Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: Frank on 2nd March 2025 at 21:38
(also Terry same date)

..."This is symptomatic of a problem we have nowadays. I must say I really find this projected empathising a bit hard to take from you Alan and the subsequent desire to ban things on that basis. It's this kind of nonsense that leads to a situation where something that was designed for and shown to quite young children at the time for their own educational needs is now age restricted to the over 18's. The absurdity of this cannot surely be missed by anyone......."

Life is full of absurdity, as we all know. One of the things I enjoy is to listen to and watch old British comedy radio and TV shows and Carry On films. These days apart from verbal warnings "that this show was made 50 years ago and it does reflect language and attitudes of its time". You need not worry about that, because the BBC will have excised any hurty words prior to transmission, and it is not unusual for a programme which had a running time of 28 minutes reduced to about 25 minutes. Similarly on TV at the moment they are repeating Steptoe & Son and again words are bleeped out and sometimes entire lines and exchanges edited out. Last week for example they showed an episode where they go the cinema - Harold wants to see Fellini's 8 And A Half and the old man wants to see a nudist film. They even managed to distort the poster advertising the latter so a woman's breasts are pixilated, so that the picture is distorted and the next line is cut. ITV repeat Carry On films and whole scenes are cut. I can guarantee that not one of those scenes involves nude children. I have some of the Steptoe's on video and even sound recordings issued by Pye of complete shows taken from the original soundtracks, so I know just how innocuous some of the excised lines are.

If the work of two of our greatest comedy writers (Alan Simpson and Ray Galton) can be butchered, (Dr Bowdler did the same thing with Shakespearian texts) to make it more "acceptable" to modern audiences, then I see no problem in making that dubious schools programme be put on the banned list. I repeat - why do people wish to see it?. If you want an idea of British life fifty years ago, there are far more innocuous programmes broadcast on a regular basis on numerous TV channels, much more edifying than that sordid peep show.

Comment by: Alan on 2nd March 2025 at 16:31
Unless one of those men who took part in that film comes forward to explain the procedures we will never know. I think it is the pretend innocence of TV executives and school heads that annoys me most. I seem to remember that Schools broadcasting would run all term and each programme would either do stand-alones or a short season on one topic, then move on to something totally different. Odd that of the dozens of programmes that went out, this episode was preserved on a VHS tape in somebody's home. I understand the school where it was recorded no longer exists. Perhaps that is just as well.


^^this above^^

The state of this nonsense above from this chap. You are always annoyed by something, people like you are never happier than when they are annoyed by something or other.

But let me tell you what I find really repulsive about some of the things you say like this above. It's the way I've seen you nonchalantly smear other people and throw doubt on others motivations so easily and without shame. It never ends does it. In this latest example you are now smearing someone for having recorded something and kept it for many years, going so far as to describe it as 'preserved'. We all know full well what you are really driving at Alan and it's a nasty insinuated smear and like other accusations you make, you have no justification for saying these things in the way you do. It's also not true, there are many other editions from the same source as well on the Vintage Schools TV channel, not just the one under scrutiny here at the moment.

The problem isn't the television programme and its details, it's you and anyone else who can't accept the past for what it was and can't see such total innocence without thinking malevolent thoughts about the situation.

I think Tony you made the more reasonable and thoughtful post for those here who hold such views, and did so in a well written and non judgemental manner and although I would not have written what you said I did at least agree with your final line - 'I think this show raises so many interesting questions around the whole issue of privacy, exploitation, double standards, procedure and consent before you even get to think of the actual content.'

Fair enough Tony, I'll buy into that point of view. I will not buy into yours Alan because you always overdo it.

Like you Greg I've been braodly empathetic to much of Alan's backstory content and how it leads to his views now but Alan I must take issue with you describing that programme as repulsive, that's way too strong and I disagree with banning things too.

Greg, you said - 'I’m certainly not condoning the programme as I too have said previously that I wish it would be taken down. I think it displays the cruel double standards that only boys would be subjected to, with a complete disregard for how they might feel.'

For me this comment of yours makes the case quite strongly for keeping things like that available and in the public domain as a modern historical archive. To see quite clearly how times change even in a very short passage of time. I don't want to see things washed away out of existence as if they never happened in the past, no matter how uncomfortable they may look. I would not object if that was me there if I had originally agreed to be part of it, whilst still being able to admit and agree to all the double standards etc and arguments that have been made that boys like me and you put up with when young. The more we can see from the past the more we can learn from it, and that is the case here, the programme has unwittingly served a wider later purpose you might say.

There's also a lot of sense in what Frank has said here too.

This is symptomatic of a problem we have nowadays. I must say I really find this projected empathising a bit hard to take from you Alan and the subsequent desire to ban things on that basis. It's this kind of nonsense that leads to a situation where something that was designed for and shown to quite young children at the time for their own educational needs is now age restricted to the over 18's. The absurdity of this cannot surely be missed by anyone.

