Burnley Grammar School

I heard this some time ago, it's so true on the age perception we all have of ourselves - 'Old is always 15 years older than you are, at whatever age you actually are'. So true.

The most recent addition to our bareskin running whatsapp group is actually 65, our 21st member.

Mr Chips I know you said you taught French not PE but you've taken some sport at school in your past career and you clearly are a great advocate of the age is just a number attitude. There is no reason why anyone at any age can't do lots of physical activities as long as they are well enough. You'd be a welcome member on our bareskin running group with your outlook which I know can be infectious and motivate others. What do you think of bareskin running as a concept and would you do it at your age, or would you ever have done? Many of us that do it find it has extra benefit that regular jogging doesn't although we can't really pinpoint precisely why. It's increasing in popularity and so is wild swimming away from mainstream pools. It's not so frequent at this time of year now but we did go out with 8 on Saturday morning just gone and ran 5 miles bareskins, and as I think I might have said a few weeks ago when I dropped a comment, it's not a group of buff extravert show offs wanting to be noticed, we have a few runners who have admitted to actually being introverts and shy but it didn't stop them wanting to join and go out with us. The only thing we wear above the waist is an LED headband light to see the way through the darker areas we go to stop us tripping up, we wouldn't want to do that with no protection.

Our next run is set for Friday evening but it looks to be getting much colder so we might have to shorten the distance and make it a quick one.

Very much enjoying Mr Chips contributions the last few days. I hope you stick around.

James G on 21st November 2023 at 01:37

Thank you for your comments James.

I’m a little older than President Biden, I am fit but I’m not sure I could keep up with the pace required of him but I would give it a good try.

Some time ago, a former colleague developed dementia and he has now died. I did read a bit about it then to try and be at least a bit useful when I visited him. One of the things I learned was that we nearly all fix our perceptions of who we are in our mid-30s. That made sense to me because I’ve never really felt much older than that so when I used to go to see Jack, I would take along things from then and those days so the 1970s. There are maybe others here who can throw more light on this?

He could talk perfect sense for hours when we focussed on that, sometimes a bit repetitive but mostly very accurate things about what was happening then, often more than I was and I’d done some preparation. He couldn’t remember what he’d had for lunch today but a news item from back then and he was there. My point here is, that I still have a much younger outlook on life than you might think, when people talk about ‘old people’ I wonder who they mean, certainly not me but my body doesn’t quite keep up these days.

On not wearing a shirt for PE or rugby training, I never really thought about it at the time but I never wore a shirt and nor did the PE masters or the other masters who coached rugby and other sports so I suppose it was just a case of leading by example and what you did whether you meant to or not, the lads would do more easily too. For rugby, I coached sixteen and seventeen year olds. At the start of my career, they didn’t have shirts anyway and I coached until the mid-1990s when they did have shirts but they didn’t wear them.

To make a comment on the picture, it may have been that the lads didn’t have shirts to wear, their shorts and plimsolls, no socks, are exactly what I had as a boy and what the boys had when I started teaching and I see the year was 1959 so exactly in line with my experience. The difference of course is what the master is wearing, when I was at school, no PE master wore a shirt and as I’ve said, when I started teaching, masters didn’t either.

At first the lads were a bit nervous of me. Their previous coach, a maths master, had left the school. He had never changed out of his suit for rugby coaching so clearly not physically involved and rugby is possibly the sport with the greatest physical contact of any so not a sport for anyone uncomfortable with that.

I think they got a bit of a shock when their new coach appeared in their changing room in his shorts and plimsolls and was very active alongside them. When I started to get them to lift me for a line out, they were incredibly nervous about touching me and holding me but I reckoned that if they could learn to lift me, they could lift each other with ease because like any lift, it’s technique that counts and when you know where to put your hands, a line out lift is quite easy. The lads doing this were the props and often bigger than me so it was well within their capability.

I also got them tackling me, if they could tackle me, they could easily tackle the opposition. Of course, as players know even today when kit is so much more technical, in a tackle, you can lose your shorts and inevitably it happened. I remember the look of horror on the face of the first lad who had pulled mine down and the relief when I just pulled them back up and told him it was a good tackle, he will remain nameless but he went on to play for England. I pushed the lads just about as hard as my county coach pushed us and it worked, they went from being a bit of a joke as a team, to winning very well.

