Burnley Grammar School

@Fred - 4th October - There is a book called 'Stretching Their Bodies' by William Smith - it came out 40 or so years ago. From what I've seen of it it was rather 'dry'.

For the history - I posted something some months back on the general health situation in the UK from the 1900s onwards - if you have the time you might find it interesting to scroll back (I don't keep copies of my postings).

Showers - history of: showers have been about for years - I suspect that they started to come into use in 'communal settings' in the 1930s (I'm specifically thinking about in large ships for crew use).

A little while back someone posted about living in 'poor quality' housing when growing up and remembering the 'joy' of using school showers on a regular basis - because it meant they could get clean - these are things we tend to forget about the way many people grew up in the 1950s and even later.

I completely agree with Jason's comments of the 6th, and 'Thanks' to Nathan for his postings - always interesting & thought provoking.

T

Comment by: Neil on 5th October 2023 at 16:51


I take it you don't approve, Neil?

You don't like the idea that bullying teachers can treat boys like dirt, and that you should feel subservient to them?.

Even though they (quite rightly) "Know their rights" it still, sadly, doesn't stop some teachers going rogue.

Rudyard Kipling would have been proud of you, sir - damned proud.

PE is not and should not be considered a luxury subject Alan, are you kidding. It should be considered a top priority and vital, nothing less than that. What is more important than physical health and wellbeing. Far too many people of school age are sedentary and the last thing we should be doing is making them even more so. A minimum 2 hours per week is not unreasonable.

You cannot complain about an obesity crisis and then remove PE from schools. So many don't even walk to school quite short distances now and get stuck in mummy's 4 by 4.

I used to walk 2 miles to school and 2 miles back each day. Do two PE lessons each week lasting 90 minutes a go. Always on the go, sweating profusely a lot of the time and into the showers at the end every time without fail.

Eddie 4th, October 20:18

Oh it really is awful that the staff would leave those elderly men like that, and during visiting time too. It seems the staff were totally indifferent at a time when those men deserved and needed respect and care. I find it unforgivable. Perhaps you should have listened to you conscience, and If staff did notice, it would have only highlighted the limitations of their own actions, which would have done them good. Well done to your wife for helping them at that late stage in their lives when they were no longer able to do so for themselves. Were there any male nurses available? Or perhaps in 1996 still predominately female.

No, thankfully most days on the ward I would have appeared like most of the others, in a bed with sheets and covers, just wearing a stripy pyjama jacket. But I’d have nothing on below due to the contraption on my right leg, so I always felt a little vulnerable. My bed had a frame at the bottom, with the bedding over it to keep it off the mechanism that kept my leg straight. Since all my recent thought, I'm now really hoping my bedding hadn't ridden up at the bottom because of this, as it had on the boy's bed I mentioned in a previous post. Who knows, but it's far too long ago to worry about now!!

I wouldn’t have been able to cope at all if they’d been so unkind as to leave me uncovered continuously for everyone to see, and my parents would certainly have objected. Johnnie asked a similar question, to which perhaps I hadn’t made a clear answer, so I apologise for that.

Comment by: Fred on 4th October 2023 at 23:21


I don't know for sure, Fred, but I would imagine the "great" 1944 Education Reform Act made it a compulsory subject. I know that Act, is considered one of the great reforming governmental achievements, just as Blair's "50% of school students must go to university" nonsense of the early 2000s.

Frankly, in the age of cutbacks I feel the PE is a "luxury" that could become much reduced and taken as an optional subject, rather like music is. I know a musician who does some part time work in a school, but only two afternoons a week. They could make Wednesday afternoons, which is the sports day at university a day for optional sports and games.

A bit like algebra these days it is a subject not that many people feel the need to study and if they do there are plenty of after school clubs. The same might be said of art too.

Many of us knew our place in school. Now many know their rights.

I've also watched the film left on here about the young gymnasts. But it's worth saying this was not actually a PE lesson in school but a story about the whole culture of producing results at that time within the eastern bloc. The boys looked like genuinely great gymnasts but the striking on the leg and causing an injury was horrible to watch and the reaction looked very realistic too. It's probably the kind of thing that is still going on in the far east and China nowadays to produce sporting results.