My own children were primary school age in the 1970s and I still remember all the consent forms I used to get given to sign even on things like school trips, swimming and medical emergency issues to name three things there. I'd wager a decent sum of money that proper consent was followed by all involved, and I'd also wager another sizable sum that those involved would worry a lot less about it if they saw it again than you are Alan. They probably all know it's out there.

Have you seen the rest of the Good Health archive, there's a lot more where that came from.

Comment by: Greg2 on 2nd March 2025 at 13:39


We are not disagreeing Greg,, and I am not trying to start an argument - I was merely making the point that a lot of things that are said as - let's call it "state speak" - cover a multitude of sins. It is akin to the Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police when claims to be "shocked" when one of his officers gets caught doing something he shouldn't have been. Once, yes and he might well be shocked, but it is like a biting dog - when one gets caught it seems to be the law of nature one hears about more and more cases . There have been so many cases in the past couple of years he should stop being shocked and do something about it. We hope that nothing untoward can happen, but it often does, and what I find especially reprehensible is that in these days of CCTV (we are the most closely watched society in Western Europe, with more cameras per head of the population, yet they still can't catch fly-tippers!), and all sorts of checks, so many people find a way of circumventing the system. Is it carelessness, or too great a reliance on the systems in place, or that the systems are not as foolproof as they are made out to be.

Unless one of those men who took part in that film comes forward to explain the procedures we will never know. I think it is the pretend innocence of TV executives and school heads that annoys me most - are they seriously trying to pretend they were unaware that there were paedophiles prior to that film being made, and you can only wonder at the motives of the person who saved that isolated example of that series. I seem to remember that Schools broadcasting would run all term and each programme would either do stand-alones or a short season on one topic, then move on to something totally different. Odd that of the dozens of programmes that went out, this episode was preserved on a VHS tape in somebody's home. I understand the school where it was recorded no longer exists. Perhaps that is just as well.

Comment by: Alan on 2nd March
Alan, for goodness sake, I've kept out of your previous posts that seemed to rile so many, as I've often had some empathy for what seemed such awful schooling, and such a dodgy gym teacher who so obviously disturbed you. But here you seem to be getting worked up due to your own chosen interpretation of an English language word that already has its own meaning. In this case it’s nothing more than to make sure that a procedure was in place to help protect people, especially minors, who might appear in a television programme. It’s ensuring respect, and care. Are you disagreeing with those things? Yes I know the interpretation of those words resulted in a programme which those very same words would’t allow today, but it was a long time ago, and they were very different times. I’m certainly not condoning the programme as I too have said previously that I wish it would be taken down. I think it displays the cruel double standards that only boys would be subjected to, with a complete disregard for how they might feel.

I also despair at the way so many have posted on here giving the impression they can’t wait to see it. I also found difficult Christine Sanderson’s comment that, ’It does intrinsically feel and look more acceptable to see boys in such a situation than girls and I would have felt less comfortable with girls shown in the same precise manner from that school at that age' which I saw as such a predictable comment from a female only able to give an interpretation from her own adult point of view, instead of trying, at least, to imagine how it might have been from the boy's, or at least the child's, point of view. I see this in itself as a failing for someone whose work is to inspect schools.

I’ll give up now trying help people understand that it’s unlikely those showering boys would have been forced to do as seen. I can’t prove it, and I could be wrong as it was a long time ago. I just think it would be unlikely. I’ve learnt long ago that in the end people continue to believe whatever they want to believe for their own reasons, including it seems their own meaning they give to words.

I mean no disrespect to anybody, but somebody mentioned the word "protocols" in relation to that repulsive 1970s/80s school TV film, that along with two other meaningless expressions always annoy me:

"Best practice" often used by captains of industry and floundering politicians - it's otiose - who would advocate "worst practice" and "affordable" - another trite buzzword. What is "affordable"?. What is affordable to me might not be to you, or vice versa.

"Protocols" sounds very reassuring doesn't it;. I am sure there were "protocols" in the education industry, but they didn't seem to stop the minority of teachers who used the cane to excess for trivial reasons back in our day, or paedo P.E. teachers - protocols didn't clean out the rotten apples in the barrel, even when other teaching staff had suspicions but turned a blind eye.

As regards that film , it ought to be withdrawn from You Tube - those men will be in their late 50s now at the youngest, and I am sure if some of them knew it was available they would be aghast and embarrassed. You do have to wonder why somebody thought it necessary to preserve an old VTR of an episode of a schools broadcast and make it available for everyone to see.

I totally agree with Yours Truly that those boys would have, at the very least, been coerced to appear in it, whether they really wanted to or not - perhaps a fee, or a day out or a days holiday, or perhaps just told they "had to" do it,.


If it was all so innocent, why not show the girls in a similar scene?. It would be interesting to know what the writer and producer/director got up to in their spare time!. We will never know - after at least 45 years (some people have dated it earlier) they are probably in the great Pinewood in the sky now. If the P.E. teacher is still alive, I wonder what he thinks of himself now.

