a third of the time to almost half we took PE was like it, dependent also on which teacher took us. We had two 70 minute PE lessons each week, one in, one out.

I was one of those kind of boys who found such a requirement extremely difficult, especially at the beginning. Outright scary infact the first few times I had to do it. I would try desperately to think of a way to subvert my teachers demands and be able to keep my top on, but none was successful. Just because the other 20 or 30 boys were the same didn't make me feel any better about it, infact worse. I convinced myself I was too thin with puny arms and body that was less than it should be for my age. Somebody actually made a direct comment to me about something which made my own mind keep on telling me my body was a certain way and didn't compare well next to others. I just felt that I was one of those boys whose body simply didn't need to be out there on view. It was in my mind rather than real I can admit to that.

I began skiving off a run of PE lessons, 5 in a row and went and sat in the toilets for an hour, and nobody checked them to see if I was there. Eventually that got me hauled in front of my headmaster in his office on a one to one chat about what was going on. He was a reasonable head. I explained a couple of points, one about one of my PE teachers, stuff about my preferences in sports, likes and dislikes. When I brought up my dislike of doing PE with no top in a lot of PE lessons he slouched back in his chair, chuckled and said - is that all this is about? I'd been intending to try my luck and mention showering too but with his reaction to the no PE shirt thing I didn't dare carry on due to embarrassment and knowing I was getting nowhere with him. It was all brushed aside like I was a silly boy and I was told to promise no more skiving, having admitted hiding in the toilets, and then had to apologise to my PE teacher who was asked in. And that was that. I felt like I'd been ridiculed for a legitimate concern. It was really disappointing because he was a reasonable head who did care about our welfare, later in school he dealt with me over something else to do with careers advice and was rather good and gave me time in his office, in a school with 1000 of us to look after.

Then in my next PE lesson the head suddenly appeared very discreetly, one time looking through a glass door before I caught his eye contact, he realised it, came in and watched for a while. Nobody else paid him much attention but I knew why he was there. I was impressed he even knew when my next lesson like that was. Half the boys were without tops, me included, two separate team games were taking place. He watched mine, some basketball. He began clapping, I looked, he winked at me and turned around and left.

Showering was an absolute nightmare. I remember constant attempts to get out without one, sometimes more successful than others. That wasn't unique, a lot of us were at that one trying all the tricks to avoid them. There was this day when upwards of a quarter of the guys in PE got given what became known as the - nude walk of shame - as we got a massive bawling out and sent to get showers thinking we'd got away without one.

When I got to the final year in school suddenly showering completely ended, the teachers didn't ask us to take them after PE anymore, unless anyone actually asked to do so. A couple did now and again and had them almost to themselves. We even kept our tops on the whole time in PE as well. Still did the same kind and amount of PE as before but seemed like we suddenly got treated more adult like, which just raised further points in my mind such as if it could be like that in my final year in school why couldn't it have been the same in all the others.

Back in 1999 I went on a stag weekend of a friend with a group of eight other twenty & thirty somethings to Ibiza, I think most if not all got their tops off on the brief beach visit we managed that weekend but I kept a couple of trendy tops on and nobody said a word to me, but I was thinking about it quite a lot and remembering school days on that outing.

None of the school issues I've outlined have ever affected my own two children, neither have been confronted with them, a 16 and a 19 year old.

Hello, Tommy and Andy.

For you or anyone interested, to search Historyworld for a particular word or phrase, you can enter it, followed by a space and site:historyworld.co.uk into Google's search box. (If you put quotation marks round your phrase, this narrows results further).

Doing this brings up a list of occurrences of the word or phrase anywhere on historyworld.co.uk, so you can quickly find if a particular subject is mentioned. Entering site: then the website name into Google works to search any website.

With sites that change rapidly, it may help to click on the three dots by the entry you want in the Google search results, then click on "Cached". This brings up a slightly older version of the relevant web page, showing it as it was a few days or weeks previously when Google indexed the page.

Hope this is helpful.

Did a heap of swimming and gym shirtless in school.

