Burnley Grammar School

I have discovered that the school my son will be going to in six months time operates what they call - traditional values in a traditional setting - as the school ethos. It's a selective grammar school and we both had a look around it last week and were very impressed by what we saw.

Over the weekend we were discussing the things we are going to have to provide later in the year, uniform, books and of course a PE kit. This school appears to operate what they themselves call a "no tops rule for PE" for the gymnasium there and this is all mentioned in the prospectus. He will be expected to shower. I was quite surprised by the no tops rule for PE though and decided to do some further research using the trusty google search engine and found this here.

I can see these grammar schoolboys are doing PE with no tops but that's a very long time ago. We both been keen for him to have a good solid traditional education but this is one thing we didn't bargain on.

Would anybody like to offer me some thoughts? Thankyou.

Greg2 (on 6th March), thank you for being kind enough to comment in reply.

Though it was the summer term, I don't think it was an extremely hot day - the young men themselves had said nothing about the temperature - and I remember the teacher's words given as an instruction, not a suggestion.

School showers - my take on them.

Think about it like this for a moment. Your own parents, your next-of-kin, would not dream of standing in the bathroom at home watching their own teenage son (or daughter) post puberty, at the age of 13, 14, 15 years old, having a shower (or bath) with no clothes on, naked.....

.....yet come to school and that whole dynamic gets turned on its head and your teenage self is not only forced to shower and to do so with no clothing on but that mere teacher is permitted to have a good watch at you doing it and in most cases did so.

Like me, your PE teachers have probably seen more of your young teenage self than your own parents ever have done. Few of us as teenagers allowed our parents to see our naked selves with pubic hair, but our teachers saw the whole development of us all as we passed through the senior school PE years.

Our teachers considered themselves to have the absolute right to see all our naked teenage bodies while our parents would not ever say that, so our teachers gave themselves more rights over our personal privacy than our parents had over us. It kind of feels wrong when you see it like that. If your own father insisted on standing watching you shower or bathe as a 14 year old while naked, even though he was your own family, your dad, you'd think he was a bit weird to do that, but we accepted those teachers, sometimes men older than our own dads, doing this with us.

When you think of it like this it does seem a strange doesn't it.

I never gave the school showers much thought until recently and I left school 35 years ago. But I now think, leaving out privacy and shyness out of it, that they placed lots of us in a terribly vulnerable position where not everyone had our best interests as priority and the communal mandatory nudity on teenagers going through puberty was excessive, unjust and damaging to a significant number of people and should only ever have been a voluntary arrangement at least with better safeguarding against voyeuristic teachers, of which I definitely had two.

The question I now ask myself is why did it take me over 30 years to think like this and decide that what I was made to do at school was in so many ways not the right way to go about things.

We've had an unexpectedly fabulous past week on our bareskin running group and done four runs of various sizes since last weekend and today was amazing, we got 29 of us out for a whole afternoon nearly half marathon distance run of more than ten miles or so around a local beauty spot we agreed to arrive at by car, although where possible we try to not meet up by car if we do things closer to our homes but with more people some now live a little further afield, but all within 10 miles and most within 4 ot 5 miles of each other and me.

It really was an amazing achievement to get so many together, but after the dull winter I think the recent sun and now a bit of warmth made a lot of people keen to get out at last, although I myself have been running all through winter in small groups on shorter distances in the evenings.

We've now got 65 members on our bareskin whatsapp group, having gained more than ten new members since the new year and five in the last two weeks. Word of mouth is helping our numbers now and it's snowballed a bit recently.

In the past week I've done bareskin (fully shirtless + shorts) runs in groups of 3, 5 and 9 men on distances ranging from a couple of miles right up to over ten, an early morning one, a couple of evening ones and today's all afternooner.

I did a 6.30am one with three friends for half an hour early last week when the temperature was actually hovering around or just below zero. Not for the faint hearted and one for the seriously committed but nothing like as bad as you may imagine it to be. Anyone is capable of running without a top on in those conditions for a short period with the right attitude. It got my week off to a really good start to do that with two others just as the sun was coming up.

Some of the guys are like me and saying they are surprised how addictive they are now finding it, how great it makes them feel and how they love the camaraderie that goes with bareskin running with others. I absolutely agree.

What I want to repeat on here is that a lot of those on our group are men who are trying to prove something to themselves and are going beyond what they always thought were their personal boundaries, some quite openly have said how anxious the thought of going bareskin running made them at first but still wanted to try. Those now on our group are mentioning it to others and egging them on to give it a go. There are definitely many men on our whatsapp group who have gone running with us who would write similar things to some of you guys on here about your shirtless school memories.

We've now got a couple of 18 year old friends joined the group and their 72 year old grandad, and the old boy was the one who encouraged them. The 72 year old is actually a GP in our area and looks amazing for his age, doesn't look a day over 60 and would put some men of 40 to shame with his fitness and physical appearance. All three were out with us today. The remarkable thing is the wide age range who have been attracted to bareskin running since our group was set up.

We're thinking of setting up a social media page sometime by summer or even a YT channel as well to record some of our bareskin running activities so if and when that happens I will gladly provide this site with the means to check us all out!

Out of interest, would anyone else here ever consider setting up such a group themselves or joining one if the opportunity arose?