I think it was Greg who called school showers a rite of passage. I absolutely concur on that one. For some strong reason this aspect of secondary and grammar schooling in all our pasts, and for some even now, took on great significance and still has a hold on the long term memory even for those of us who haven't sat in a classroom in over fifty years now.

As this is a history site, does anyone actually know the history of PE in schools? I think school became compulsory to go to in about 1870 or so, but when did PE become a compulsory part of the school week, does anyone know this and so when did regular school showering start taking place leading to the almost complete nationwide compulsory requirement for it after a certain age?

Wouldn't such things as school showers after PE have been seen as an extravagant luxury in the late 19th and even early part of the 20th century?

Nathan said he'd be disappointed if any of his present pupils wrote up on future forums many years hence. What's to say some of them aren't doing it right now Nathan? Unlike many of the contributors on here who never had access to the internet as youngsters and social media all over the place, your pupils do have it on hand.

Reading many of the recent comments surrounding school PE anxiety, and those school showers anxieties and shirtless anxieties, if anyone would like to message me to talk about these kind of feelings then I would be more than happy to converse. I will leave the email icon available.

If you would like to know more about me, please read back the posting I placed on 23rd June 2022 at 16.14. I'm sure most have long forgotten about it.

Greg on your hospital comments from your childhood and the dignity aspect that affected you.

My story goes back to 1996 and people at the other end of their lives. One of my very elderly grandparents was in the final stages of a long illness in hospital when I visited with family on a weekend afternoon. There were about 8 very old people in this ward, all male, but all kinds of visitors were coming and going. A couple of the elderly bed ridden patients were quite restless and to my horror I began to realise that one next to the bed we were at was about to become exposed. On another bed the sheets were hanging off and that mans gown was right up leaving nothing below. At one point both men were fully exposed waist down. It was hard to know what to do, do you go and do something yourself or not. Well staff entered and walked away again a few times and did nothing for these two men and I was outraged. That could have been my own grandfather being ignored like that. Luckily he was tucked up nicely and not even awake or aware of much. My wife actually went across and gently and respectfully did the nurses job and restored some of their dignity with the sheets.

In your case Greg I find it equally outrageous for a boy to be treated as such. Were your parents not concerned by that? I would not have wished my parents to visit me at eleven laying there without vital coverage, especially in a public ward area.

It's probably all still happening now as we write, in some corner of the health service. Male dignity on the NHS even in 2023 isn't considered as important as womens.

I've just this evening watched the entire Hungarian film - Feher Tenyer - that Robbie left on here. The translation of the title into White Palms obviously reference to the powder that gymnasts often place on their hands.

You were right Robbie, a very decent, if also difficult watch, seeing a gym being ruled by fear like that. It drew me in and I stayed with it.

Johnnie said;

"I agree with you that school showering was very much viewed as one of the growing up rights of passage, and yes we did worry about it. Going to the bathroom at home is seen as quite a private thing even within families isn't it. You don't expect someone else in the household to barge in on you when taking a shower or bath or using the toilet, as close as they may be related to you and live with you. There's a reason they put locks on bathroom doors after all.

When you are tiny none of that matters much but consider the age that you start demanding your own personal privacy in your own home as a youngster and it tends to kick in at around about 10 or 11 I would suggest, the exact time when you go to school that they want you to start sharing showers with your friends (and non-friends/enemies) and in front of non family adults too. You can sort of see why there can be issues that take hold when you consider this. It's actually quite perverse in some ways when looked at in the way I describe."

^
The above is a very eloquent piece of analysis I thought and made me think about the issue in a way I haven't done so before.

Alex:

R was a homosexual with a particular liking for boys of 14 and above. It was well known but this was the days of, to quote his mantra ¨ïf there is any trouble, it is me they will believe - not you¨

Johnnie 2nd October 17:08

Thank you for your reply. I’ll try to cover the several points you make.