Definitely felt different out of the water shirtless on the gym floor compared to in the pool. Unsure why, the pool was never a concern to me in any way but often fancied having a shirt doing gym when I wasn't allowed to. I didn't think of myself as shirtless phobic at all by the way, but undeniably rather a lot seem to have been.

Thanks Andy.
It seems that all that most posters want to talk about here is whether one should do PE with tops on or tops off.
And it takes thousands of repetitive posts to keep repeating the same things.
Other topics to do with school life, including in connection with PE such as I mentioned seem to be out of the question.
I am sure that many boys were given corporal punishment by PE coaches during the lessons. But this seems to be irrelevant or a taboo subject.
I am sure that if I come back here in a year's time after more hundreds of posts out of curiosity these posters would still be talking exclusively about whether to wear tops or not for PE.
Amusing really.

I do not understand why there is such an problem about males be they adults or children going topless it happens all the time when they go swimming.

I agree with Jay.

Nothing wrong with the lesson as shown in the B&W photo accompanying the chat here.

Boys of all school ages should turn out for the school gym in their bare chests for a PE class even today. It should be a compulsory requirement and no argument about it. Simplicity is one thing but also I think it would inspire confidence in the medium to long term and probably a lot quicker. None of this body shaming or body shyness.

We've now got a whole generation who don't even know what a proper PE lesson looks like, who don't even know what a school shower is, or that it even used to be a thing that had to be taken. Likewise I think school showering should be compulsory after PE classes. A handful of years ago I talked to my grandson who was twelve at the time going to a new school and told him what we used to get up to. When I mentioned that they used to line us up with nothing on and walk us naked into a big shower at school after PE he looked at me in abject horror and my son, his father reiterated much the same thing for himself and he told us both he thought we were lying! Which begs the question in my own mind about why a modern day twelve year old would think that jumping into the showers with nothing on but a smile with your mates after PE at school would be such an unlikely thing to believe, and the same goes for the no tops rule in PE class too. Going by the reaction my grandson had to me just talking about it for a moment in passing I can only dare to think just what his reaction would have been in school if genuinely confronted with being told he had to go in the showers or take a lesson without a top. I'm convinced he would have had a nervous breakdown on the spot and so would many others due to the way they've been socially conditioned nowadays to think about things.

I quite enjoyed the read about Nick's naughty teacher allowing him a naked swimming session. Nowadays that teacher would likely be fired on the spot, charged with some kind of trumped up offence and slung on an offenders register.

Tommy has raised a valid point about school days and yet people are out to shut it down, harks back to the Alan days. If you don't want to contribute you don't need to but as this site isn't indexed in any way there is no way to find things without trawling through hundreds if not thousands of pages.

Cut Tommy some slack gentlemen.

I haven't read all 4,000 posts on this endless discussion.
I will probably have to go several hundred posts to find the discussion on this subject several months ago.
But I will try if I get the time.
Talking about endless repetitions I am amazed that a subject like PE in schools would take thousands of posts and still going on after several years of non-stop discussion and repetitions.

Replying to Jay,

I agree with you 100%.

Plenty of corporal punishment comment on here, too much of the same infact, can't think what Tommy has been looking at to miss it.

Like Iain says, the subject has been done plenty on here and involved some rather feisty exchanges not too long ago. For me there is only so much you can say on the matter before it becomes quite repetitive, but it's all there for reading further back.

Boys simply don't need anything else for PE. Low cost and practical what more do you want.

Comment by Tommy - "Something that seems to be missing in this long discussion about school days in our time and which was normal and common in most schools is corporal punishment."


Are you kidding Tommy. Have a look through many of the comments during last August, just three months ago, there was a right old ding-dong going on about corporal punishment in school, and in particular one specific school from the past, Litherland in Liverpool in 1981. I placed a link to Hansard at the time discussing it in Parliament. There has been a huge amount if you've missed it and wish to browse recent months.

I hope that's helpful.

Something that seems to be missing in this long discussion about school days in our time and which was normal and common in most schools is corporal punishment.