So PE played to all my weaknesses in school, and one was my aversion to team sport and another my absolute aversion to showing my body off because I was very skinny. I didn't wear shorts much as an older kid because I thought my legs looked weedy. No shirt on was a definite no go, so I tried to avoid both being a skin in PE and a shower user but was very rapidly slapped down into my place and told I must muck in like the others and that was the final say in the matter, and I had to do both these things like others and if I made further excuses I'd be in detentions. I was among a group of boys in my class given the same ultimatum. At first I remember being absolutely devastated by this and it consumed me, even thinking about taking the detentions. When I said this to my PE teacher he told me not to try that and informed my head of year who gave me a warning on a possible two week suspension if me or anyone else didn't buckle down and act our age. I remember the act my age comment. I still recall the deep anxiety I used to get on school nights when I knew I faced PE the next morning and the dread of it. By the age of 15 I was so sick of it that I just wanted to get up in the morning and go and do a proper job of something and get some money instead of the of school PE lessons.

This is a great discussion.

I'm Faye and I'm 53 years old and yet school seems like yesterday and a lifetime away in the same thought.

I've interests in sport and history so that's what has brought me here. I've yet to see it but intend to when I get a chance but from the sound of it I think I might also have seen the programme on health education that is being mentioned here. We did watch a series or something with that title at school.

Am I the first 'girl' to come on here and lay claim to topless gym lessosn at school then? I had to do that in my first school almost from the word go at five for at least a year, possibly two. The girls and the boys at my first school were all the same, doing PE in our underwear in many cases and treated all the same as each other with no difference. I can't even remember taking much of a PE kit to my first school, we certainly went outside properly dressed for PE though. I may have mentioned to my mother something along the lines of doing PE like the boys, that's quite possible knowing me, but I don't really know what I thought of it at that age. It looks like it was common practice.

Moving along to our primary school the same pupils all followed on and the school was adjacent to our first school, I remember the boys there never wearing any tops in PE when we did gym like at the first school but girls always had a proper PE kit to wear of some sort.

Hello again. I was doing my part time flower delivery job in and around Dunstable on Friday morning and passing down some familiar roads like I always do and once again saw a large group of schoolboys running with an adult from the Queensbury School in Dunstable along the Langdale Road if anyone knows the area and off to a quieter area. There must have been 25 boys in that running group and 80% were running in their bare chest only, I spotted maybe four or five others with some kind of T-shirt or vest on, they looked anything from 15 to 18 to me but were definitely coming from that school. That's the third time I have seen this now in the last year and a half and seeing such a group is an attention grabber. It was a sunny morning but it was still only February.

One thing that also caught my attention was that two of the boys wearing the T-Shirts were black/asian looking while all the boys running with a bare chest were clearly white. It goes without saying in this day and age they must all have been choosing to go off running in that way. It does look impressive as a spectacle outside to actually see like that, whatever one thinks of the merits of it.

To the latest PE teacher Yorskhiredad, is this something you could imagine doing with your lot?

Here's what I think happened with those PE boys in the television programme.

They were just doing a perfectly normal regular PE lesson outside, it looked like they were coming in from a game of football to me. The cameraman and any crew told the school/relevant teachers they would set up in the changing room and film when they ended the lesson and the PE teacher probably gave the film crew an exact time he would end the lesson and go back in, so they would know to be ready for the shots they wanted. The boys will have been told this, but not actually asked if they were okay about it. I don't believe they had much choice whether to take part, they probably just had to when it was mentioned, irrespective of any nudity involved. The film director will probably have told them to act like they were not there and invisible and not to look into the cameras at all. They all simply come in as normal and try their best to ignore the cameras. Despite this I noticed one boy did glance into camera while showering. Like others think, I don't suppose any of them had much say in the matter other than being told what was happening and what to do and went along with it because adults all around them were saying so. Children will end up putting up with all kinds of stuff adults throw at them, or at least they used to.

What nobody has picked up on here is that there was a named boy called Warren who was the focus outside briefly beforehand and then on his bench removing his stuff, walking last in and then being the focus on him rinsing away. He had no hiding place did he, and looked like a mild mannered quiet boy to me there deep in his own thought. Did he volunteer for the extra role within the whole thing or was he just picked out as a done deal and told what to do. There was no extrovert body language going on.

Someone mentioned school vetoing it if they didn't like it. I doubt they would have even had that power to do so. On final edit if they saw that film and thought, uh-oh that's too much there, with the full on exposure shots they didn't expect then I doubt any objections would have made much difference as they had already agreed the situation and signed it off somewhere and film makers don't allow the subjects of their documentaries to also become the editors of them as a rule do they. I don't think many of the parents would have been able to veto it either in those days, and as others have said, it was shown for many years to lots of schoolchildren and these boys were probably 20 and it was still going to air in the weekday daytimes to schools everywhere, god only knows how many times.