We certainly did trust all adults back then, certainly at that age. We respected them too, and did as they asked. They were different times. But I’m not sure younger people hold this same regard for their elders in today’s society. Many entertainment programmes on tv seen to depict adults who seem to enjoy belittling and even humiliating themselves in ways that would have been totally alien in the past. There seems to be a total disregard to the effects this will have on watching children, and they will watch, if just out of curiosity.

I suppose what I was meaning by, ‘none of us were keen’ on having to shower, was that we were aware of having to be confronted with this new experience that would take us out of our comfort zone. We certainly felt disconcerted, but together with a realisation that we were expected to conquer this discomfort, which I suppose we then thought would somehow take us further along the line in starting to grow up. It was really just another unknown to overcome, as many things seemed to be at that age.

The girl thing when I was in hospital certainly didn’t help, especially when happening during the situation I found myself in. I was already doing my best to try to cope with my just developing, and now completely lost, dignity at that age. You touched on this area in your first few paragraphs, so you’ll understand. For one of these young girls to then casually throw in such a remark, I suppose upset me, though I don't think I showed this. All this while I was uncomfortable anyway. To tell you the truth Johnnie, I was surprised I’d even written this, and then pressed the send button. I wasn’t sure how it would read, or indeed how others would think. I then thought I shouldn't have bothered. But, I suppose I was probably, subliminally, seeking some form of catharsis, having committed it to paper, so to speak. I expect some won't understand the fuss at all, but it was an occasional childhood thing I’d had before, always hated, and by that age was really fed up with it. We can never know what others might presume, so subsequently I became guarded whenever out with friends.

You mention your family member being an NHS nurse, and would say she’d seen it all before so don’t worry etc. Well, I’ve often thought over the years whether some of those young students had experienced anything much before. They were so young, perhaps only 15 back then. They’d appear for a day or so, and then disappear again to be replaced by others. Perhaps their first experience of a real ward started with menial jobs helping children. Perhaps they didn’t even have brothers, and then they found themselves all of a sudden washing down an 11 year old boy. As I said some were very nice, but others were certainly, ‘whispering behind their hands’ types, who I remember just made me feel uncomfortable as they seemed so attentive as they washed me. I did ask them once why couldn’t they leave the bowl and I’ll wash myself, after all, I’d been taking care of my own ablutions at home for some time at the age. The answer I was given by one of them was, ‘Because we’ve got to do it.’ So I had to just let them get on with it. I could say more, but I’ll leave it there.

I was unable to wear pyjama trousers because I had the fixed splint on one leg. It was just another aspect I didn’t like as I was exposed every time a gang of staff came around my bed to check me. There were lots of moments like that and no one seemed to care. I was eventually moved out of the room to a large children’s ward after about one month. About a month after that one kind nurse did help me with this. I can’t remember some of the details now, but perhaps I'd been trying to cover myself during different moments and she noticed. She returned and asked me if I wanted to wear some sort of briefs that could be tied on either side. After all my time there it took nearly two months before this option was mentioned to me. So I remember wearing those for the last month or so. There was a boy diagonally opposite from my bed who was always exposed because he had a frame at the bottom of his bed that the blankets seemed to ride up along during the day, and no one sorted them for him. Everyone going past could see him. I asked the nurse if he could have a pair too, so she put some on him. I still remember now he smiled back across to me, which was his lovely thank you.

Comment by: Steven Ross on 1st October 2023 at 21:20
Talking about the fear of showering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEnTThSRa_g




Power showers in school. I so wish. That really is fiction. Nobody here had power showers in school like the ones in this video did they?

There's a lot of swiping at the PE chap Nathan on here but what is he supposed to do, there are far more pupils than teachers.

Communal showers don't exist for the purpose of humiliation. They exist for purely practical purposes, on cost and efficiency. You need to clean a large number of people at the very same time, in as quick a time as possible. It's that simple really.

The PE teacher can have his own shower cubicle. Probably only one wants to use it at a time anyway. I don't know how many male PE staff there are in his workplace.

