Burnley Grammar School

David
Why were all the 'good' boys circumcised? Seems quite bizarre

Remember having the PE master check that we had no underpants under our shorts at grammar school in 1955.
Not every time but if he suspected a boy was violating the rules he would have us line up and and pull out front of the shorts while he checked for underpants, violators would have to remove them and receive the strap.
Mum had me circumcised after I passed the 11+, as all good boy at the grammar school have it done, just as it became less common, so rather self-conscious in the showers at first.

John, was the "topless" rule made by the school staff, and if so, what was the reason for it, or was it just dormitory culture established by the bullies?

John,
That's entirely true of course, but unless you give every patient a private room....! Why not suggest it to the NHS?!

My experience in dormitory wasn't so beautiful. Out kit was pajamas, but only for the bottom part. So if we wanted to wear a pajamas shirt, we couldn't do it. But the problem was the initiation game in this dormitory. You had to show your strenght if you wanted other guys didn’t disturb you during the other days. I remember I was tied to a lamp with my arms up, for all the night, with a band on my eyes, so I couldn’t see what they would have done to me. It was terrible to be hit, and tortured in several ways. The day after my chest was a battle camp. But in this way, I earned the respect of everyone

Graham, Paul

Like both of you, my boarding school clothing list (circa 1960) included pyjamas, 3 pairs changed fortnightly to suit the laundry schedule, and while these were generally expected to be worn, the expectation only extended to the bottom half, and most of us slept topless, especially in hot weather. For PE in the gym and cross-country runs around the school grounds and surrounding countryside, vests were mandatory, which the relatively large number of us who had come from schools with topless PE policy found rather irksome, but which ongoikng campaigning failed to alter, and the swimming pool had prominent notices warning us that "swimming costumes must be worn at all times".

Leeds Lad,
Within a single sex ward of male patients how do you know that any gay patients would want the rest ( straight guys ) looking at them either?

It's ok to say "only one sex therefore nudity is ok", but that's assuming it's only the opposite sex that fancy the gender in question. Within one sex, there may be several gay people who the rest might not want looking at them. That's just the way the world is! I've said the same thing in my hospital, when they introduced single sex wards. They wanted women to feel men weren't looking at them, but I said "How do you know some women aren't looking at them?!" We just don't know. People think we all fit into nice boxes so they can say "Phew! problem sorted!" Their logic is amiss!

Paul - Your experience sounds very like mine, except that my three pairs of PJs, newly purchased from M&S as per the boarders kit list, never got worn at all. My first night sharing a dormitory room with an already established year-group of seven other lads soon established that birthday suits were universal night attire throughout the school.

Henry - Sleeping naked wasn't a school rule, as witness the PJs on the kit list, but it was certainly not frowned upon, and was even encouraged by the "house-parents" of the boarding house, as contributing to the ethos of manliness. Not that any of us needed any encouraging!

I went to boarding school in the 1970s in the UK. It was much as others describe, dormitories, communal showers, white shorts only for gym with no underpants. For bed we had to wear pyjama trousers, no jackets, no idea why that was the requirement. Swimming was naked and I never thought anything of it, it seemed quite natural. Punishment was the cane of plimsoll always on the bottom.

Here in Berlin and of course the Germans have a different attitude to nudity at my gym there is not a shower cubicle and it's communal for about thirty and you don't either see any towel dancing in the changing room.

I swim at a pool which has a mixed day on Sunday and other days are men or women only. I never go on a Sunday - too many children - but on men's days there is a big notice up in the changing room which says 'Badhosen verboten' - swimming trunks forbidden. Nude swimming is therefore compulsory on men's days and no one seems to think it's in any way abnormal.

John,
Not all boys and men are the same concerning modesty, especially today. Some are very reserved about being seen nude by others even if they are the same sex.
Maybe it is a cultural thing of what one is used to. Going to my local swimming pool over many years I have noticed that the nudity in the changing room and showers has grown less and less over the years when it has now become standard for boys and men to shower in their swimming trunks.

Also it was not always the case in some schools of being a male only environment. From what several other posters have said they had female teachers and instructors during their nude swim classes.

Graham,
Was the sleeping nude a rule of the school or the boys choice?
I had a friend who went to a boarding school where they had strict rules about wearing pyjamas for bed. He told me that he was once given corporal punishment for wearing underpants under his pyjamas.

On the same theme, what about the bedwetters which one always finds in such institutions especially among the young boys?
From what I have read and is well documented it seems that some boys were punished or shamed when they wet the bed. At my friend's school the boys who were regular bed wetters were woken up during the night by the person in charge at night to take them to the toilets to relieve themselves so as not to wet in bed.

Graham,

You ask about pyjamas, we had them as part of our uniform list so I had a couple of pairs however after the first couple of weeks no one wore them. Apart from a couple of times I've been in hospital I've never worn them since. Even if sharing a twin room with another man it doesn't bother me and almost every man I've shared a room with has slept naked.

For anyone interested, this is where I used to swim when I lived in Helsinki:

https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/administration/participate/contact/search-address/toimipistekuvaus?id=41102

As you will see there are no mixed days. If you should be visiting Helsinki and fancy a swim, I recommend it - it's a lovely pool and has great saunas too - it is Finland after all.

