Burnley Grammar School

Alan, I plead with you to stop repeating the exact same argument on here on the abuse issue.

Why are you unable to let go of it?

Comment by: Jamie Pearson on 28th March 2024 at 17:27
I've been lurking reading this thread and reading your comments with great interest Craig for the past few months.

Your hugely impressive and positive sounding posts have inspired me to set up my own little bareskin group too with a pair of friends, so we have three in our group set up a couple of weeks ago and one of them has decided to look into doing a social media group maybe on facebook with it too, but I set up our little one on Whatsapp like you have done, with a view to doing some of this throughout the hopefully decent summer ahead.




I agree it's good to read some positive comment around the whole issue of physical exercise even with adults and how wonderful you feel inspired and inclined to give bare chested running a go considering your own admission of feeling nervous as a schoolboy at the prospect. In the end it's down to not being scared of your own self and body isn't it. It does nobody any good to be overly cossetted from such things in school in my opinion, you learn nothing about yourself and will never break free of fears if you are.

Comment by: Tanya on 27th March 2024
I don't agree with the title of the article, which is ridiculous - "Swimming In Gym Class Is A Terrible Idea. Let's Stop Forcing Kids To Do It".



I really did dislike the headline on the article here. Swimming in PE is not a terrible idea at all. It's a very good idea and the younger the better. I often wonder why I was eleven years old before I even got my first chance to go swimming in school. We should be getting taken to the pool to swim and learn within our first couple of years in school shouldn't we? There should not be 14 year olds in school going to the pool who still cannot swim at least a couple of lengths of breast stroke easily. I don't think anybody should be given a get out from going swimming at school.

Comment by: Craig on 26th March 2024 at 23:37
I've got another two men ask to join our bareskin running whatsapp group over the last weekend, taking our count to 32 now, and we are at 22 takers for our Easter Monday run next week as things stand tonight. Both our latest ones to join are quite young, just middle 20s.




I've been lurking reading this thread and reading your comments with great interest Craig for the past few months.

Your hugely impressive and positive sounding posts have inspired me to set up my own little bareskin group too with a pair of friends, so we have three in our group set up a couple of weeks ago and one of them has decided to look into doing a social media group maybe on facebook with it too, but I set up our little one on Whatsapp like you have done, with a view to doing some of this throughout the hopefully decent summer ahead. All three of us took our first run together last Sunday afternoon in a quiet area and found it to be quite an exhilarating experience. I'm 38, the others are 41 and 45 and have been 'normal' runners for a while already. Now we've done it once it has made me wonder why it took so long to discover this possibility.

I used to get a bit nervous in school when I had to take my shirt off sometimes for PE lessons like shirts v skins and waiting to discover which you would end up being, or the teacher just deciding all the class goes shirtless sometimes.

I live in Shepton Mallet in Somerset which has some great running opportunities locally to go running like this off the beaten track.

Comment by: Ethan on 28th March 2024 at 13:16


I am not Jewish myself, but I believe one of the tenets of Judaism is "an eye for an eye".

These three, now elderly men, in their heyday inflicted unimaginable physical and mental pain on boys as young as 10 to young men of 17, two of them ran away to South Africa to evade justice and are intent on fighting extradition to Scotland, by the courts of that country, and no doubt imagine and hope that death gets them before the law does. This to me, confirms their guilt. The one found guilty yesterday, might not have even been in court to hear the judges remarks, hiding behind the age old excuse of infirmity.

Remember Ernest Saunders, found guilty of criminal activities in the Guiness scandal in the 1990s?. He was sentenced to a modest term of imprisonment, but got away with it by claiming that he had Alzheimers Disease. A normally fatal and incurable illness, of which he was miraculously "cured" months after his conviction. He laughed in the courts face.

Saunders, spent a weekend in Ford open prison, but these three revolting teachers have never served a day behind bars, even though they should have done.

Given all the distress and pain they caused they should have served at least a few months inside to at least partly atone for their crimes, at least as a token punishment..

Mr Campbell himself, now 62, says he constantly recalls his days from 10 up to the age of 17, and it causes him great distress, to the point where he remembers being 10 and cries on front of his wife. We hear of his case because he is famous - what about all the lads who didn't become famous, and what might have happened to them?. We will never know.

That is why I say justice has not been done.

If we are too squeamish to put old men in prison for their wrongdoing, and people like Saunders are deemed "too rich and important" to languish in prison, perhaps the answer is to make sure they get a really good thrashing in front of the people they hurt. They enjoyed dishing it out, let's see how well they can take it, even in their dotage.

Comment by: Alan today.