When we used the gym, I always took my plimsolls off, the PE masters always left lads to choose but all the lads I was coaching took their plimsolls off too, it may of course have been coincidence or it may have been because it’s what sir did.

My comment about marks on backs and chests was when I was a school boy, we didn’t have shirts, clothing was just off ration and I would say it was into the 1970s before people bought it freely. We were marked with a marker pen back and front as we left the changing room, it was quick, effective and washed off. When I started teaching, the PE masters used to give out coloured bands to teams because shirts were not part of the kit at the time but it did become shirts vs. skins when shirts were introduced.

Back in the 1960s, town twinning was a big thing, your town twinned, usually with a similar town in France or a few more places, even some in Germany. I remember it all being set up and as a fluent French speaker, I was part of that and the first visit to France of councillors and dignitaries. I saw an opportunity though and while the headmaster would never have approved of this had I gone to him first, I suggested to councillors that we should take the school rugby team to France and they thought it was a great idea and so it was set up and became a bi-annual trip with the French lads coming here in the other year. It was a great opportunity for the lads to see something different, foreign holidays really didn’t happen back then and to speak the language I spent hours teaching them. While there they stayed with French families and masters stayed with the French teachers. The whole thing ran for about twenty years and once word was out about it, all of a sudden, interest in rugby sky rocketed.

On clothing more broadly, when I started teaching, I had one suit for school, one pair of shoes, two shirts, two ties and three pairs of socks and underpants, a pair of plimsolls and two pairs of shorts as school clothes and not much more for leisure time. You didn’t need a big wardrobe (the furniture item) in those days. While clothing was off ration, it might have been freely available but it was not in huge supply and was very expensive compared to today. Things got a bit better when a cousin qualified as a tailor and he started to make suits for me (off the peg was not common) though I still only had, I think three, but that was luxury.

Gentlemen, am I rambling too much? By all means tell me to shut up.

Mr Chips.

Based on the year you said you began teaching (1962) you must be in the Joe Biden kind of age bracket one assumes (he was 81 today) so I am very impressed with your active lifestyle, including riding a bike and running, although you said you don't do the latter anymore. I know a 91 year old man who still rides a pushbike near to me.

You mentioned PE teachers leading the way and dressing the same as the pupils, no tops. I do wonder if some of the guys on these pages would have felt better about doing their own shirtless PE if their own teachers had done the same as you have told us and not been like the photo above where the teacher sets himself apart from his class, expects all the boys to go shirtless but won't do so himself.

The one thing about whole classes going shirtless is how do you divide up into identifiable teams when needed. You said this - "For team games we had a coloured mark on our backs and chests at the start of the lesson." What did you mean exactly by this, was this a piece of fabric or something like paint or ink directly on skin, that sounds very unusual and more effort than just requiring half the class to stick a vest on or something else.

Physical education is all about the body so I see no point in trying to hide it away in a gym and therefore I would favour shirtless PE and mandatory with it - just like I faced. It did me no harm. Too many expect to get indulged nowadays so we now have men who probably didn't really mind getting shirtless and showered in PE a few years ago now suddenly deciding a bit late in the day that they didn't fancy it after all.

Lance on 20th November 2023 at 13:25

Thank you. I’ll do my best bearing in mind that I taught French.

When I was at school, no boy had a shirt for PE or gym so no one wondered whether we should be wearing them or not. We had white shorts and white plimsolls – dreadful to keep clean, black would have been so much better. For team games we had a coloured mark on our backs and chests at the start of the lesson.

When I started teaching, it was normal that boys still did PE and gym without shirts and indeed, at what I’ve said was staff PE, no master wore a shirt either, it was plimsolls for running outdoors and we all went barefoot in the gym. For me at least, no shirt was a great incentive to keep in shape and toned.

Things changed over time and PE shirts; white cotton T-shirts, were added to the uniform list but I’d say not every boy liked them. Cotton gets wet when you sweat and therefore not so pleasant to wear particularly out in a wind when you will feel cold quickly but sweat would just dry off and so most lads continued to go without and as I remember, the PE masters didn’t mind one way or the other. There were some shirts vs. skins team games played where one or the other was compulsory. The PE masters generally didn’t wear shirts for lessons, maybe that had an influence on what the lads did.