Paul,
I wholeheartedly agree with everything in your recent post. In a male only environment I cannot see why trunks need to be worn.

Paul I agree with your closing comments. I find it ludicrous in our male changing room that usually the younger men and lads all hide behind towels or in some cases complete their. changing in the privacy of a toilet cubicle. After all what have we got to hide?

Paul - as I've said elsewhere, when I first went to boarding school, I expected, and found, communal nudity in showers, changing rooms and dormitories, just as you have described. What I didn't expect to find, though, was that everyone, without exception, slept nude as well. Did this happen in your school?

Josh H,

We had nude swimming at school (boarding school 1960s/70s) and it wasn't that it was imposed, it was just what happened. Trunks were not part of the required uniform so no one had them. We were used to being naked in the dormitory, showers and changing rooms so swimming was not alien to that. In men only situations at the time nudity was quite normal - did anyone ever see a partitioned shower in a men's changing room?

I lived for quite a few years in Helsinki and my local swimming pool had men's days and women's days. I don't know what happened on women's days but on men's days there were no trunks to be seen and that is still the norm at the pool I used to use.

I prefer that to dealing with men with hangups dancing behind towels in changing rooms in case anyone sees a bare bottom or worse still a penis.

Josh H,
I didn’t swim naked at school but my cousin did and had no issues with it and it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. From what I have read on the subject, nude swimming was imposed for boys because back in the 1950s and 1960s the trunks were often made of wool or cotton and the fibres from these garments would block the filters of the swimming pool. Back then the filters were apparently less sophisticated than they are now.

By the 1970s nylon swimming trunks were available and the issue of fibres from the lads’ trunks blocking the pool filters was resolved. At a boys only school I cannot see why some people find swimming naked such a big deal.

Although having read it in several comments, I still wonder why at many schools trunks were not worn for swimming and why it was done in the nude. We had swimming lessons every week and there was no stipulated colour for trunks although in the 60's we all wore the briefs type.
I suppose I would have coped with naked swimming because the whole class would be the same. But why was this rule imposed at so many schools?

Forgetting P E kit in my prep school resulted in a slipping as a "reminder" not to forget it again and using kit from the list property. No pants were ever worn under shorts so always a risk borrowed pair might slip off, though our swim lessons were nude so we all saw each other naked anyway. The nudity wasn't the problem it was the whacking and being the odd one out which caused pain and embarrassment respectively

The punishment in my school was having to write lines or the cane across the hand. Some teachers gave the lad the option of detention or cane. Most accepted the can.
a) It got the punishment over and done with
b) If you stayed behind at school your parents would know and you would be punished further by them. In P E the punishment was slipper across the backside and wearing only thin shorts and no pants was painful.Although I only know that from what other boys told me.

Mr Curious,
Please accept my sincere apologies for the post that appears on the 23rd of January which appears to have come from you. I have clearly made an error whilst typing, the post is from me.

John

Mr.Curious,corporal punishment was administered at the school that I attended and was usually used to maintain discipline.
Mainly we would receive the cane on our buttocks if we misbehaved,but frequently we would receive a sharp slap on our legs.Mainly for PE and games our teacher would use a strap over our skimpy shorts if we weren't trying hard enough.

Mr Curious - forgetting PE kit always resulted in a dose of the slipper and then being told to find shorts in the lost property box, if you were lucky they fitted but they were usually too tight or too big. Too tight rubbed your stinging arse and too big you had to keep hold of because you weren't wearing underpants.

For all else there was the cane, every master had one and four strokes was pretty common, six exceptionally and eight from the headmaster.

Private boy's grammar school in the 1970s.

I was at Senior School in the 1970s and if we forgot our PE kit we were loaned a pair of white shorts and a pair of pumps. We had to route through a basket to try and find some that would fit and invariably couldn’t; the deterrent for forgetting PE kit was having to wear someone else’s smelly pumps. If we couldn’t find any pumps to fit then we simply did PE in shorts and went barefoot.

Another question for the posters and readers here.

Was there corporal punishment at your school and how was it carried out?

A simple question to those who were at school in the 50s,60s and 70s.

What happened when you forgot your PE kit for PE class?

Were you punished in some way, including corporal punishment, or made to do PE in something else?

An alumnus named Martin left some memoirs of Shears Green School on this site.
The earliest one that I can find is from December 7, 2013 and is currently on page 40.
The latest is from April 16, 2014 and is currently on page 38.

There has been much talk of the old policies of having boys and girls topless for mixed sex gym classes. Girls topless up to the age where they required bras. There has also been much talk about boys swimming nude. There is a Facebook site from Shears Green Primary School in Kent which has comments from former students remembering how the boys had nude swimming on Mondays, the girls had nude swimming on Wednesdays and both boys and girls had nude swimming together on Fridays. Some of the comments from the girls showed that they looked forward to the mixed swimming.

Ian,
Where there also female visitors who saw the boys showering naked?
Were you also belted bare in front of visitors?
What was their reaction?

I understand that you had to do what you were told without question in those days but this seems to have been too sadistic and humiliating to me.