I think some people do like jobs that give them self importance and an ability to show it off. I'm Jewish. Nothing showed this off better this week than the two Israeli's who survived 7th October and were heroes saving lives who on entering this country were met by an officious and antisemitic border force officer who accused them of having attitude while displaying bags of it himself and prejudice and then told them - we are the bosses here. Actually they are not the bosses, they are the servants, the public servants and they seemed to forget it.

But there's bad eggs in every profession who let the side down in a big way. I think the victims in the Campbell story are best placed to decide whether they accept the outcome in that case and if they do then that's all well and good, I don't think there is any need for those not affected to decide that it's not good enough on their behalf.

Comment by: Vaughan Williams on 27th March 2024 at 16:59
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-68679000

Thanks for publishing that VW - I saw it yesterday and was minded to do so myself, but as you might have seen, when I publish anything which suggests that not all teachers are the saints they like to pretend to be, som HW readers come down on me like a ton of bricks.

It is worth pointing out that this old wreck, "unfit to plead" (though he will probably get his telegram from the King in 11 years time) is one of three at Mr. Campbell's school, the other two (PE Masters as it goes) are in hiding in South Africa and have resisted every attempt to have them stand trial in Scotland. I think their motives for so doing are obvious.

The victims feel that "justice has been done". I am afraid I don't.

Like the redneck swimming coach, some people should just not be in the teaching profession. It is less a case they want to pass on their knowledge - such as it is, - but they want to dominate children (presumably because they haven't got the guts to do it to grown men). The selection process should be much stricter to weed out undesirables like this.

I also noticed the swimming teacher trying to throw the girl in the pool looked a bit like he needed to lose a few pounds too. I wonder what the outcome was of all that, as that was in 2014. He didn't look much like he wanted to be in the pool either did he. He wasn't dressed to be in the water and any self respecting swimming teacher should be in the water with them, not standing at the side looking down, so he was just as bad as the girl, who should of course gone into the pool when told to do so, but that didn't give the teacher any right to drag her into it.

The teacher apparently had a good record but that way of treating people is about more than just having a bad day at work I think.

When I went swimming at school everyone was always so keen to do it and I do believe everyone should be taking swim classes at some stage in school.

Comment by: Terry on 26th March 2024 at 22:27
I believe you once said your school still takes showers after PE so I just wonder what your expectation would be for any result on that issue if you were to hold a similar survey on attitudes to that, and would you ever consider such a survey in future in that regard?




When I was in secondary school in the early 1970's the boys always had to shower together with each other after every PE lesson, in my case for my first couple of years I had three lessons each week, two gym ones in the mornings on Tuesday and Thursdays and another on a Friday afternoon outside.

Showering was a given. Boys often got sent back "to have another go" if too quick. Showers at school were nothing more than hot water, in and out. But we had a couple of boys in my class who brought soap bars in one day and asked to use them and were allowed but rapidly disallowed because they were taking too long about it with soap. So we had the quite hilarious spectacle of some boys getting sent back in to shower again because they were too quick and boys that wanted a proper shower with soap and some time to do so being told they couldn't because it was wasting time and too much hot water. You couldn't make it up really.

Now it might seem quite an incredible thing to say but remember this was now more than fifty years ago, but once in a while on Friday afternoons at the end of the week the PE teacher would jump into the shower alongside us, starkers like the rest of us when we were older boys. Nobody seemed to make a thing about it. It was obviously allowed at the time. Did anyone else have this?

Although showers in school didn't bother me too greatly, or even the teacher sharing, I certainly do remember a feeling of shock the first time I did it when I was 12 and finding myself surrounded by so many naked boys just like me and sneaking looks and comparing, it's unavoidable really. Does that initial feeling sound familiar to anyone else? But within a few goes it all becomes normalised for most.

The two gym lessons in the mornings were always taken by the same pair of teachers and the school uniform in the gym was listed as boys being a bare chest in there and so we knew where we stood on that issue from the very start and just changed into shorts and went off for PE. Many times we would wait outside the gym door waiting for a PE teacher to come along and unlock it to let us in, and stand around looking and feeling rather awkward. The gym doors were always kept locked when not in use and nobody was ever trusted to just go in there without a teacher being present. I never really understood this or the locking of the doors during the school day. Sometimes the relevant teacher could be up to ten minutes late.