Comment by: Terry on 16th February 2025 at 21:33
ITV Schools - Good Health - Fit & Healthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRRw-k7cGJs&list=PLv1UpvxmZIp0ZOOyeGcqnj7ELr3U-tkT8&index=1




That's something I remember seeing at primary school, my word that series takes me back a bit, although I didn't even begin my primary school until 1984. Lots of things we used to watch on the tall telly on wheels in those days used to be old programmes made a few years before so must have done the rounds a fair few times on repeat.

Everyone's different I suppose but I would have taken part in that without being very bothered and would have volunteered, even for the showering part to camera there if they wanted, because I'd have seen it as a bit of fun and actually quite a daring thing to have a chance to do and I always liked being a little daredevil. It's not the kind of thing that happens everyday in school is it. If I had done and now saw myself in the buff from my primary days I'd have a very good laugh at it and treasure it as a keepsake. I see it as totally innocent and maybe naive.

Respect to anyone who disagrees with me though.

Robert.

I had a man take me for all manner of PE in the late 70's who sounds roughly similar to your one. One of those men with plenty of mouth, as you said, which produced a lot of hot air about nothing very much. A keen whistle blower and also hand clapper at us. A very hands on individual who thought nothing of physically touching people, and he also had a pair of black sports shoes that I never saw him wear but that got used against us.

PE in the school sports hall was done shirtless for me in the 70's like with so many other boys, and I was in my second year at comprehensive school aged thirteen when I had a run in with mine.

I remember telling my dad at the dinner table that my PE teacher Mr Collett had smacked a couple of boys in my class across their bums in a PE class I was in with the sports shoe, including someone who didn't deserve it who was a friend who was always round our house. He made me promise to tell him if anything like that happened to me, and I promised him I would, he even made me repeat my promise to tell him which I did. I wasn't too concerned because I didn't see how I would ever do anything to warrant such a thing against me, I kept my head down, always turned up and did what was required to the best of my ability.

But I was wrong. I wore a brace on my teeth at the time and often ran my tongue around it in my mouth because it could irritate me a bit and make my teeth ache. The PE teacher saw me doing this and thought I was chewing on gum and said he'd been watching me for a while doing it. He stopped the lesson, made me walk over to him and open my my mouth wide and stick my tongue out while holding my head in both his hands. He accused me of just swallowing the gum that didn't even exist as I was going up to him. This sent him absolutely nuts and he got another lad in our class to pick up the sports shoe from the side bench of the gym and hand it to him whereupon as I stood there he smacked me three times with it on the bum, which did hurt, but my pride more. The act of doing it I found worse. When he did that he gave me a final smack right in the middle of my chest at the breastbone with the plimsoll by flinging it at me while holding it, onto my bare chest, and told me that I'd better not be chewing gum in PE ever again because it was very dangerous to do so and I should know better.

He wouldn't listen to me and no amount of trying to explain got through that I was simply feeling my mouth with my tongue because of my dental brace, which he could clearly see. Totally blind to reason.

Anyone who ever got a smack with the sports shoe in PE you could see trying to notice any mark from it when we were in the showers afterwards and I was no different, there was a mark on my chest but nothing too obvious on my bum, but I couldn't strain easily enough to see anyway without looking very obvious. I went into a toilet later to have a better look a break. The sensation maybe lasted an hour or so from it.

If I had fully deserved it for something I think my dad would have let it go, like most of our parents at the time did.

So after this I remembered my promise to my father if this happened at school to me but despite this I just couldn't bring myself to tell him, at first. I was fairly quiet for the rest of the day after that happened and when I went home. At the dinner table that night when we were all talking about what we had got up to, it was my turn to say what I'd done at school and don't ask me how, parental intuition, they both sensed I was not myself and my dad actually knew it had been a PE day and asked if something was up, eventually dragging it out of me that the teacher had hit me four times with a sports shoe, three times on the bum and once in the chest. By evening there wasn't anything to see on my bum but he asked me to take my top off and show exactly where he struck the shoe at me and there was a slight red mark remaining, nothing much but it stood out.

The next day the school was telephoned while I was at school, and before the end of the day I was called into the headmasters office where both my parents were along with the head to explain what had happend to him. The PE teacher was then invited in with us and had to explain. My parents made it quite clear that the behaviour he'd seen me doing was something I did a lot at home since wearing the brace in my mouth and also that I never ate chewing gum. My headmaster told my PE teacher he might like to consider his response to me and he offered both me and my parents an unconditional fulsome apology 'for any misunderstanding'. A bit rich that last term, which suggests we were both at fault not just him.

None of this stopped him sometimes making use of his sports shoe to chastise people in PE though, but it seemed to happen less and with me he suddenly became a lot nicer which I thought was hilarious because everyone else noticed it, they absolutely loved the fact my parents had forced our PE teacher to say sorry like that.