The rugby team I coached were almost all without shirts for training, it was their choice though maybe because I never wore a shirt they followed ‘sir’s example’. My method of coaching was to lead from the front so I always demonstrated exercises and techniques and then joined side by side with the lads to do them before standing back to appraise technique and ability so I was very much part of the tackle, line out, scrum, maul or ruck with the boys. For games they were obviously properly attired in rugby kit as was I. At the time I didn’t see shirts as any issue one way or the other for me or the boys.

These days, fabrics are so much better and they keep you sweat free and comfortable as I know because I still ride my road bike and the gear I wear today is so much better than even a few years back. I don’t run these days and I don’t use a gym but I imagine gym shirts and shorts are at least as good as my cycling gear at keeping you dry and comfortable.

I think in the school situation, the thing I’m most in favour of these days is boys having a choice so they should wear shirts or not depending which is comfortable. I see men and boys out running most days and I would say that it’s an even split as to who wears a shirt and who doesn’t. That’s the best way, offer a choice then no one is compelled to be uncomfortable. Sport is to be enjoyed not endured and a good grounding in sport at school which is enjoyed sets a boy up for a lifetime of fitness.

Garth (Nov 20). Meanwhile, here in Rishi Sunak's UK, "women" with penises {my Latin is a bit rusty, so should that be penes?} are demanding cervical smear tests.

Mr Chips what do you personally think the best way to turn out in a school gym is? Are you a fan of the shirtless appearance or the vest and t-shirt, or maybe you think it should be left to the individual to decide, or not?

Here in New Brunswick Canada where I work and live at the moment away from back home the latest diversity wheeze is to say that men can actually have a vagina and a woman a penis. We've started having issues even in schools with self identifying and genders being forced to mix because of it in changing areas. That's Trudeau's Canada for you. At this rate showering will be unisex in the country's schools.

I stuck my first comment on this forum three years ago to the very hour I have just noticed but it has been two and a half years since I last placed anything. For anyone wishing to know my backstory please go to 19th November 2020 about page 92 currently and there are a few follow up over the next six months.

A couple of weeks ago someone put a comment on here about feeling certain their teacher would have picked them up and thrown them into the school shower if they had not been keen to do so or refused to take one. Well I can vouch for that from 1981 as written on my first ever comment here. I got caught with my best friend trying to evade our first school shower and me and him were stripped naked on the spot under his angry gaze towering over us and he then physically grabbed the pair of us by the back of our necks and frogmarched the two of us either side of him across the changing room and literally threw us both into the shower. So to the guy who asked about first shower memories that is mine and even 42 years doesn't lesson the memory of that happening which can replay easily in my mind when I care to think about it. Yet I went on to have a decent relationship with that teacher but was forever wary.

I fully approve of all the new school teacher input, that's very refreshing to see things from both sides.

The writer Denton Welch absconded from his boarding school, Repton, for several days at the age of fifteen in similar tragic circumstances to those described by Mr Chips, his mother having died. Welch describes this in his book "Maiden Voyage".

On his return (Jan 1931) he was treated with comparative understanding by staff and prefects and was not punished for the absence, though the school in Welch's account was otherwise brutal and he was unhappy there. The next term, his father (a rubber merchant) took him to live in China.

Jim on 18th November 2023 at 22:45

Thank you for your kind words. I might have acquired some wisdom with age, if I have, then, if there is an interested audience, I believe it’s my duty to share it. Learning and money are very similar and of no value whatever if you keep them to yourself.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 18th November 2023 at 23:30

Thank you for your comment. I’m delighted to see a post from a man who was my contemporary.

I agree whole heartedly, the conduct of the headmaster regarding the bereaved boy was disgraceful, indeed, that’s not a strong enough term but I was rapidly ‘put in my place’ when I objected. I was in my probationary year and it was a case of shut up or clear out. I shut up but was never proud of it.

I think the culture of the ‘war damaged’ took time to change. Men joining the profession when I did struggled with it but some simply joined in with the culture as that was the way things were done. Some of them remained around for many more years though they became a progressively smaller percentage of the staff thank goodness. Some of their influence was quite toxic.