You can't help but wonder what was going through the boys minds there and what would be going through your own mind in their place when showers at school are already a quite tricky situation for many as it is without knowing someone wants to make some TV with you doing them at that age. Enough professional adult actors have big issues with all this kind of thing when asked to film nude scenes, and often they have closed sets where only the very few who are essential are in the vicinity of that part of the production, which is always strange when the end product is going out for mass public viewing anyway. I'm curious about what the boys in this show's reaction would have been when they must have first seen it themselves. I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall when that was done, not to be a voyeur, but to just see how they were treated and how it all worked out in filming terms and the manner it was done with them. It would not surprise me to discover the boys received some treats for appearing, not just a credited thankyou at the end of that.

I think this show raises so many interesting questions around the whole issue of privacy, exploitation, double standards, procedure and consent before you even get to think of the actual content.

Could I please try to clear this point up once and for all. It really is highly unlikely that children shown in the pe/shower film would have been made to feature in it by either their gym teacher or the school. It would have been the television company, in agreement with the school, and with parents having been informed, that provided the children who complied. All those filmed with speaking parts; those featuring prominently in foreground or middle distance shots, which already includes boys featured in the foreground of the shower scene, would all have had to have parental approval with release forms signed at that age by parents of guardians, otherwise they would not have been used. Any children who wanted to be in background shots only would have been respected.

There have been for many years, rules and protocols in place, which go into great detail, and intended to protect not only those featured in footage, but also the tv company themselves, to protect from any possible litigation that might arise in the future. I work in documentary film and I just know this. I would have been the age of those boys only a few years before, but I’d be very surprised if things back then would have been much different to what they were in the 90s-2000s. Obviously anyone appearing naked under the age of 18 these days would not happen, but I’d be very surprised if similar protocols would not have been in place for the very same reasons I state above.

What might not be known is that those featuring prominently, including those with speaking parts, would likely have been offered a small fee. Unfortunately this might have been a sufficient incentive for boys to agree to do something that they might later have regretted. I’m thinking the boys in the shower scene who subsequently might have received teasing and ridicule, not only from their girl classmates also filmed, but any others around the school, which I think highly likely following a probable school screening before the releasing of the episode to terrestrial school television. I wonder whether Christine Sanderson, or anyone else even thought or cared about this?

I've just seen the Fit & Healthy video under discussion here and the shower and changing room strongly resembles what I remember from my own school changing room (1994-98) and the naked filing in and out like that we always did from about the age of twelve. It really did make me hark back to things seeing that. I don't have a problem with it existing in that form but in my opinion they were told to do that and didn't get choices. That was clearly a real class of real children there, not child actors like someone laughably suggested. What you've got to remember is that you were told to do things at school, not asked. None of us were asked if we'd like to take showers after our PE lessons in those days were we, we were told to do so whether we wanted to or not, compulsion all the way, one of the few things I remember being strictly compulsory to do, and forced to cram naked with each other whether we were the shyest kid in class or the most outgoing carefree showy kind. Nobody's feelings were taken into any consideration in the least by anyone who made us do those things. In my case the water was only ever lukewarm at best and we only used the water, no soap or anything, just told to stand under the water jet, get wet through and rub the water over ourselves using our hands, what kind of proper hygiene is that anyway. I used to find I was simply washing off the deoderant body spray I'd already put on before school, and we were not allowed to spray those in our changing room either so I couldn't use it in school.

I'm convinced those boys were made to do those scenes even if reluctant, I was trying to see if they were the same ones who were doing the gym scenes (all shirtless and mixed PE like we did in primary school) including the two sat on the bench taking pulse rates with the PE teacher.

I was only born in late 1981 but many of my memories match identical to those of you who were at school in the 70s and 80s on here.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

Thank you for engaging with me. I hope I have not come across as too hectoring in previous posts. I do have a tendency to go on a bit.

I completely agree with you that we all carry embedded unconscious assumptions regarding gender roles, whether through nature or nurture. That is precisely why we all need to be made aware of them as much as possible.

The shower scene didn't trouble me - I have no doubt it would have found its way to the front page of the Daily Mail long before now if it came out that Jimmy Savile had been off-camera holding the towels. If I feel irritated or offended by it it is because if by chance I had attended that school at that time - those kids will have been almost exactly my own age - I might have found myself in that scene despite my own unwillingness - I still cannot accept that those boys freely chose to be in that scene.

'Double standards are a fact of life and were quite dramatic when I was at school. I had a friend who wanted to do woodwork but she wasn't allowed to do so because she was a girl and they only allowed boys to do so..'

You are quite right. Double standards have always been around and were more blatant in the past than now. I remember reading somewhere that the former Labour MP Margaret Beckett upset her teachers when in the sixth form she insisted on applying for a science degree rather than any of the arts or languages that were considered 'seemly' for girls.

Of course your friend ought to have been allowed to pursue what she wanted - as a matter of fact I can remember one girl who joined our metalwork class in third year because she was considering taking it as an O level option. (Normally girls did not do woodwork or metalwork at my school, although, weirdly, we boys did join the girls for cookery classes. Looking back, my secondary school seems to have been somewhat progressive, although I still remember it as a human zoo.) But at least your friend was not forced to do Home Economics in her pants.

'I think one of the most important lessons that should be given to children is that life isn't always fair, you can't always get what you want and there are winners and losers, but if anything we were more likely to have told that to the previous generations than the current school age generation and that concerns me.'