Like Robert and so many others who have opened up in these pages, you have to wonder why P.E teachers behave like a cross between the Kray Twins and an old army drill sergeant, and I can only conclude that even today, it must be something to do with the training they are given at teacher training college. Perhaps they have lessons in how to be obnoxious and how to humiliate boys. Perhaps it is the character of those men involved - probably bullied by parents when they were children themselves into being the best at their sport (you often read of fights breaking out between parents at amateur Saturday matches in the local parks), and need to stop trying to relive their childhoods through others. Any teacher must surely realise that there will be boys who don't like their subject, whether that is geography or history or P.E and the interminable games of football, rugby or cricket. They should realise that by shouting at them and demeaning them, they are not going to get any better results. In other subjects, teachers realise that not everyone is going to enjoy everything, but their attitude is one of acceptance (one hopes) and you just have to realise that it is not a personal slight. The attitude of some of these games masters is very petulant and self defeating. It seems to be the one subject where the teachers are just a little too demanding, and over ambitious. Not every lad wants to be a professional sportsman, or join the Royal Marines

Perhaps instead of "teeth brushing" lessons for 3-5 year olds, they should give lessons to PE teachers in how to behave.

Thankyou Greg and Christine for the comments.

I'm heading into my mid sixties and still remember that and many other things from my school years as if they happened a couple of years back. Something about school memories seems to stick. You're right, the teacher I commented on was very overbearing to everyone he came across, but I wasn't exactly a tiny timid little thing though and he made me quake as I described. I think most boys would have taken the man's plimsoll across them rather than being dumped into the girls class, and without the shirt too. Teachers tend to stick together though Christine don't they, they like to avoid open disagreement in front of the class.

Someone at school described our school gym as a depression chamber to me, a turn of phrase that seemed very powerful to come out of the mouth of a young mind about 12 or so. None of this damaged me though, I just thought my own one was a bloody idiot and an insufferable pillock. If he was still about he'd be about 80 by now I think and if I came across him I'd fancy smacking him on the nose! Call it the interest payment he's earned over the past 53 years.

Greg I disliked the football and rugby but so do lots of boys and men, that's not unusual, it's actually very common. It did not make any of us girls or feminine because we shied away from enjoying those sports. I liked doing summer cricket for example, was alright for large parts of the school gym and could climb and do all that stuff quite nicely and confidently, more so than most, the school long distance cross country was a doddle to me and away from school I went banger racing with my uncle to watch the stock cars, even did some canoeing at one point, did swimming a lot, liked playing darts and snooker, so was into many sports even if they were not school PE compatible ones. But if you didn't like football especially that the PE teacher dictated every boy MUST like then you got the girl tag. It's quite daft really isn't it, and I'm sure my teacher was far from a one off like that. Thanks Greg for the supportive comment and to you Christine once again.

Ian W is also a good point, I think that's why there was shower resistance too. I get exactly what you are saying. People never like being ordered to take off what they are wearing by someone else, it does feel different I agree. This may account for why many people had issues with the communal shower regime school would expect of us and I see there are many comments about this subject too. That doesn't surprise me in the least if my own school is anything to go by. It could be a very unpleasant experience for some people and I saw lots of very inconsiderate behaviour by the teacher I already mentioned when it came to school and showers. I saw boys regularly hit with the teacher plimsoll very hard for next to no reason other than being relucant to shower or even taking one but not doing it properly like the teacher wanted, it was like swatting flies.

Robert I just had to say something after reading what you said there. I deplore such behaviour. There is and there never has been a reason to treat anyone in that manner. A good teacher should always know the limitations of their pupils in any subject and work positively to overcome them, none more so than a physical education teacher. What disappointed me more about your story was the acceptance of the other teacher to your teacher's request. A stronger teacher would not have done that, which suggests to me that your teacher could possibly have been quite an overbearing member of the staff against his colleagues as well as his pupils. I've never been an actual teacher although working in education but I would not have accepted you into a class I was in charge of under such circumstances. I've heard many stories over the years about the teaching profession and many about PE teachers but I have never heard one where a teacher made threats to place a boy into a girls PE clothing. When I hear stories like this it concerns me what more such a person may have done, and you said this man was young so he could have had a long time ahead of him to act similarly to many others. I condemn his actions and if I had ever been aware of anything such as this while going through an inspection process on my teams then I would have made sure it had consequences and there was hell to pay for it using all available options given in the job.

Robert this happened you said in 1972 and like so many other comments on here what comes across is how these type of memories from school, even if an isolated case on just one day, remain so stark enabling many people to relate them to others in such fine detail such as in your case after more than 50 years has elapsed.

Comment by: Matthew on 15th November 2024 at 23:41
We had an examination one day in middle school where all the boys in our year had to assemble in the hall and get down to only our underwear and then go and sit in batches of boys about ten at a time on chairs along the corridor waiting outside the medical room to be seen. Once inside we were given an eye test by looking at a book and covering one eye at a time. That was it. Back to the hall to pick up my stuff and dress again. I could not understand why they went to such effort and made us remove nearly everything we had on, shirtless and barefoot, just to do an eye check on us. Very weird. I think I was 9 or 10 years old. That took place around 1976 or 1977.
Does anyone have anything like that?






Yes Matthew I did, so I hope you are still reading. Almost exactly the same as this, a bit later than you in 1978/9 it would have been and that would make me 10/11 years old.

You're right, quite a strange one. I remember hearing from a teacher that we would be getting a 'check up' but that was it. I knew little more than that. I think we knew the day before, there must have been a note home I would think.