I remember one man, an English master who was a couple of years older than me. His ability to teach was way better than mine and to listen to him talking about his subject was inspirational. His behaviour towards the boys though was a different matter. Yes, they respected his knowledge but they lived in fear of him both for his sharp tongue and regular in public put downs and disregard for any boy who didn’t conform to his ideas of what a school boy should be. While we all caned, he caned way in excess of any other master and lads went to his classes in fear. He was promoted to be Head of English and the headmaster regarded him as the ‘strongest and most capable’ master on the staff. I detested him. He was promoted to be deputy head in another school and I know I wasn’t the only one who heaved a sigh of relief when he left. He was an extreme example but there were others failed to change with the times and so while change came, it was gradual. At least, that’s my experience, you may have, of course had a better one.

Mike on 19th November 2023 at 00:10

Very funny, I have my red pen ready for when it’s done.

Kenneth on 19th November 2023 at 00:24

I thought it was about being clean and washing away dirt and sweat. As a boy at school and a man doing vigorous exercise, I needed a shower afterwards. When I was coaching rugby, I don’t remember telling the lads to get in the showers, they just did it. I only needed to stay around because they were supposed to have some degree of supervision and that was my responsibility until they were all dressed and out of the changing room.

Adam Bell on 19th November 2023 at 01:53

Do you now think what you did was funny of does it all seem a bit silly?
You of course demonstrate perfectly why suspension does not work unless your parents also reinforce it with grounding and removal of any privileges and it doesn’t sound like your parents did. Needless to say, I would have caned you. You would have been back at your desk in fifteen minutes, squirming uncomfortably on your hard wooden chair for the remainder of the day and looking rather silly in front of your classmates, you would not have missed two weeks of your education. You would probably have had tears in your red eyes when I returned you to your next lesson and I would have explained to the master taking it why you were late, what you had done and that you had been caned. Of course, in my boys school, what you did could never have happened. Returning a boy to class in those circumstances made a very loud, clear statement and was excellent pour encourager les autres. A boy who did not want to be caned only needed to behave.

You might even have repeated misbehaviour in the hope of suspension but it was a rare boy who risked the cane twice.

Before the ‘I hated everything about school and teachers’ brigade start, no, I wouldn’t have derived any satisfaction from that other than a boy was justly punished for stupid behaviour at a point in his life where he should have known better.

Tony on 19th November 2023 at 14:20

This is all part of a culture of control that now sweeps through schools and it’s supposed to be part of discipline. That awful woman who claims to be the strictest head, Birbalsingh, I think is her name would heartily approve of this because it makes identikit children. I would rather do away with school uniforms altogether and have a reasonable dress code which allows children to act responsibly and choose to present themselves well. Of course, for team sport, some sort of matching kit is necessary but other than that, school uniform which is a very British thing and about conformity, should be done away with. Other European countries managed it all very well.

Robbie on 19th November 2023 at 19:04
Very funny.

The following is a message to Alan and people such as him. It's a song lyric (Eagles - Already Gone) from 1974 and it's well worth heeding.

"So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains. And we never even know we have the key."

The following is something from a couple of years ago that I randomly saw.

"PE Kit for all Years 7—11 students — boys and girls (which can only be purchased from Barnums)

Black tracksuit trousers with School logo
Black rain jacket with School logo
Black Mid-layer with School logo
Red polo shirt with School logo
Black shorts with School logo
Black socks with red top"




When I was at school yes we had to turn out with the blazer and logo and the regulation school tie pattern but the PE kit had no need to be emblazoned with school logos, the basic requirements were laid out and you got them from wherever.

Why are school's nowadays doing this on PE kits? You don't need school badges, logos or anything else plastered all over each and every item which then constricts the options and forces parents into buying quite possibly much costlier items. It's pure pretentiousness on the part of schools that do this and completely pointless.

I actually think schools now are far worse than 25 or more years ago on the PE kit requirement which used to be a lot more sensible and as some men here have written, minimal in gym.

Comment by: Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 18th November 2023 at 23:30


I am glad you made the points you did, Robert - it is something I was attempting to get across myself. There was no need for teachers of boys in the 1980s onwards to treat them as if we were army recruits, as it is doubtful many of them were themselves. This was what I was getting to in my reply to Mr Chips. I know from Saturday lads I employed myself in the past decade and a half, many teachers, still had a bad attitude towards them. Sadly one poster seemed to think I was ¨getting at him¨ in my reply, which I think was measured.