In the gym we were all expected to be able to climb ropes and touch the ceiling within a certain time limit. We were also expected to be able to cartwheel and stand on our heads and all kinds of things, and jump over the horse and clear it easily, hang onto wall bars, somersault on the trampolines and be able to walk along thin wooden beams three feet off the ground without looking down at our feet and just feeling our way along with our bared feet. We also did sudden running bursts from side to side touching the walls and back again until completely exhausted with a last boy still doing so who would be the winner. That was quite competitive. Boys were very tactile in the gym lessons and often grouped or paired in to tasks involving direct contact with each other, pulling, lifting, holding, you name it. We had to learn how to easily pick someone else up and hold him across our shoulders at one point, and some smaller boys had to do this with some bigger boys. Our teacher showed us the technique. We had a lesson where we circled the gym and did a lap with half the boys holding the other half, lifted up. It might have been good practice for anyone considering becoming a fireman.

When we played games against each other like basketball there was a blue or red ribbon you got to hand diagonally across your chest over one shoulder and down across the bare chest to signify your team.

Outside we did cross country all year round. I have no idea how far we ran on these, but they took up most of the hour or so at steady pace but we always broke up into smaller groups and separated along the route. It was never compulsory to run the cross country without a vest on but we were allowed to remove them if we wanted to and by the time we got back into school and ran past the PE teacher shouting out times at us as we went past often many of the boys were in bare chests on the warmer days. It is a nice feeling to run outdoors without a top and I willingly chose to do so sometimes. Once somebody removed the top along the run it had a quick knock on effect and others would follow. The gentleman on here who now does this with a group has clearly discovered and hit on a desire to do this with some people and I can understand this.

I wouldn't want to go back and change any of it much. The PE teachers would have their wilder moments with us but when it came down to it were all pretty decent guys doing their job.

Comment by: Lloyd on 27th March 2024 at 15:00


Apart from being a bully, and inflicting physical assault on the girl, he seems to be somewhat obese - he looks as if he is wearing Diane Abbott's shorts. Hardly an advertisement for the "benefits" of physical education.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-68679000

Tanya.

There's an even better news story on that here that gives more detail and opinion.

I do agree with you that swimming should not be taken out of the school curriculum, that's mad. But you don't behave like the teacher here trying to persuade someone to jump in the pool. It's worrying that someone does that with so many witnesses.

https://youtu.be/HLSgi3o6Ejw?feature=shared

Quite something here. Two points to the ten year old article, whether to have swimming as part of school gym/PE classes and also whether the teacher in the video was guilty of abuse in forcing a girl who didn't want to go swimming, into the water. It's from a female viewpoint.

https://slate.com/culture/2014/11/swimming-in-gym-class-is-the-worst-gym-teacher-forces-student-into-pool-is-charged-with-abuse-video.html


I don't agree with the title of the article, which is ridiculous - "Swimming In Gym Class Is A Terrible Idea. Let's Stop Forcing Kids To Do It". We all did swimming at school, it's the only time many get the chance.

Competition swimmers do not have to wear shirts so I cannot see why shirts are required for gymnastics at all. Today’s society tries hard to stop men being men, more people within gymnastics need to challenge the totally unnecessary rules which require athletes to wear vests and shirts.

Concerning male young adult gymnasts, if you watch them in training, nearly all of them don't wear a shirt or vest, even in warm up for competition they have their costumes rolled down and their upper body free. Only in the moment of competition the vests come up. So why not have male gymnasts shirtless for competition with long gym pants for highbar, parallel bars, pommel horse and rings and short shorts for floor and jump. Most adult gymnasts in competition actually want to be shirtless but are not allowed.

All PE gym lessons should be shirtless in schools. It's a positive thing and the male bare chest, adult or schoolboy, in the gym environment is meant to be seen.

I've got another two men ask to join our bareskin running whatsapp group over the last weekend, taking our count to 32 now, and we are at 22 takers for our Easter Monday run next week as things stand tonight. Both our latest ones to join are quite young, just middle 20s.

While I'm here and as I've just seen Nathan asked a question, as you have made quite the issue about bare chested PE recently and finding out views on the subject. Would you for example ever consider encouraging your own to go doing the school cross country bareskins or setting up a school club for that purpose for volunteers. I am not advocating should be made to do so against their will, only volunteers, like our group. Do you think such a thing at your school would ever gain traction if you suggested it, either as part of a regular bit of PE or set aside as a school club pastime? The health benefits are definitely there to be had.

The notable thing about our bareskins running is that nobody has joined and then gone on a run and then decided that they made a mistake doing so, everyone has done at least two or three so far.

I am aiming to get 50 members by Christmas, so have 9 months to get another 18 joining us.

You have said that the results of your recent shirtless survey were in line with your expectations Nathan. I believe you once said your school still takes showers after PE so I just wonder what your expectation would be for any result on that issue if you were to hold a similar survey on attitudes to that, and would you ever consider such a survey in future in that regard?