What a pity that Gandhi, Luther King, Pankhurst and Mandela plainly were not taught that at school!

It always seems to me that this argument is advanced by people who are either unaffected and therefore unconcerned by the inequality in question and/ or are aware that they themselves are actively benefiting from it.

I half agree with you. It is invaluable for children to learn that life can be unfair - and they then need to learn that by taking up the courage to challenge the things they find unfair they can, sometimes, by no means always, get these things changed or abolished.

But if this is such an essential lesson it is equally applicable to both sexes. So why, why is it that in any issue involving the infringement of personal dignity and feelings it always seems to be the boys on the receiving end?

James, you poor soul, you have my sympathy. It's appalling that a teacher should respond with anger to an eight year old's tears, when they had done nothing wrong.

I'm about your age, my eighth birthday being in autumn 1992, and was also instinctively self-conscious about doing PE bare-chested, particularly at infant school. I kept my feelings completely hidden in my first year of infant school, as I mentioned before, but then things became considerably worse - though I cried about it only once. It was the Friday before breaking up for Christmas 1991. Aged seven, I was quietly thinking I wouldn't do any PE for more than a fortnight, with seasonal excitements imminent. And then, an extra PE lesson was sprung on the class that afternoon as a "treat". For various reasons (the anger of adults, my and others' distress), it was particularly unpleasant.

James, please excuse my asking, but what had you been used to wearing for PE indoors at your school before primary?

(Greg2, you asked me in another message what Lord Burghley would have used to weigh himself. I don't know; his biography by Stephen Alford doesn't say, but I ventured to have an e-mail sent to Professor Alford asking that, so I'll pass on his response).

Picking up your comment Yours Truly on PE "uniforms". I went to a secondary academy, starting in 1974 and there was no school uniform at all for anyone which was I think somewhat unusual. We could wear what we liked subject to just a couple of minor rules such as no denim for instance. I'd come from a primary school with a uniform so that was a very strange feeling going to a big school and being able to wear just what I wanted like at home. About fifteen years later long after I'd gone they did introduce a formal uniform sometime around 1990 or so.

However, and here's the amusing bit, although school required no uniform for normal everyday classes it did for PE lessons and we were not allowed to just come to those with whatever we wanted on. In the school gym for example we had to wear white trainers and no socks, or be bare footed, black shorts only, no other colour and markings, and the whole gym was a shirtless environment where only bare chests were permitted for us, but I'll give a couple of my teachers from that time a heads up for at least sometimes being like the boys in PE and taking us shirtless themselves but most of the time they seemed more comfortable keeping theirs on.

You might imagine any school would be more concerned about how we all turned out for the majority of our time there in all the other subject classes rather than just the one subject of physical education lessons. It's interesting isn't it that PE lessons were treated with such discipline like this even in a school with no actual formal uniform.

I had to laugh at the link on professional footballers, I didn't listen to it but anyone who thinks most of them shower after the match with their undies on obviously hasn't been near a real adult locker room in their life.

Hi John D,

As you say, everyone is different. I have admitted before that I was a particularly shy and self-conscious child and as such felt that the world didn't need to see my parts (I never asked but I bet the world would have agreed).

I hope that reading other comments on here you can at least accept that not every child or every boy felt the same as you did. Too many posters on here cleave to the reasoning, 'I never was aware of any issue and so therefore there cannot have been an issue'.

As I have said before, this ought all always to have been optional and up to the individual. There was never any intrinsic need for a 'PE uniform', apart perhaps from gymnastics where the potential for a t-shirt to fall over its wearer's eyes could prove dangerous.

Freedom of choice. You should have the option to get your danglies out if you want to. Juts as long as you don't get them out anywhere near me.

Comment by: John D on 28th February 2025 at 04:20










"....I was a show off in front of friends sometimes and when I was ten years old I ran about 50 metres between my house and my best friends house in the middle of the day for a dare completely starkers and ran up to his bedroom while his mum was out>>>>>"

Well, John, everyone is different. . Some people like to disport themselves in nudist camps, but they are in a minority, as I suspect you were at ten. I don't think you would have done it down the high street where I lived in London. We had three bus routes running along my road.

By the way, it might interest you, and others here to know that professional footballers these days - those earning thousands of pounds each week - shower after games in their underpants. You don't believe me? - I must admit I found it hard to believe myself - just watch this Sky TV journalist saying so from 50 seconds in from the start of the recording. Whether you watch the rest of it or not is entirely up to you, but he is an interesting speaker, and I can empathize with some of what he says, even though I loathed sport..

So - all those people who laugh at me and others for their modesty back then - we were not allowed any covering - this is professional football in 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgQdQHbEPSs

John D, You have highlighted what is frustrating about Alan's often interesting comments - his tendency to make sweeping generalisations from his own experience: my gym master was a pervert, so all gym masters were perverts; I hated showers at school, so all boys found showers a horrible experience, and so on.
I have made this point before but I have no wish to criticise Alan: his candour a few weeks ago was impressive.