How good to see somebody who was actually teaching right back in the sixties refuse to defend a beating headmaster in those very poignant circumstances outlined by Mr Chips. Well done sir for saying that. In normal circumstances it might have been okay but that wasn't normal.

The girls changing room was immediately opposite the boys in my comprehensive school and we took PE at the same time although not together, we were separated in different areas. I always had this strong desire at the time as a testosterone filled teenage boy to burst in on them changing and while I was undressed. I mentioned it to friends as a laugh.

So the highlight or lowlight depending on how you view it of my school career was getting suspended for two weeks in 1979 for going through with a dare I shook on with friends to do after PE on my 15th birthday walking across into the girls changing room directly opposite our boys one while I was undressed completely. I ran back out within 10 seconds to screams that nearly burst my eardrums. It was one of me against 20 of them, I should have made the noise more. I didn't even get to see much, they got the better deal. My PE teacher was actually smiling after it but it didn't save me as he knew he had to report me to the head who did the deed and the next day informed my parents I was suspended for two weeks immediately. For that I got an extra fortnight holiday, given no work to do at home and at the end of the school day went to the gates and met my friends as they finished. Even my parents and grandparents found the whole thing amusing while trying to seem disgraced by me.

It was one of those completely crazy schoolboy pranks I'd agreed to do as a birthday dare the night before when I was with a group of my friends having a sly smoke that seemed easy when I said it but wasn't but I knew I'd never live it down if I backed out so just went for it without thinking on the day. It didn't do me any long term harm however and puts a smile on my face when I think of it now.

Think about it - School showering was actually about discipline wasn't it?

I'd like to give Alan some homework.

Task: To give the most positive account of your schooldays you can possibly manage to grind out of your memory bank.

No excuses for not handing it in completed fully. You have until the end of the week.

;-)

I know it was another time long ago and all that, but quite how any head teacher in all conscience can summon a young man and cane him in his office just a couple of days after his mothers funeral is beyond heartless.

I've got no time for men like that and just like you Mr Chips I was in teaching for 42 years also, almost in parallel to your own time served bar five years, and sparingly dished out a share of corporal discipline in my earliest years when required. But never would I have entertained the idea of doing so against a freshly grieving pupil for his mother. Teachers do have empathy and certainly had lots of it to give even in the 1960's and 1970's as well.

I believe many of your comments regards ex-World War 2 demobbed men turning to teaching as an option possibly relate to boys at school in the 1950's and 1960's predominantly. I think by the mid 1970's this was largely irrelevant, as men who might have left the forces in 1945 at the age of say 30 would by then have been 60.

Absolutely delightful posts there by Mr Chips if I might say so, full of experience and explanation of how things once were and quite a bit of the wisdom that comes with age. Thankyou for the time and effort you put into writing those out.

Alan on 18th November 2023 at 16:58

FFS, give it a rest. We have a new poster who could contribute a great deal and has said a lot so far that makes sense. Stop whining.

Alan on 18th November 2023 at 16:58 'My problem with "Mr Chips" comment yesterday'

Oh dear, another problem. The gentleman you are having the problem with has told us he retired almost twenty years ago and yet you seem to want to apply what he's saying to the current time - of which you in any event have no experience.

I found his posts very informative and they made sense. As usual, it doesn't fit your narrative and so you have to start with a put down. How perpetually sad.

My problem with "Mr Chips" comment yesterday, is that while PTSD might be an excuse for school teachers who treated pupils abominably years ago, nobody has been forced to join the armed services for over 60 years now, there hasn't been true conflict since the 1990s, so why are some teachers still arrogant, egotistical, vindictive and treating their pupils like dirt all these years later. Fourteen years ago I was employing Saturday lads - most of them older lads still at school earning a bit of weekend money, and I still heard of really bad behaviour from teachers in regards of contempt towards pupils and verbal bullying, and these teachers can't be suffering from PTSD, and if they were, treatment is now very freely available, without embarrassment. It is a good excuse - though not mitigation , for older teachers, years ago, but not in 2023, is it?

Greg2 on 17th November 2023 at 20:51

Thank you for your interest and comments Greg.