It would be simply impractical to provide 30 individual shower cubicles for a class in a normal school, the cost and time involved and hot water usage would be huge, and you would still have to walk to and from those cubicles anyway and probably be seen to some extent, so what is the point.

You claim "Mr R" was enjoying every minute of watching you and 35 others, you were there so who am I to argue with you on that, but I would like to ask a simple question - on what actual basis do you make the claim of enjoyment?

I know PE teachers paid close attention to us in school changing rooms and when showering but I would never say they enjoyed the view.

I think most schools in the 1970's ran cross country - we had 2 PE lessons week, one in the gym, one cross country (plus a games afternoon).

The first games afternoon we were all told to bring plimsolls as well as our "normal" rugby kit. We then all had to walk the course with a teacher, to "learn" the route. in total it was 5 miles - roads, fields, woodlands etc.

On return we were all told that we were to now run the course we had just walked - get changed into rugby shorts, plimsolls, nothing else.

Pretty soon there were 120 boys lined up, all stripped to the waist, all freezing in the cold. When we walked the course we had normal September clothes on (so vest, shirt, pullover, jacket and coat), now all of this had to be removed, and we were ready to do the run - same kit as we always wore for xc - which is all but nothing !

David: I do (and always have done) shower every day - I have to, because some of my work now involves lifting stuff, I used to play music semi-pro and I am one of those who sweat quite a lot since I was about 16. I use a shower gel which also washes my hair, every morning, and in very hot days, after worker as well . I always enjoyed feeling fresh, and my objection at school was being herded in with 35other lads, and especially knowing Mr R was enjoying every minute watching us.

Lance to be fair to Nathan, I think he is by no means one of the aggressive bullying teachers that I and so many others endured, but I think he shows a distinct lack of empathy, which is not his fault, it is the fault of the teacher training colleges who regards boys as a unit with a number, one size fits all, and still think it is 1950 and it is their job to toughen them up for the army.. Nathan himself must be young enough to remember some of the vagaries of being a young teenager - putting it crudely, involuntary erections (never happened to me) because I was a very slow developer physically which got you remarks from the more advanced lads, (and Mr R) there might be some lads who are homosexual and dread the daily shedding of clothes. I think I have mentioned in the past I had a schoolmate who had a really big and noticeable scar from his chest to his naval, which got commented on, by R as wells the lads - all a big joke for him and some of the louder mouthed lads. This embarrassment lasted for him well into adulthood.Nathan says he would only be worried if the embarrassment in showering went on for months. How does he know it doesn't?. It lasted all my school years, and reading some of the other guys experiences on this site, I was not alone.

Nathan is as much a victim of the bloody system as we were - and sadly it seems - still are. Memo to the pen pushers who arrange teaching courses: it is 2023 gentlemen, everyone has bathrooms these days and only a very few lads are going to become Royal Marines, and we were all given names individual to us - use them.

This is a really rather good Hungarian film from a few years ago set in the early 1980's about the Eastern European ways of training young gymnastics and the abuse some of them suffered. Much of the film is in foreign language but some is in English. Do not let it put you off, it's very easy to follow and get the feel of the story and empathise with the characters. I can't quite remember how I first saw this film but I've managed to find it online tonight and thought I'd share it with anyone who has 100 minutes to spare for something a bit different.

Having suffered as a boy under a brutal Communist era coach, champion Hungarian gymnast Miklos moves to Canada years later in search of a new start only to find himself unwittingly perpetuating the very same cycle of abuse among his own pupils.

Feyer Tenyer (White Palms) 2006.

https://videa.hu/videok/film-animacio/feher-tenyer-teljes-film-amerikai-cirkusz-edzo-Xv1jRuAdxDXpzGYb

Greg thankyou for your kind comment after reading my memory.

Your way probably worked for you at the time, mine for me. It did work for me but I didn't give it much though I don't think. I remember the sensations of my first school shower all too well. It was something I had built a big fear about, not helped by that boy ridiculing me for months. I do remember not feeling how I expected to when I was standing there with no clothes on, and nowhere to hide as I became ever wetter, and my surprise that I wasn't being further ridiculed by him.