Comment by: Alan on 27th February 2025
<You just can't convince me that those boys freely consented to that shower sequence....... There is nothing you could have offered me to agree to being filmed naked for national TV on repeat. I still think those boys were made to do that.....">

<So do I - I suspect it was like the old army/RAF system - "I want three volunteers - you, you and you". I doubt any of the men who were the boys in the film would admit to being in it - I know I wouldn't.>




Oh I don't know about that in answer to these two comments above. I would have probably put my hand up if asked, although granted I might have been a bit surprised if my boy bits also ended up shown if the camera went lower. With things like that the parents would naturally want to see their kids appearance on the telly, can you imagine sitting with them for that, but they are young enough not to be majorly embarrassed surely. I thought the edition was absolutely fine from my standpoint. We all see the same things differently it appears. We actually did have showers in our own primary school in the early seventies and they were used quite a lot, not always but we never seemed to go more than about two or three PE lessons before using them and they were quite nice and new I think, so was the school building. There was a simple small hand towel cupboard in the cloakroom near our coat hooks, it was filled with cotton towels and bundles of paper ones as well as loo rolls and a few other bits and pieces like soapy bits. Cotton hand towels, very fancy but good enough to dry with and we had to share one between two of us. Not a good lesson in hygiene there. Our class teacher, whether a man or even a woman would be around briefly checking in on us and I suppose as young boys we didn't think too much about that, teachers knew best after all.

I was a show off in front of friends sometimes and when I was ten years old I ran about 50 metres between my house and my best friends house in the middle of the day for a dare completely starkers and ran up to his bedroom while his mum was out. We had been paddling/swimming in the garden. But I had forgotten about the running back bit and didn't have any clothes with me, as I bottled the return run, and he had to lend me something, but his mum came back and saw me wearing her son's clothing and asked where mine was and we admitted the dare. I was marched over back home and given a rollicking while laughing about it and handing the clothes back to my best friends mother after I'd changed in my own bedroom back into my own stuff. Because I took showers consistently at primary school I think this gave me a confidence about my own skin and I was used to being seen and seeing others from a young age with no clothes thus leading to the confidence to do silly naked dares in our quiet little street in broad daylight. When my dad used to inflate his really great fun paddling pool in our garden and fill it about two feet deep me and my best friend never wore swimming trunks in it as children and always went without until we were about ten. Some other boys from school would also join us sometimes and a couple of them were adamant they would never use the pool without their swimming trunks even though we saw them at school in the shower, which seemed kind of funny really. Having an extroverted persona helps I think. I'm unable to put myself in the introvert quiet shy persona so it must have been far more difficult and my thoughts are with anyone who suffered shame, unhappiness or embarrassment at school as a youngster, it obviously stays with a lot of adults and I must confess to being quite surprised at the consistent strength of feeling on things like shirtless PE lessons and showering described across these pages.

For kids in the seventies it was such a free and easy life and I miss all the fun we got up to, it just doesn't look like many ten year olds today are enjoying their childhood as much as I did mine. Many seem harrassed by over protective neurotic parents nowadays who won't let them out of sight for ten minutes without checking up.

Hi Alan,

I would speak up. Now I would. If that had happened to me I would post it on here. History gives people long voices.

I remember crying the first time when my teacher Miss Cresswell made me take my top right off for PE when I was eight years old and new at primary school in 1992. It made no difference, it just made her angry, and all the boys had to do PE in bare chests throughout the primary school with the girls by our side. I hated PE at primary school. We could only wear shorts.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 27th February 2025 at 08:44
,

"...Christine: would you have felt as relaxed about that clip if it had been of girls showering? The nudity is entirely unnecessary. Part of the scene shows showerheads sprinkling followed by a shot of the boys from the waist up. That was all that was needed to show children watching this film that showering would be necessary........


You just can't convince me that those boys freely consented to that shower sequence....... There is nothing you could have offered me to agree to being filmed naked for national TV on repeat. I still think those boys were made to do that....."


So do I - I suspect it was like the old army/RAF system - "I want three volunteers - you, you and you". I doubt any of the men who were the boys in the film would admit to being in it - I know I wouldn't.

Hello Yours Truly.

I've thought about your question for a moment and you have made valid points of interest that show up how many of us routinely accept differing rules between differing people, in this regards on the gender issue.

It does intrinsically feel and look more acceptable to see boys in such a situation than girls and I would have felt less comfortable with girls shown in the same precise manner from that school at that age. At face value there should be no discernable difference I agree with you but we are all clearly conditioned to some automatic thoughts on gender that are hard to break out of. Even as children we expect the boys to be tougher and more resilient as a gender even though this in itself plays to gender based stereotypes.

You are correct of course, the points could have been made effectively without any need to see boys showering directly at all, just taking their PE kit off, a sequence on the running water and then getting dressed. I do agree that the whole thing was very literal indeed, and wasn't really required. I was not troubled or offended by it though and accept the educational context, just about. But as I've also said beforehand, it may have also acted as an introduction to school showering requirements for the primary ages watching who might or will have been unaware of future expectations at that time, so in this context the film at least did its job.