A grammar school education back in the day was a privilege, it was one I and my brothers enjoyed and we knew how lucky we were. My parents never allowed us to 'get above ourselves' though and even as we went to university we were reminded that the privilege of a good education carried with it the huge responsibility to use the opportunity wisely. They were values I always tried to instill in boys I taught but I don't know how successful I was.

Well done on getting to university, I think the determination it needs a bit later in life demostrates a good character, moreso than in an eighteen year old who is just making normal progress through the education system, you should be very proud of what you achieved.

On your primary experience, corporal punishment be it a smacked leg, a caning or anything between was the norm back then as it had been during my own school days and I was certainly on the receiving end of the same regime as other lads at the time. Those days are now gone though and I think with some reservations that overall everything is better. I do still subscribe to the idea of the short, sharp shock for some behaviour though but the law says something different these days and so that's what must happen.

On the relationship with anything German, when I went to university, I was interested in German as a second language alongside French. I had learned a little at school and only for a year when we had a teacher who offered that alongside Spanish as his second language. I was discouraged first by my parents who couldn't think why anyone would want to learn German, my father had an absolute hatred of anything to do with Germany and my mother was no better and then by the university who said the course would be undersubscribed and not run and that's how it turned out. I did learn it in later years and am reasonably fluent.

Your headmaster's behaviour was appalling, that said, it typified the behaviour and attitude of many to all things German in the years after WW2. Men of your headmaster's age had almost certainly, like my father been brought up by fathers who had been in WW1 and so the hatred was there, both my grandfathers had been in the trenches and one invalided out of the army and while my memories of them are vague, believe me, there just couldn't be anything good about a German. That set of beliefs followed by WW2 and Germans and Germany were never to be trusted.

Your father, at the time was a brave man to have married a German girl but that would have made him look suspect to many people and your mother probably suffered badly too. You should never have been treated the way you were but it wasn't so abnormal at the time. Men I taught with regularly expressed very derogatory views about 'krauts' and that was the most polite term used to describe them. There are several I can remember who would have regarded you as the 'kraut child' to be treated harshly at every turn. It was wrong, it should never have happened but believe me, as a junior master, challenging upwards in those days got you less than no where. If I thought a boy was being treated unfairly, the very best I could do for him was put in a bit more effort and reinforce his achievements both in my classes and more broadly when I had the opportunity.

Yes, many men were damaged by their WW2 experience and I include my own father alongside many of my former colleagues. I look back now with that great tool, the wisdom of retrospect and much of the behaviour I witnessed was consistent with PTSD and burn out. These men were teaching, often without the right qualifications, it was all they could do and they needed to make a living. I was one of the first grammar school masters who was required to be a graduate in a relevant subject. Up until then some masters had no more than their own education as the basis of their teaching and of course any more learning they had done along the way and what is now dubbed continuous professional development was as good as unknown, now it is mandatory.

I think perhaps any emotional resource that was left for these men was saved for their families and there was none for school. I've read a lot about WW2 including the Russian advance on Berlin and the aftermath, it was dreadful and compared to many, your mother was relatively lucky. It sounds to me like your parents were very good people who were able to build something together that a lot of couples didn't have back then. My own parents rather co-existed and after thirty years of that divorced and to be honest, that was a relief. Circumstances impact on people differently, your parents were able to make a go of it, mine were not.

Teachers are indeed not perfect - nor are many others. Since the focus of a lot of comments here is about PE teachers, I would say it wasn't until we got to the second half of the 1980s and the development of what is now broadly dubbed sports science at Loughborough that there was any real resource for PE teachers to draw on. Even then it was regarded as a non-degree for the 'thickies' but it was easy to see the huge difference these men brought to the whole subject and it changed hugely and for the better as learning improved.

It might amuse some of your to know that when I first started teaching we had what was known as staff PE one lunch time and one evening each week. The headmaster expected all masters under the age of forty to attend though of course there was no sanction if you didn't. Most men did and in the main it focussed on running and circuit training and it was taken of course by the two PE masters. They drove hard and of course joined in so quite different to a PE class for the lads. They knew how to get and keep you fit but they were not the brightest buttons in the box and both were former army PTIs which was all the learning they had. I was by then a county level rugby player (as was one of the PE masters) who also went to training one night a week and so to a point I was grateful for the extra fitness sessions each week.