Every new autumn term there must have been literally tens of thousands of boys like us who turned up to new schools, went into PE, found themselves facing the communal shower regimes of their schools and all of them privately within themselves, like me and possibly you, quietly conquering their fears with teachers nearby blissfully unaware that we were doing so.

I've seen what Nathan has been saying. Don't be too hard on him. It's not his fault. He sounds decent.

Alan, Andy and Mark that's what I think too, I think it's the solo shower isn't it. That's a beauty. Gotcha indeed.

You kind of have to laugh just a little at that admission don't you. The current serving PE teacher who is right now as we all write on here
sending all his current boys together into the school showers at his school with no privacy of their own, denying any problems exist and then turning around and saying he has his own private shower on hand for himself. I'm not saying he should jump in with his class like some old timers are alleged to have done in the long distant past but emphasising his own solo showering arrangement while demanding communal arrangements for others is so typically a school thing, and a politician too.

Nathan, in the interests of fairness would you share the showers at school with all the other adult males in PE who work with you if you had to?

There was an item in the press last week about the nation's changed washing habits due to the cost of living crunch. They say sales of soap bars are rising again having been in decline for years. Who knew that? I always use soap bars. It was said that 75% of people in the UK shower or bath every single day. I don't. I'd never have time to bath every day and shower maybe every three or four. I found the stat that three quarters of us do this every day rather high. I always feel clean. Maybe it's my throwback to the time growing up when you had a bath once a week whether you needed it or not. Actually I got naked and washed more in school than at home during my high school years of the late 60s to mid 70s. I had one bath a week at home, always on the same day each week. I was lucky I never had to share at home with siblings, we were allowed our own bath night to ourselves. I had a couple of showers each week in school and I'd be rubbing myself all over with the good old soap bar directly on my skin which was how they encouraged the after PE collective shower clean up.

So how many times a week do people on here shower nowadays out of interest? Not every day, surely it depends on what you've been doing and the temperature and humidity doesn't it.

The content here has never been better in my considered opinion.

Quoting Gerry - 'surname use is linked to discipline isn't it and making sure you know your place in things.'


Others will surely have a similar memory of this happening to them in school even if they were the most well behaved kid in the place. I was one of the behaved ones. I was simply minding my own business at about fifteen going along the corridor by myself and from behind I heard my surname screamed out loud enough half the school must have heard it. That was my middle aged English teacher. He then pointed to a precise spot on the floor he wanted me to stand on as I approached him, like I was a dog being trained. I then made the hideous mistake in his eyes of not being respectful enough and addressing him correctly as Mr Warwick. We never called anyone Sir at school. I'd actually said nothing at all when beckoned over and waited for him to say what he wanted. I got a lecture on how to speak to staff for my troubles for actually saying nothing. I think he commented on my body language too come to think of it. You couldn't win with this sort of guy, the kind of teacher who garnered very little respect out of anyone much. Here's this guy speaking to me like that and at the same time demanding I speak to him correctly and show due deference. Many fifteen year olds of the past will surely know what I'm saying here. I still remember this exchange I had and how mad it made me as I walked away from it, the sheer hypocrisy of demanding of me total respect and use of his name correctly whilst he could summon me with a surname shout, clip of his fingers and point me to where to stick my feet like he was animal training, the stupid old fool.

Greg post from 30th September.

Nice story, quite a few points to pick out.

I agree with you that school showering was very much viewed as one of the growing up rights of passage, and yes we did worry about it. Going to the bathroom at home is seen as quite a private thing even within families isn't it. You don't expect someone else in the household to barge in on you when taking a shower or bath or using the toilet, as close as they may be related to you and live with you. There's a reason they put locks on bathroom doors after all.

When you are tiny none of that matters much but consider the age that you start demanding your own personal privacy in your own home as a youngster and it tends to kick in at around about 10 or 11 I would suggest, the exact time when you go to school that they want you to start sharing showers with your friends (and non-friends/enemies) and in front of non family adults too. You can sort of see why there can be issues that take hold when you consider this. It's actually quite perverse in some ways when looked at in the way I describe.