Comment by: Neil on 25th March 2024 at 21:10


"...Alan may disagree with my view but when you are saying that gay men and women should not be doing certain jobs such as teaching because their sexuality means they cannot be trusted to conduct themselves appropriately, .."


Neil, I think you have misread what I said. I have said several times that I have no problem with homosexual teachers per se, just NOT employing them in P.E. departments. At my school there were always rumours that our art master was homosexual, for instance, but that didn't bother me - then or now - the art teacher can't see you and watch you having a shower or taking your clothes off. That was my problem with our PE teacher, who spent far too much time in the locker and shower room, especially as you got older.

I won't rehearse my arguments for taking a hard line on this matter, nor will I apologise for it.

Comment by: Mickey Grant on 25th March 2024 at 00:20
Personal attacks? He's been handing them out for months.
Noteworthy how few people challenge him on his homophobia - if that's not a personal attack I don't know what is. But I guess some targets are permissable?



Mickey, there have been people calling Alan out for his comments that appear to be blatantly and generally homophobic a few times that I have read, so there is no need to feel too hard done by, he has been called out for this and not been given a free pass.

Alan may disagree with my view but when you are saying that gay men and women should not be doing certain jobs such as teaching because their sexuality means they cannot be trusted to conduct themselves appropriately, and should be penalised based on their sexual characteristics then that in my book is clear and present homophobia and there is little point denying it really.

Comment by: Dean on 24th March 2024 at 18:35


""Nathan's 64" should just keep their shirts off at stop whining, they lost a fair vote.

Actually I doubt any of them are whining like you know who here. Sorry Alan but you do go on a bit. Did you never ever accept having to go shirtless in school PE then? Surely you must have got over it at some point. All lads do, no matter how shy they are or lacking confidence.

I did."

Thank you, Dean, for your pep talk - very kind of you to spend your Sunday evening enlightening me.

All I can say is that I am not alone on this board with my discomfort (which is a comfort!). Everyone has something they are uneasy with. Fear of spiders, for example - there are grown men who really get uneasy seeing them. Luckily for me, that is not a cross I have to bear - just as well, for decommissioned electrical/electronic equipment often harbours a few once you take the case off. I wonder what your secret fear is?. Care to tell us. I don't sneer at people who have phobias or fears.

I will also say that if you had spent 5 years, for 40 weeks a year, two or three times each week with our teacher (it varied according to what year you were in - (our last year it was only twice), you might well have had similar reservations to me and some of the other lads who took part.

Personal attacks? He's been handing them out for months.

Noteworthy how few people challenge him on his homophobia - if that's not a personal attack I don't know what is. But I guess some targets are permissable?

I am quite happy to say that nobody is 'whining' about their lot in PE. Nobody ever has done so over the issue of the occasional bare chest requirement. My decision to take soundings on the issue was completely unilateral based solely on many of the comments I have read across many of these pages in the past year or so. Nothing more. There was no pressure from anyone at all for me to do so.

I've had a handful of pupils ask me if the results were what I expected and I had to say that broadly speaking they were in the range of my own expectations.

I can endorse many of the comments said here by Seb. I'd also say that doing PE in a bare chest removes all restrictions on movement quite effectively too. I also think that lack of confidence and shyness is something to challenge and overcome and sometimes confronting mostly minor anxieties such as taking your top off in front of others is worth doing.

Chris: As I said, I am no expert on the education system, but I was fairly sure the Scottish system IS different to the English, and it be so:

https://www.sharpscot.co.uk/how-is-education-different-in-scotland-from-england/

I assume as Wales has it's own devolved system of government, they might well also differ, but I cant be bothered to find out

"Nathan's 64" should just keep their shirts off at stop whining, they lost a fair vote.

Actually I doubt any of them are whining like you know who here. Sorry Alan but you do go on a bit. Did you never ever accept having to go shirtless in school PE then? Surely you must have got over it at some point. All lads do, no matter how shy they are or lacking confidence.

I did.

Comment by Alan March 24th

"I know Scotland has it's own system, and I am not competent enough to talk about that. I daresay Wales and N. Ireland have their own systems, I am talking about schools throughout Britain."

Britain is the largest island of the UK, comprising the mainland entities of England, Scotland and Wales. So "schools throughout Britain" include most schools in England, Scotland and Wales
For completeness, and to inform non-UK readers, Great Britain comprises the aforesaid island of Britain, together with all of its off-shore islands
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is just what it says.

Comment by: Russ on 23rd March 2024 at 14:46


"It could be a lottery within the same school though. Many teachers had their own way of doing things in PE lessons I seem to recall that could vary from one to the other."