Like you, the same here, we had to go to our repsective boys or girls cloak rooms and change. Once we had done this we had to go to the hall and sit on the floor and wait. The boys were told to take everything off and just leave our pants on, the girls I think must have been in underwear and kept their blouse on. It was a school with uniform. I remember coming into the examination room and having to stand in front of a desk and answer some questions with two people looking at me, and finding the whole thing quite unnerving. Walking through a door in nothing but your underpants and seeing two complete strangers as a child that age feels very intimidating to say the very least.

I remember being told to turn around and sit at a smaller desk with a book and one of them got up and came over to it with me. This was an eye test, one of those colourblind things. There was also another one with letters of the alphabet. That was basically it in a nutshell. I was surprised there wasn't more to it and expected there to be.

Nobody even touched my body in any way during this 'check up' but they must have been looking at it obviously. But why were boys told to take all our clothes off bar the one pair of undies just to stand in front of a desk and answer a couple of questions and then sit at a table and look at a book. We didn't even have to turn the pages of it, that was done for us too.

Nobody needed to change at all for this 'check up', so what was the real purpose you have to ask yourself? Looking for signs of domestic home abuse or something without making that clear to any of our parents? But then the girls kept their blouse on, unless they had to remove that in the room when they went in for their go.

The ways of school and days like this shall forever remain a mystery!

My take on shirtless PE was this;

I didn't mind being shirtless at home on my terms but I did mind someone telling me I must be at school.

Did anyone else feel similar to this? It makes a difference.

Robert on 7th March
That was an absolute disgrace how you were treated Robert. I really hate enforced humiliation of children, usually boys, when in front of the opposite gender. It’s such a heartless thing to inflict on one so young that it’s just wicked. It was just as much an abuse of your right to receive respect for your dignity as the way I was treated by some nurses on a children’s ward. I’m not sure how I would have coped with that at that age, but thankfully unlike you it sadly seems, I was able to lose myself in sport such as football, rugby, cricket, as I was alway a competitive and sporty kid; though not so much in gym as I never intended to become an acrobat! What a swine he was, and being male too he would have known how much shame and upset this could bring you. It seems boys often didn’t stand a chance at times, as it could be some females or males who might show complete disregard for your feelings, by being so insensitive to deliberately enforce lasting humiliation. Children can be really hurt by this. Didn’t the girls’ gym teacher find it in herself to feel sorry for how you’d just been treated in front of herself and her girls? She could have at least just let you sit the lesson out I would have thought? Such horrible people it seems were in charge of boys so often in the past. Just awful, and I feel for you.

Recently discovering a photo I'd not seen in many years of my primary school that I had forgotten about there was an official school gym photo featuring me and fifteen others, neat white gym shoes and white ankle socks, tidy white shorts and all bare chests and folded arms. I was so upset it shocked me to remember so I tore it in half. What a relief to destroy it, because although we were smiling slightly I never enjoyed the primary school gym and that teacher we surrounded. I would prefer not to say any more though on that.

The other memory that came back was senior school the boys school was next to the girls school separated by a wire mesh fence. The girls had a netball pitch which was next to fence . After school had finished for day I would walk home . Practice for netball was held after girls finished classes. This was 1960s. I would wander past the court looking at these pubescent teen girls running around in there airtex vests and navy blue cherub school knickers. No skirts allowed believe it or not. No wonder we boys took so long to walk home. Bouncing boobs and bottoms. Those were the days when anything was possible in school.
Some of this thread shows the misery of PE for boys and some girls. There's a myth that boys and girls in the 1960s were alright about showers. That's rubbish, most boys I knew in the 60s did not really like it and couldn't do it fast enough and get out, we just put up with it and got accustomed to doing so, that's very different. But it depends from whose viewpoint on general PE. Girls just hated all PE I always thought. But many boys loved watching girls doing it if they saw them. Girls liked watching running shirtless boys on our playing field and using the climbing frames we had on the grass that we swung from. I think those days are gone now and they look after pupils a lot better now.

PE gives me some very mixed recollections and a very unwelcome memory of one lowbrow moment.

Boys at school were only allowed to wear one pair of plain white shorts, no underwear beneath, in the gym. Although not exactly keen it was at least better than the other stuff of PE, the football and rugby that was the main sport outside we always got made to do. I hated both a lot. My young PE teacher knew this and one day told me I'd better make a lot more effort or else. I just couldn't be bothered though.

Next lesson when we went out for rugby he flipped on me and told me if I didn't like football and rugby perhaps I better go and get a leotard on and join the girls instead. He told me to mend my ways or he'd get a spare leotard from the girls PE office and make me put it on in front of the boys and wear it. But he didn't, it was all mouth.

It didn't make me any keener on football or rugby though. It was purgatory for me to do that, wet and mucky and cold, out in the rain, it always seemed to be raining when we played or blowing a gale.