The other piece you put up about the adults being in charge is also correct. If like me as a youngster you just implicitly trusted more or less every adult and that if they told you to do something then it must be alright. I think at the age I mentioned above you are becoming far more aware of things but also you are still too young, or were in my time, to really question things that happen.

There was another point you made on the actual shower anxiety point. You said 'none of us were keen'. You nail it there for many with that. I've read others talk of fear and anxiety which is fair enough, but few people would probably go as far as to say they were literally terrified or thoroughly scared, but just not keen covers it well. Perhaps it's worth asking what lies behind the 'none of us were keen' point you make. Because you are right on that.

I thought the comment made to you in your hospital bed was incredibly insensitive. At the age of 5 that may have been less of a bother but not when you are 11 years old. Both my parents were in the NHS and one was a nurse who did those kind of things. I'm sure their attitude would have been that they were not embarrassed and neither should the patient be, as they'd seen it all before. That's all very well but nowadays we do try and treat everyone as individuals and comments like that don't help do they.

It's astonishing to read that you didn't have the privacy of pyjama bottoms to wear during your hospitalization. Presumably you were covered by sheets though. But as you say, it's that tired old double standard yet again isn't it.

I was often called Master both verbally by older extended family members when I met them on special occasions and also in letter form. I really liked it, just like you.

Surname calling.

This was my experience across the board at school in the 1960's from quite an early age. I heard my surname more than my first name as a rule. My first name was virtually never said aloud by anyone in school. Even the school doctor when we saw him called me by my surname and the matron.

Isn't it surprising how unfriendly or austere getting called by just your surname feels compared to being addressed by your christian name which feels instantly more friendly.

I don't think it makes any meaningful difference to discipline whether you name people by first name or surname but surname use is linked to discipline isn't it and making sure you know your place in things.

Spencer, 2nd October at 01:29.

You seemed to deal with your anxieties very well in the end, which must have helped you. But don’t think too much about how your initial behaviour must have appeared to others, we’re all just who we were and did what we did when growing up by trying to help ourselves deal with situations we felt uncomfortable with. Similarly, I was really self conscious at that age, doing silly things which I thought helped me at the time, I’m sure many of us did the same. But your technique was much more mature compared to mine.

I remember once being on a school trip in Northumberland. We all went to this secluded lake somewhere for swimming. I always hated swimming, but had packed my swimming trunks so seemingly had planned to join in. Boys and girls were on the trip, and all grouped with our own gender, as you do at that age. I remember most of the kids just changed quickly while sitting on the bank, which accomplished the task very efficiently and quickly, while everyone else was doing the same. What did I decide to do? I walked up the bank and back down to the other side to change on my own, so stupidly making myself more of a spectacle, as I was the only one there for anyone else to notice standing on the top!

I still dreaded showering when my time eventually came to be truthful. My first time I was in and out so quickly and starting to dress, that our fierce Gym teacher shouted at me for putting my shirt back on before properly drying myself. Again attracting more attention when hoping for the opposite. We all learn eventually.

Kids can be really cruel, and my way of dealing with any ridicule, if persistent, was to just push them, which then sometimes turned into a fight. Stupid I know, but I was a child just trying to cope with everything, but can’t imagine how I must have appeared to others thinking back. I must have been a mass of contradictions as it was my nature to try to be quiet and unassuming, but I think people in general, and certainly kids, just try to take advantage of that. At least my immature way did succeed in stopping further ridicule from other boys, which gave me time to work out how to improve with things. Your system was much better.

I went to a state grammar school in the early 1970's

We were always addressed by our surnames, and everyone was expected to address teachers as "sir" - additionally you had to ensure that every reply ended in "sir", thus "Sorry I'm late into PE sir" "Why are you late Williams ?" "Don't know sir" "Wall bars Williams, move"

This applied from year 1 to the 6th form, and in all lessons