Was wrong done in the past? Yes of course it was but I'm not sure anyone had the learning or understanding to do things differently. Schools were run on the lines of discipline, control, learning and punishment. None of those things included empathy. I remember in my second term having a lad burst into tears in one of my classes. He had been away the day before and I asked if he was alright and he'd been at his mother's funeral. I set some work and took him out, made him a drink, left him sitting quietly, went back to class and after the lesson went back to see him, talked with him for a while and then went to ask the headmaster if we should send him home for a few days. I was told not to get involved, that I had already overstepped the mark on that and that the lad needed to knuckle down and get on with it. Nothing was going to bring his mother back. That was the culture, it was the culture of war, your mate was killed, you took a deep breath and carried on and the damage was left to fester.

Two days later, I passed the headmaster's study to find the same lad outside, I stopped to ask how he was but as I did, he was summoned inside. I waited, I heard eight cracks of the cane and a tearful lad emerged. His offence, he had truanted the day before because he couldn't face school. The headmaster reminded me that I was accountable to him, not the other way around.

Yes, I could have resigned, protested and all sorts of things but I would have had no audience. I think it was better that I continued to teach to the best of my ability.

Anthony you've asked a good two staged question there on the school shower, pre-perception against reality. It's often said in many things that the thinking is worse than the doing.

Most of this appears to relate to school after the age of eleven it seems to me, so what would be the three biggest fears about entry to secondary school level education in the past, is it fair to say that school showers would be in that top three and possibly number one?

My first school shower was not at the same time as others even though we were in the same PE class. I'll explain how. When I started at secondary school which was in 1975 we did not have to take them straight away, it was purely optional for something like a month to six weeks. I'm not really sure why that was the case. Perhaps we had some really soft and liberal minded PE teachers at my school. They seemed a mostly good bunch when all is considered by the values of those days. I recall that after PE some of us showered and others didn't for many weeks. I think we got told we would all have to do so eventually so were under no illusions that we could permanently skip them, quite possibly given a deadline or something like that. So I decided to use them from the beginning even though something like half the PE class didn't bother. There seemed little point in delaying the inevitable and more to be gained from just getting on with it and at least showing willing.

The first time I showered at school was with a couple of very close mates and we smiled at each other and looked each other up and down in our birthday suits in a sort of approval. It all seemed quite civilised actually. I think I found it quite amusing to see my mates naked like that. But the moment passed quite fast and we got on with things. I was never scared to shower at school and felt quite comfortable doing so.

(I was never bothered about taking my shirt off in PE either, which was a very common thing for all to do in a PE gym class)

There then came the point when those who had held out against showering also had to start doing so as well. I think that kind of changed things a bit. Firstly the showers were now more crowded and things didn't seem quite as easy going as before, possibly because those of us who had been fine with showers had done so for a short period and were okay with it and those that didn't fancy it were happy not doing so. When those boys then got made to shower you sort of knew exactly who those boys were who were a bit reluctant to do so and some of them couldn't hide how uncomfortable they felt I think. I remember that many of those type of boys kept on not bringing towels to school and the PE teachers got fed up with telling them to. I know some of us were getting asked to share our wet towel with others.

The one downer with school showers for me was having to carry that damp towel around school in your bag all day.

Showering at school with your mates was an accepted part of the school day, once, twice or three times a week. Everybody in the entire school had to do it, girls as well as boys, because everybody had to do PE. It was just another thing we did at school, like going into the school for assembly in the mornings.

Funnily enough I don't recall my first school shower (1985), or even any of them over the 4-6 years we had them. This surprises me a little as I'm sure I wouldn't have been that comfortable with them. That said, I don't think I would have questioned the necessity or whatever and would have just got on with it. I've already said that I was self conscious of my sticky out belly button (still am a bit) and I would probably have put any awkwardness down to that - ie it was my problem, not the fact we had to have showers.

One thing I've noticed in my attempts to retrace my childhood over the past year are how much easier it has been for me to rediscover quite a lot of my old school chums but not so easy to discover my former teachers from school at any age in any school. I wonder why this is?

It's good to see some teachers joining this discussion to balance up the pupil to teacher ratio.

Mr Chips,

An interesting contribution. Thank you.