Double standards are a fact of life and were quite dramatic when I was at school. I had a friend who wanted to do woodwork but she wasn't allowed to do so because she was a girl and they only allowed boys to do so. Where I live there is a woman who runs her own one woman carpentry business nowadays.

I think one of the most important lessons that should be given to children is that life isn't always fair, you can't always get what you want and there are winners and losers, but if anything we were more likely to have told that to the previous generations than the current school age generation and that concerns me.


Going onto A Yorkshiredad, you are a PE teacher yourself. That's a very interesting story you relate from your own school. Why do you personally feel so uncomfortable on your new summer PE kit issue, and I'd like to know if you've had any parental feedback so far or if you expected any? I think the reasons you have been given sound fair and reasonable.

Hi Christine Sanderson, Sean B,

Christine: would you have felt as relaxed about that clip if it had been of girls showering? The nudity is entirely unnecessary. Part of the scene shows showerheads sprinkling followed by a shot of the boys from the waist up. That was all that was needed to show children watching this film that showering would be necessary. Somebody else here stated that the Benny Hill theme was used over this clip, though I didn't hear it myself, I only skipped through this bit.

You just can't convince me that those boys freely consented to that shower sequence. I had two full medical exams at primary school and even though there were maybe five adults at most present they were shocking, horrible experiences. I used to swerve school plays because they always made us strip to our underwear before changing into our costumes. There is nothing you could have offered me to agree to being filmed naked for national TV on repeat. I still think those boys were made to do that.

I think we all got that that segment was filmed for hygiene purposes . . .

Of course there were safeguards! Nobody here has said otherwise. The animosity towards that scene on here isn't because of any suspicion that any shenanigans took place. but because of the lack of regard shown those boys. There was no safeguarding those boys' dignity, was there?

As overwrought as Alan may sound he makes a crucial point - it was for a damn good reason that CRB checks were instituted, a long time after the time of this film.

Christine, your observation about the boys themselves commenting is good. They could clear this up.

A guy on here, or was it even two, on the ginger hair thing said something I can concur with fully too. I hope things have moved on a bit nowadays and school is not so bad for that kind of thing but I used to keep taking hit after hit for being a ginger haired schoolboy and yes you better believe it, when you have to shower and they see what you've got they hit on you again, and again and just never let up about a sprig of ginger hair that grows in your school years. Another ginger haired lad in my gym group used to get the same nonsense and we were referred to as the twins despite being unrelated and only having ginger hair in common, not looks. A certain gym teacher we both had said he thought ginger boys were less strong than others in class once when I flunked something, no idea where he got that from, although I guess you don't see many major sportsmen who are classic ginger redheads do you who excel.

Comment by: Sean B on 26th February 2025 at 23:28


"I'm quite sure Christine isn't as naive as you're attempting to make out Alan, and I think the power of your own arguments is reduced by making a post where you thread together all those characters from your childhood on TV and radio like that into one big worst case over the top scenario. It looks rather silly to make your point in that way because I could just as easily run off another much larger group of names at the time, 99% of everyone else, without any hint of scandal or impropriety against them."

Sean, the vast majority of police officers are honest and do their jobs well with no suggestion of corruption, does that excuse those who don't?. Should the police service overlook rape, murder and criminality of any sort, committed by the rogue element, just because the majority of officers do not indulge in criminality?

It is not a silly point at all, to highlight the fact that several "entertainers" who were contemporary with that revolting TV schools programme were perverts - and given that, to take Savile as an example, we now know that several of his work colleagues and producers had been telling the BBC this privately in the 1970s but the BBC refused to take action is terrible. It reminds me of the fact that when I met one of my ex teachers when I was about 22, he as good as admitted to me that several of the staff knew about our P.E. teacher' s "weakness" but chose to look the other way. You will forgive me if I find the word "silly" rather offensive in this context. The 1980s was a time for sweeping a lot of things under the carpet. Perhaps I was wrong to call Christine "naive" - I suspect she just liked the status quo and was in no hurry to break up the exclusive little club some teachers were members of. Why rock the boat, when you can enjoy a nice calm cruise, on a tranquil river.

Re: Good Health Fit and Healthy ATV/ITV circa approx 1980.

That was a very authentic showing of the school showers after PE as I remember doing them myself in both my own middle and comprehensive schools not far away in Stourbridge in the 1970s/80s, except there were more of us. It might have been even more accurate if that PE teacher had been shown peering in too. I notice he kept out of sight!

I agree such things are a good record of the truth we all lived. No point erasing stuff like this. There's nothing wrong with showing the truth of school life in those days.

I must have been about nine when I first had to shower at middle school and I just remember it happening to us one day without any warning after we did a PE lesson which involved music and a tape recorder and a lot of moving about in a warm school hall and with my first ever male teacher I'd just got called Mr Gander.