Anyway he had a go at me along the same lines the next time again for not getting stuck into the rugby and throwing myself about like he wanted or chasing that bleedin' oval ball, and sent me off the pitch, came up to me and said he'd had enough of me and he was sending me off to the girls gym class where I obviously needed to be, and he left the boys briefly and marched me to their gym, told their teacher I was joining them if she'd take me, she agreed to that, and although he didn't force the spare leotard onto me he did make me change on the side of the girls gym class while they watched, out of my entire rugby PE kit and into just my shorts, black ones I wore for rugby and nothing else, everything off, I protested this but just got big gob earache off him and I remember feeling sick to my stomach as I took the kit off and had to join the girls gym class with only my shorts on and no top, shirtless, no footwear and a male PE teacher who said to the girls PE teacher I'd prefer to be with her girls. That bit was completely untrue, I wasn't soft or a girly lad at all, just hated football and rugby and that made me a girl in his eyes. It was a humiliating half hour or so and I really didn't know what to do with myself, my heart was pounding away and I felt faint with nerves and was actually shaking at times because of it and the total humiliation. I don't think those girls or their teacher understood how bad I felt, and my own teacher didn't care or he wouldn't have done it to me. Most of the girls seemed fine with me, but what a thing to do to a kid of 12, to make one boy by himself shirtless in the girls lesson just to make a point to a non rugby liking school pupil.

The real trouble happened after that lesson when I was made the butt of jokes during the rest of the week. It was not something I ever dared tell either of my parents because they'd have both been up that school wanting answers immediately and much as I'd have liked to see the PE teacher answer for what he did I just wanted a quiet life and to forget it. I would have rather been hit with the PE plimsoll in his office a few times actually, like some boys received.

It was a really nasty thing to do and was meant as a shock to make me wake up and put more enthusiasm into the rugby and football but it didn't work and he kind of bellowed a few more threats over the next few weeks but gave up eventually. That PE teacher tried to make me out to be a troublemaker but that was as far from the truth about me as you could get.

Year this happened was 1972.

Go down to 12.57pm on this live update on BBC News over the unexploded WWII bomb today in Paris and you can see a big white sign behind the police on a wall with a great big showerhead symbol on it which I noticed. I put the words into google translate and it was what I thought, a public shower facility in Paris, and I provide the website for it below as well as the item. We don't have anything like this in London or any other major cities or towns in the UK do we.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz6l257gnjqt

https://www.saintdenis.fr/bains-douches

I couldn't agree more with you Alan, but I still think it's worth being available for the reasons that Terry mentioned a couple of days back.

The little lad you mention who got named, and some of the other prominent faces, you can't tell me that many of them didn't get a right old ribbing over this. We all know what kids are like, especially at school. We were them ourselves once. They'd have all been keen to see this and it's a sure thing they would have been shown it when finished, probably at school even before anyone else saw the broadcast, or if not then when broadcast. If you got filmed for something at school of course you were going to want to see it and the school was probably going to want to show it. Can you imagine sitting with that as a school group, boys and girls watching back at what they shot and that little lot coming up at you. That almost certainly happened. You can't tell me that those boys in that film didn't end up getting some mickey taking over doing that from some quarters, they just must have, and seen by their female teachers too. There's a comment underneath where someone mentions a class reaction to it and someone, I think it was an old teacher was on here a week or so back saying she got reactions with various classes looking at that, understandably, and these weren't even the ones involved. Even if the girls in that school did not see it, word always slips out about things like that, especially in school, and some would have made every effort to try and see that somehow because if I'm perfectly honest if I'd been at school and known the girls in my class or just the school had been filmed naked in the school showers I'd have been quite eager to see it, it's human nature, especially as a child.

I see the poster named Yours Truly has mentioned double standards a few times. Tell me about it! The double standard at school between myself and my own sister was not hard to notice even when we were so young. There is one thing about this double standard that makes no sense to me. Boys are treated as if they shouldn't care or be modest and have no right to be and have no sensitivities, while girls are treated the exact opposite to this. But go and read many peer reviewed articles on psychology and they will concede that boys have a general tendancy to be the most sensitive sex at the ages were are talking about, school age 10 to 18, but this is not reflected in the attitude and treatment of them, and us as we once were too.

Someone in the comments under it said the boys looked relaxed about that. Coming out the shower they looked anything but, very nervous to me actually and who could blame them.

Matthew S on 5th March
Matthew, they just must have been very hot perhaps? I would have thought at 18 they’d be able to make their own decision on whether to take their tops off if they were really hot? Sounds like they really could have done with a fan in there!

Graham D on 6th March
I’ve never heard that in some schools girls didn’t need to shower. How strange and I wonder why that was, especially if they were all just as active as the boys. Girls certainly had to shower in my school, and I remember we’d arrive from our music lesson and they’d be still in there, obviously only accessible from their side. By the time we’d changed and gone into the gym, they'd have left and gone to their music lesson. We alternated this every week during our second year, so around 13. What’s slightly odd is how showering was strictly enforced from the beginning, then much the same in the second year, but by the 3rd year when around 14 or so, everything became relaxed, with showering becoming optional. Strange that. Most boys didn’t bother then unless we’d become particularly muddy from games etc, It’s odd as we still did just as much activity during gym lessons. I would have thought we’d all perspire far more as we got older, than we did as 11 and 12 year olds.

Yes, the shower scene was definitely voyeuristic, and I think they were trying to push boundaries even further with the way they filmed the boys. It was deliberate and it was unnecessary.