Not a pleasant subject, I know, but it was part of school life when I was at school in the 60s. I can't count the number of times I was given the slipper or the ruler especially in late primary school.
Some teachers were really brutal and would give us cp for any little thing, even just for talking in class.
The punishments were always given in front of class. You would be called up to the teacher's desk, bend over it and get a few whacks.
The headmaster was never involved unless it was something serious that involved the whole school. like vandalism on school property.
I would like to hear others about their experience of corporal punishment at their school in those days.

Just wish to make it clear I've posted a few comments on here in the past few months but I am not the same John who has asked these questions to Aiden these past couple of days incase there is any confusion.

Aidan,
We did PE stripped to the waist and there was a strict no underwear rule, so like you the underpants came off in the changing room and we had compulsory naked communal showers. I never experienced naked swimming at school but did go skinny dipping with friends in summer. At an all boys school I can’t see why nude swimming should be an issue. If your parents are supportive and prepare you in advance I think that it usually takes away irrational fears.

Our school had its own modest sized learner pool outside. There was no deep end, the whole thing seemed to be about four or five feet deep throughout. Standing in it it came to upper chest height for normal sized kids of twelve. Lessons were mixed genders. I remember we often got encouraged to wear goggles in the pool which often steamed up. Obviously boys wore our swimming trunks, the old style close fitting firm things. Girls an all in one outfit, leotard style. We used it from March to October. We'd use it for swimming in school time and for out of hours practice as part of a club, often single sex, so in my case boys only.

It was at one of these out of school practices on a Saturday morning that I ended up swimming naked with everyone else because our male teacher actually allowed us to do it for a lark and everybody joined in. I think there were about a dozen or so of us, maybe fifteen. It was in July of 1980. It was great fun and we chose to do it and were not stopped. But we should have been because although it was Saturday we were on school premises under a school teacher supervision. One of the lads with us that morning told his parents what we'd done, it spread like wildfire and before we knew it our teacher was in big trouble at school by Monday and the talk was about what we'd all got up to in the pool that Saturday morning. I think he got a warning and a slap on the wrist for it, nothing more for allowing us to swim naked like that. He definitely didn't have any ulterior motives for allowing us to do that, that I ever noticed, genuinely straightforward just having some fun. It was a shame, the sensation of swimming completely naked was incredibly different just for removing one small item. Unless you've done it then it's hard to describe the feeling if immense freedom and how natural it felt. Obviously it began as something a bit daring to do as we knew it wasn't really allowed, but everyone wanted to try and chose to get naked without inhibitions. Obviously if you went to a school that forced you to swim naked if you didn't want to it would be quite distressing for some, I get that, but I found it a hugely enjoyable and positive 90 minutes or so when I did it, the only time I ever got the chance even though it should not have been allowed.

John on 17th November 2022 at 19:17

I don't remember being bothered by it. At boarding school we slept in open dormitories and showered in open showers so we all saw each other naked often enough. When we changed for sports, underpants had to come off so swimming naked was not really much different. I guess you get used to anything after a while.

I knew in advance about it all because my brother who was seven years older than me and had been to the same school had told me about it. At prep school we didn't have a pool so swimming never happened and there wasn't anything to compare it with except going to the nearby pool at home which of course was mixed so trunks were worn but certainly for men and boys there was a big open changing room there so again, naked was normal.

Did you ever experience naked swimming?

Aidan,
Were you bothered about having to swim naked at school?. What did your parents think about the swimming policy of no swimwear allowed?.

Hi,

P.E lessons for boys and girls are separated and the girls wear their usual P.E uniforms. However, they can see us when we change into our P.E attire in class or when we are doing P.E outdors. I would like to post a picture of a P.E lesson from my school but I dont think you can do so on this site.

Yee, did you share your lessons with girls? If you were made to be shirtless around girls, how did they behave? What did they wear?

Howard on 12th November 2022 at 21:36

Boy' boarding school starting in 1967, the school had its own pool and we swam naked throughout my time there. I think trunks were optional from about 1982 but I believe it was then junior boys who wore them as seniors were just used to naked swimming, it's perfectly natural!

A very interesting, long and nostalgic discussion about school PE going back several years.
But what I found most interesting and controversial was the custom in some schools that had nude swimming for boys in some schools as several posters described way back.
How common was this custom in schools?
Did anyone here actually experience it?