Even before that we were often made to walk into a foot bath before going out into PE which we always did with nothing on our feet, so they must have been keen not to give us all infectious foot problems but I always thought damp floors were more likely to do this.

As a general rule most of the middle school PE lessons I remember were done with boys remaining shirtless throughout and girls in leotards or shorts and top. At comprehensive school it was a bit more varied between many variations of which shirtless PE was a definite favourite of many teachers to tell us to do.

I'm quite sure Christine isn't as naive as you're attempting to make out Alan, and I think the power of your own arguments is reduced by making a post where you thread together all those characters from your childhood on TV and radio like that into one big worst case over the top scenario. It looks rather silly to make your point in that way because I could just as easily run off another much larger group of names at the time, 99% of everyone else, without any hint of scandal or impropriety against them.

I agree with Christine's general sentiments. I've also seen the item under discussion for the first time this evening. It's alright for what it is and the reasons it was shown. It's possible being a film under an education remit will have allowed greater freedom to do that. My only problem there would be if anyone was placed under pressure or literally ordered to take part against their own wishes, that would be unacceptable of course. If the boys wanted to take part in their PE showers fly-on-the-wall filming like that then who are we to moralise on their behalf. I agree with what was said previously, it would be nice to hear from one or two of them about their remembrance about the day they did that film and how they view it now. None of us would forget would we if it was ourselves. If it was me, I really don't think I would mind, it was only a few seconds.

It's easy to be instantly over reactionary to such material, yes there are a class of unclothed naked middle school boys with their willies to camera who look about ten or eleven to me, but accept it for the innocent situation it is. For some people, maybe you Alan, they can't see a naked person or private parts without thinking, naked/penis = sex/temptation. It certainly doesn't in my own mind, any more than when I was at school and showered naked with the boys and looked at them and was thinking such thoughts, I wasn't.

I thought Christine's comment suggesting that this programme was also using quite direct imagery of school showering to press home the future expectations of school hygiene to primary ages quite an interesting take.

Some things about the past may well make uncomfortable viewing to some but that doesn't mean they should be airbrushed away. History, even very recent history, isn't all perfect and rose tinted. Things haappened, and they happened in the way they did, and we should all be able to see these things free of censorship.

Answering Mark's questions.

There was no problem encountered with any of the boys working ex-top in gym class, but I knew there was unlikely to be. By the age of 9/10/11 they have all absorbed the ' teacher knows best' line, which Alan so detests, for several years and a rebellious boy would be very unusual. My own stance remains that the boys should be allowed to wear shirts because this is clearly the preference of most of the boys and it is now the established norm in schools. Our school is an exception in its somewhat old fashioned policy in this respect. Not that I always disagree with the older ways.

We are only talking about indoor PE being done shirtless. Outdoor games lessons are just the opposite with skin covering insisted on, indeed a sun hat is included as part of school uniform and must be worn on sunny summer days even for games.

"You seem to be suggesting that when given their own choice at the other times they are all shirting up rather than any of them being shirtless."

Yes that is correct. Back in September when I first told the boys they could continue to work in PE class in just shorts if they wanted, three of the boys did indeed choose to do so. These must be the boys who preferred the summer kit and perhaps predictably they were amongst the more naturally athletic ones. But by October they had conformed with the rest of the class and since then none of the boys have chosen to work in class without a shirt.. My own son is now in year 4 and part of the PE class so I was able to quiz him on his thoughts about PE kit. Summarizing his answer I think it amounted to - school is not the right place to be going topless.

"Have you noticed many boys yourself who you think might be the future men on forums like this complaining about being told to go shirtless in PE lessons at school, just by body language, demeanour or comments."

The quick answer would be no. But then they don't get much chance in PE to show it. There is not much time during the lesson when nothing is happening. I see it more in swim class. In swimming the boys and girls get split up into 3 groups as we have two swimming instructors plus me present. Two groups are in the pool and one is resting on the side under my supervision. Boys in the poolside group often show a 'I wish I was not just stood here half-naked' demeanour, but swimming is considered to be intrinsically more tiring and dangerous than PE so they must get plenty of rest time.

"What was the introduction to it like when it happened."

I took the advise of people on this forum and tried to introduce working bare chested gently. For the last two classes before Easter break I asked the boys to do some fitness training as part of the lesson, only 20 minutes and they were told to remove their tops for this part of class. They could then put their tops back on for the final 10 minutes of games if they chose and most did.

"Can you just remind me what the reason was for the summer term policy change in the first place?"

Our hall where PE takes place is not air-conditioned, there is a fan and a fire door can be opened for extra ventilation but the room does tend to get very warm in summer. Our headteacher decided that for the safety and comfort of the boys and in order to maintain an active class it would be better if they worked without their cotton t-shirts. Working this way undoubtable helps them stay cooler and keeps them active for longer. In a state primary school the option taken would almost certainly be to simply reduce the level of activity in class. We consider this to be undesirable.

I have one question for those so interested in the content of the 1980's Health program featuring showering. I have seen sex education programs for schools dating from the same period and aimed at the same age group and they are far more explicit, what are your thoughts on those.