Comment by: Graham D on 6th March 2025 at 03:33



".... Did you notice how the camera was placed at what seemed to be half a body height, so when some of the lads walked back out to their clothing they had to walk directly into the camera shot and it was more or less at groin height for the perfect view! The director didn't give a toss did he. He tried to catch every single one of them coming back out of that shower, and did his best to make sure they all got a moment on film at some point. If and when they volunteered I wonder if they even sensed what they were actually fully volunteering for. Actually it's not what those lads thought but what their own parents must have thought when they looked at the finished end result of filming that passed through my mind"

The thing I found especially nauseating in that film was they picked on one of the smallest and youngest boys in that class to be seen on camera removing his underpants before entering the shower. Also you have to consider that a fair percentage of that shower room must have been unusable because of the camera and the lighting set-up, it must have been physically as well as psychologically claustrophobic . If I had been the director I would have been extra cautious working with such young children, and he seemed to totally lack discretion or empathy. That, and the scene where they emerge from the shower with no towels till they got to their benches should most definitely been edited out of the completed film. They would only have lost a minute at most and could have been padded it out with some of the outdoor shots.

The trouble is Greg that some of us, me for instance, ended up in secondary schools were they made the boys like me take mandatory showers after PE while the girls teachers never made them do this. My school period covers bang on the period of that film, I was at a secondary school from 1977-82. I was 11 when I started that caper. Boys never could get out of going in the showers after almost any type of PE and were made to do it with any excuses for not fully stripping off and jumping in batted away by any teacher you cared to name who we ever had. My own older sister, just a year above me never showered, she told me this, because she was never made to or even told to by any of her teachers and this did seem to be the case with girls in my own class at the time and we all knew it. There were even girls who picked a couple of boys off and tried to find information on boys they liked about what they looked like undressed if you know what personal stuff I'm getting at. I know full well that the school literature that came with us on entry made it clear as a boy I was expected to shower after a PE lesson, but I'm not sure if they said the same for girls or not, but even if it did, they didn't hold to it like they did with boys like me, not in our secondary school which had a female headmistress and a female deputy as well. Infact Greg I am certain as I can be at this distance that I recall girls openly bragging sometimes to us that they didn't have to shower while we were being made to do it. Many of these girls were just as active as the boys were, when we went outside we could see what they were doing quite easily with their own teacher much of the time. Sometimes they even ran with us on the cross country with a combination class.

Like you Greg, now in this day and age I think I would say I'd have tried to keep out of sight in a film like that if I was part of it but I couldn't necessarily say so about the me in 1977. I accepted what I had to do quite easily and quickly unlike others. Did you notice how the camera was placed at what seemed to be half a body height, so when some of the lads walked back out to their clothing they had to walk directly into the camera shot and it was more or less at groin height for the perfect view! The director didn't give a toss did he. He tried to catch every single one of them coming back out of that shower, and did his best to make sure they all got a moment on film at some point. If and when they volunteered I wonder if they even sensed what they were actually fully volunteering for. Actually it's not what those lads thought but what their own parents must have thought when they looked at the finished end result of filming that passed through my mind.

Greg, I witnessed something touching on the double standard, if not quite as unpleasant as your experiences. It happened to others, rather than myself, but as I give no identifying details, there is no harm in my mentioning.

When I was eighteen, I took part in a theatre production at my further education department. In a dress rehearsal, the cast members were waiting about. The teacher in charge spoke to two classmates, young men, likewise eighteen or so, who were wearing heavy, cumbersome costumes. She told them, "You'll be hot", and instructed them to take them off; they did so, leaving them stripped to the waist in front of several female classmates. One young woman commented on this, audibly.

Nothing more was said by the teacher, who was only about ten years older than us. This was in 2003.

Comment by: Terry on 4th March 2025 at 19:58
The producer of that education TV series on health issues, Philip Grosset, reminds me very much of film producer Peter Greenaway, if anyone knows what I mean by that.



I think I know exactly what you mean by this. Greenaway is noted for many rather pretentious movies between about 30 and 40 years ago that involve a lot of skin in them from a lot of people and are quite full on with no tendancy for discretion. You didn't sign up to many of his movies if you were shy and insecure or bashful.

I think it was Tony who suggested that the school's programme featuring the PE would have been filmed just normally and there would be someone sitting waiting to film them after the class ended. That's doubtful to me and the clues are all within the programme itself.

Although not a film or movie maker I have worked many years ago in a backroom job to do with production on corporate promotional things that were made into VHS tapes for companies.

I've no idea if they consented or not, but that's not my reason for posting this. The changing room scenes were clearly not one take, or even one camera. There could have been two opr possibly three cameras there, or more likely the shower situation was re-shot what looks like possibly three times at least. There was the entry and exit scene, there was a more invasive scene with another camera, not seen in the exit and entry scene, and there was also the shot of their feet and a soap. What this suggests quite strongly from my own limited experience is that there were re-takes to get the various shot selections and angles required, with maybe one camera, that's the likeliest scenario. Wehen you add the boys entereing and immediately changing out of shirts or the boy on the bench removing underwear you could add a further two shooting sections to what I've already described.