I think this is another excellent reason why there should be standardisation in the State education system. When you allow individual schools - let alone individual teachers - being allowed to do their own thing it can become confusing and uncomfortable for the pupils.

Moving away from PE, one of my customers, who is a bit older than me, but not by that much, forever complains about his spelling in emails. He told me once he was taught by the method known as the Initial Teaching Alphabet (no I didn't know about that, either. I found a link:

https://theliteracyblog.com/2015/05/14/i-t-a-a-great-idea-but-a-dismal-failure/


The idea seems to be you spelt as you heard the word "warta" for "water" for example.

Some schools embraced it, others didn't.


Where state education is concerned it should be like buying a can of soup from Tesco, it should be the same price, the same quality in London as it is in Lands End. I know Scotland has it's own system, and I am not competent enough to talk about that. I daresay Wales and N. Ireland have their own systems, I am talking about schools throughout Britain.



"...A lot of people find going shirtless to be motivating. For those who have aesthetic goals, it draws their attention to their body and how they want it to look, driving them to work for those goals. For others, they feel it is expected that if they take their shirt off, they must be exerting maximal effort. They would feel embarrassed to give less once the shirt has come off, so it drives them to reach for maximum performance...."

Seb, with all due respect, you sound like a sports/fitness fan. You have to remember that many lads at school just regard PE, like they might regard Art, for example, as just another subject they have to study, but have no interest in it. From what I see, most people these days seem obsessed with their faces - I was on a bus just yesterday when a teenager (male) was arranging his hair and his demeanour - to take a selfie. As long as people are well and healthy, they are no much interested in circuit training etc - they might want to watch sport, in the same way they want to listen to music, but they have no interest in participating.

I worked very hard playing the trumpet (believe me you practically needed oxygen to play a Maynard Ferguson chart!) but I never took my shirt off to do it, and I fail to see your analogy there - just a couple of weeks ago I posted a You Tube of some lads in a London school studying for GCSE P.E., all wearing shirts, all working hard. You sweat, and you wash your clothes, just like you wash yourself.

I will repeat my usual rider - it lads WANT to remove their shirts, that is fine, but the average lad who is just going along with the lesson because they have to, not because they want to, should not be made to feel even more uncomfortable than they do already. Remember Nathan's 64 - they do exist.

So it's been asked why anyone should actually go shirtless in PE.

Firstly it's good to see a mostly positive attitude to going shirtless in PE from that school who had a chance to air their views. But I definitely think the teacher should also do so, mine at school at the tail end of the 80s did so with us.

So why go to PE bare chested? Nobody, not even a PE teacher has come on here yet and tried to explain why so let me give it a go.

Going bare chested really is one of the most comfortable ways to workout. It maximizes cooling and evaporation of sweat. A sweaty shirt can get really uncomfortable. Special wicking fabrics can help with this, but they tend to be more expensive and are still not nearly as good as simply going bare chested. They still retain some heat and the sweat can’t evaporate as quickly as it does from the skin. The next best thing are probably cut-off shirts with no sides, the less fabric the better. These are cheaper than expensive moisture-wicking fabrics and probably allow even better air circulation and cooling, but they retain sweat longer once they get wet and that can still get uncomfortable.

A lot of people find going shirtless to be motivating. For those who have aesthetic goals, it draws their attention to their body and how they want it to look, driving them to work for those goals. For others, they feel it is expected that if they take their shirt off, they must be exerting maximal effort. They would feel embarrassed to give less once the shirt has come off, so it drives them to reach for maximum performance. Still others simply find it makes them feel more virile and powerful, giving them a mental edge in their workouts. Some feel that even the presence of someone who is working out shirtless is a motivator, even if they lack the confidence to shed their own. It creates an environment of exertion and performance. While this may be intimidating to some, this can usually be overcome with proper PE teaching and encouragement and the benefits likely far outweigh the drawbacks.

Personal hygiene is often cited as a reason not to allow boys to go shirtless for PE. But wearing a shirt is not a good way to keep the gym sanitary. A bare chested class in PE is cleaner all round, saves on sweaty tops going into school bags and being carted around all day long too.

Sorry Mickey but please lay off.

I agree with Nicholas here, I don't wish to come on here and see these kind of personal insults directed at anybody, it's pointless and is disruptive.

Comment by: Mickey Grant on 23rd March 2024 at 12:27

No personal attacks please. They are not wanted.

I've just noticed I forgot to leave the actual details of the clip I was talking about and left the quote for, so here it is.

Title - CoEd Gymnastics PE.

https://youtu.be/l_gb0CUzwX0?feature=shared