Like with many things made for TV, even a few moments of broadcastable film can take a while to shoot, especiallu with multiple angles. So despite what was suggested, it's almost certain that it wasn't just a straightforward come in and wait to be filmed in one easy take. It will have taken a few goes and a bit of hanging around to get everything the director wanted until he was happy, and to people not familiar with how films are made or very young I'm sure it might have proved frustrating, esepcially considering the content and subject requiring total group nudity from everyone. I'm sure they were allowed to put a towel around themselves in any lengthy gaps between takes.

Even if there was consent there is no denying that in those days of the late 70's and early 80's there would have been little concern in terms of privacy or that something like that was destined for TV later on.

Hi Mark,

Firstly, why the hell is this even in the news in 2025? Much less the UK news? This practice was being phased out in American schools fifty years ago!

I read that article. It was actually worse than just nude swimming. Two men spoke of how they were punished in those lessons, actually paddled nude on a bare bottom. Once again the kind of infringement of personal boundaries that just would not have been tolerated for girls - paddling was strictly used only on boys.

Apparently the rationale for making the boys swim naked was that stray fibres from trunks would have clogged up the drainage system. Yet at the same time the girls were issued - not only allowed to wear but actually issued - swimsuits that were obviously far larger than the trunks they forbade boys. Plainly, as with communal showers, there was another agenda here, one that the teachers were not prepared to admit to the boys on its receiving end.

I do not think there was anything sinister about this hidden agenda, apart from the odd, opportunist deviant PE teacher.. It was simply a universally accepted principle that boys were to be toughened up. Part of this was that they were to be conditioned to learn to endure and disregard feelings of embarrassment and humiliation. To this end boys were simply treated worse than girls.

There were almost three hundred comments following this article. Clearly a lot of men still have strong feelings about being humiliated like this. Male commentators were roughly evenly divided between men who hated it and the usual 'I had no problem with it and so therefore anybody who says they did is just being silly' brigade.

There were also several comments from older women had to undergo communal showering at high school. Tellingly not one of them plied the old 'and it never did me any harm' line. Girls grow up with a much more pronounced sense of their own personal boundaries and the sanctity of those boundaries. This why they are much more inclined to protest if those boundaries are crossed - they feel justified in doing so. Boys, on the other hand, have always been conditioned to think that if they complain they are being 'unmanly'. And the primal tendency of other boys to mock them for exactly that only reinforces the dilemma. There is, and always has been, a very thin line between 'toughening up' and the slippery slope to abuse.

The final insult is that when nude school swimming was abolished it was not out of consideration for the feelings of the boys but rather the sensibilities of girls who were demanding the right to participate in traditionally boys' sports.

But the exposure didn't end there. There were also medical exams at the start of each school year, and for the boys these were full-on affairs. Incredibly there was even a swimming test requirement as part of the application procedure at some US universities - guess which gender had to take this test nude?

Seemingly, if you were a young male in the US education system in times past, you were forced to accept that your privates weren't very, well, private. It seems incredible in a country which is in many other aspects so prudish.

Thankfully it never caught on back here in good old Blighty, apart from in some private boys' schools. I suppose it would be inevitable in an environment where it was believed that the best way to instil character in boys was to constantly cane them.

The Daily Mail must be having a bad week newswise. Yesterday I read an article on their website claiming that there is 'proof' that there were once aliens living on Mars. Not only that, but those aliens were human. Yup, human. Just like the swim thing this exact story has in fact been in the public domain for decades.

Unfortunately it remains unknown whether those alien humans had to do their school swimming lessons in the nude.

Terry on 2nd March
Terry, you’re saying all the correct things in your third paragraph, and working with film and photography archives is a large part of my work. All recorded material becomes increasingly important as time moves on, and I can assure you nothing is ‘washed away’ as I expect a copy of this school film will exist in the tv archives. But I certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere near the camera if filming had taken place in my school changing room!

I wouldn’t have minded in the least about the nudity in this film if it had included a similar section in the girls area, as that would have created balance by illustrating that girls too would be expected to shower in their next school. I’d have thought all watching children -when the giggling of surprise from girls, and embarrassment from boys, had subsided- might well have been left with the impression that girls wouldn’t have to shower, only boys. But I do agree that the way it was shot was unnecessarily gratuitous, especially when intended to be shown to a mixed class of children, with only boys filmed. I feel uncomfortable with that, and I have good reason to hold such views. It would have been so easy to have included both genders within the same amount of footage, and without shooting it that way at all.

Several awkward moments from my own childhood contributed to making me feel uncomfortable about the short nude bit in that film, when usual double standards permitted some really awful times for me while being looked after by some women in charge. Mainly these moments occurred during three months spent on a children’s ward when only 11, back in the late 60s with a fractured femur. There seemed to be no regard for boys privacy at times in that place, and I was often put in a situation where I was fully exposed to same aged girls in adjacent beds, due to being in traction and so unable to wear pyjama trousers. This really upset me at that time, as I was naturally always a bit bodily shy anyway. In comparison, whenever girls were dealt with, double layers of portable screens would appear, and all carefully placed around their beds. Some of the female nurses were really unkind and didn’t appear to care that boys might appreciate a little privacy, whereas others were really lovely and respectful, but as Alan says, it only needs a few bad apples. A few weeks earlier, when I was alone in a side room, I had a somewhat strange experience while being given a bed bath by two young, giggling, student nurses. I don’t want to go into details about this but I’m sure they would have got into trouble as they certainly abused the trust put upon them. Boys don’t say anything, as it would only compound embarrassment. Obviously an 11 year old girl would just never experience anything like this would she, as she’d never be allowed to be left alone in a room with nothing on while two 15/16 year old boys washed her down, especially while under the jurisdiction of the predominantly female staff of a children’s ward. There were other moments, including a far too touchy feely final junior school female teacher, who one day as I stood reading by her desk, suddenly pulled me across her knees to playfully slap my backside, to the hilarity of the class. I can’t think what she’d got from my reading that made her do that, but do remember feeling awkward as I returned to my seat. I believe all things like this are experiences only a young boy will have to put up with. As I was a good looking little kid, so in an innocent and childish way, I began to think certain things that happened like these were my fault.

So, due to experiencing such awkward moments, and there were others, as I grew up, it became the old double standards that I learnt to hate from such a young age. Consequently, just as Christine Sanderson predictably said, that she’d feel less comfortable had same aged girls been shown in that way rather than boys; due to my own experiences, I felt that with only boys being shown naked in this film, this just perpetuated and illustrated the expected disregard for boys privacy, even though the culture those boys found themselves in was probably a factor that encouraged them to comply. This is the very same reason I was treated the way I was just a few years earlier, and how this scene was directed, just pushed on this accepted disregard for young lads. This is what I didn’t like. I hope some can understand.

Nick, Tony and Matthew.

Agree, very poorly written. From what I can work out it could also be read that the head teacher, or any other teacher, could refuse to let boys go swimming in bare chests, and let's be honest, even the really sensitive and anxious would see that as mad wouldn't they? Turning a boys swim lesson into a big wet t-shirt contest.

There again from the opposite end, it suggests to me any girls brave enough to hang out with the boys topless would be able to. Equally mad!

Why do schools have to create such stupid rules. If a girl thinks she's a boy she should still have to wear the girls outfit and if a boy thinks he's a girl he should still be treated as a boy is. They are at school and under eighteen.

Comment by: Nick H on 5th March 2025 at 05:47

Oh dearie me. It sounds like your old school has been captured by a very silly woke as hell head teacher or his/her acolytes.

'Male identified students'....three words and seven syllables to say - BOYS!

You don't 'indentify' as a male, or a boy, or a man, 'you are' one. It's not a choice. I know that people recently have been talking about some radicals trying to cancel women but this looks like a school trying to cancel boys and men too.

Matthew I don't know whether you agree with me, or if anyone else does, but the way I read what's been put here by Nick is that his old school seems to be suggesting that yes boys can be shirtless in swimming/PE or whatever but that if a female pupil, a girl, actually wanted and asked to be topless in any activity that boys were shirtless in, that they would oblige this request. Unlikely I'm sure, but that seems to be the upshot of this to me.

This type of current ideological radicalism with school bosses is far more concerning and troubling than some of the most recent concerns that have been written on other matters.

Nick H, after re-reading the passage, I now think it means that biologically male pupils, or transgender pupils identifying as boys, may swim bare-chested or do PE bare-chested, unless the head says otherwise.

It is very badly worded, whatever the meaning. Sorry if my attempts to decipher it are clumsy.

Hi Mark, I took a look at that article in the Mail. It is pretty typical for articles on the subject in the media in recent years. All these articles seem to have a similar slant: saying how bizarre it was to “make“ or "force" boys swim naked as the day they were all born right up to their mid teens and sometimes beyond. As the writers are invariably younger, they really have not a clue as to what was going on.

I wonder what makes the Daily Mail suddenly write up an article on that subject matter at this point in time, as it was mainly an American requirement.

The idea at that time, now seeming quaint to the Johnny-come-latelies, was that we boys and soon enough men were all made the same. Therefore in a setting in which young males, boys at school, or male teachers, are respecting each other, there is no problem and should be no problem for anyone in such classes even if they are all bare arsed and having penises all on show. Sure, if some young person showed up without any experience of it he might have been surprised. But the activity of showering and swimming together without clothes, was nothing remarkable or unusual at the time. Never mind the ignorance of effete smarties in the 21st century.

Nick H, I suspect that sentence is designed to cater for transgender pupils. Perhaps it means that biologically male pupils (boys, basically), whether transgender or not, may swim bare-chested or do PE bare-chested, unless the head says otherwise.

That's just my interpretation; perhaps I'm mistaken.

This was in the Daily Mail paper just last week. An item about how boys at school in America in the 60's and 70's were often forced to have swimming lessons with each other at school in the pool entirely naked without any costume at all. Some remain very unhappy to this day.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14414043/Minnesota-men-public-schools-naked-swimming.html

This clothing wording in respect of school sport/PE currently sits among the lengthy school rules on my former secondary school website, exact quote sentence;

'Policy allows the school head teacher to impose discretionary restrictions, such as restricting male identified students to go bare chested but only as part of their standard swim wear for that limited activity, and permits discretionary exceptions such as allowing males to play sports PE bare chested but only if offered fairly to any female identified students who would make the same request.'

WTAF is this saying?