It wasn’t until many years later that I realised how unfortunate I was to just miss out on a grammar school education. I certainly didn’t acknowledge it this way at the time. But despite becoming a bit of a rebel for the last 18 months or so at secondary school, due entirely to a few teaching War heroes, and a particularly difficult headmaster, I did, perhaps seven or eight years after leaving school, manage to catch up with all thought lost with expected qualifications, and so get to university in the end. It does seem that the boys who attended your school, mostly, would have come out with decent educations too, even if they did have to stay in line for fear of the swishing cane as part of their school experiences.

You started your teaching career when I was just into infant school. I never received the cane during any of my time at school, but certainly did received corporal punishment from my time at infants to secondary school. Early days would have been slaps on the inside of the thighs, just where it stings, and easily accessible when so young and wearing shorts. This would be dished out by women, who it seems always predominately taught in infant/junior schools, and probably still do today. These young women in the early 1960s would never have been soldiers, though some husbands or fathers might have been.

I’ve mentioned in past posts that my secondary school headmaster (we’re into the 70s now) took an instant dislike to me and my previously attending brother, just because our mother was German. Now obviously, I think I can find some understanding of this for the times, and I expect you and others, will certainly do so. But, to punish an innocent 12 year old for the ’Sins of his father’ is irrational, unhelpful and unprofessional, to the point of failing in a profession. Are you really saying that men who experiencing War, as truly awful as that must have been, would forever have scrambled and damaged brains, to the point where they would never be healed during subsequent years spent within peace and normality? That’s nonsense, and an excuse for bullying behaviour routinely dished out to boys down the years. My father was a soldier of WWII. He had all sorts of awful experiences. He mentioned nothing of these when we were children, but did so just a little more when we were all adults. He was always a kind, caring and loving man, and a wonderful father to us all. My mother the same, who also must have experienced terrible things escaping Berlin in fear of the Russians as they drew closer, as she'd heared of their many atrocities. During all the hell of those terrible times surrounding mum’s family for many years, she must have thought she’d been rescued by my father as a young soldier, from what my mother witnessed as her destroyed country. My father never beat me, nor ‘caned’ me, despite witnessing War atrocities from the young age of 18. Nor did my mother for that matter, though of course both were firm when needing to be, and with myself being the middle boy of five brothers, we certainly needed it at times. I don’t think most parents back then ever thought they had to harden sons up for fear of WWIII. Why did school masters, and in particular gym teachers, think this so necessary, and to be their sole responsibility?

Please don’t think I just have it in for all teachers, that would just be illogical. Indeed, particularly brilliant and gifted teachers, doing the job for the right reasons, could inspire and awaken a learning that would be retained for life, and many did. It’s a wonderful profession to those with such natural gifts, but, every chosen career is chosen for differing reasons. Many former PE teachers, as with some teachers of other subjects, though not all, are probably the sort who really just enjoyed being in charge. Similar types might join the police, become sports referees etc. Corporal punishment was certainly something prevalent during past years when children were thought needing to be chastised into deference for learning. This happened for many centuries, but it doesn’t mean it produced better adults, themselves capable of rearing more rounded and capable children.

Do you really think there was no error in any of your contemporaries ways of the past? Those damaged by War? Did none of them really have any understanding of sensitivity or regard for empathy, or was all submerged beneath brute force. Could none of them grasp or regard the requirements for art? Remember, some of the greatest poetry was written by those having experienced the horrors of WWI.

Anthony 17th November at 00:03

I still remember vividly how I felt the first time I joined my classmates for my first shower. I suppose I’ve retained this memory because it was a bit different for me due to joining the class late, all of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I attended gym and games but couldn’t join the class proper for months, so witnessed all that was to come. When that day did come and I joined the gym lesson, including joining them for my first shower instead of just sitting there waiting for them to all finish, gave me a strange feeling of now being alone, in this known crowd. They were all so used to it by then, but I wasn’t. I was still the new kid who didn’t join in with it all, but then all of a sudden did. After junior school we’d mentioned to one another about all having to shower at secondary school. But, as it worked out for me, I never experienced it as a new thing to do with everyone at the same time.

Steve on 15th November 2023 at 17:37

I just felt resigned to it, as something I had to do; something that was expected of all of us when now at ‘big’ school. But really, it just seemed to be just another part of the many new experiences of joining a new school at that young age. It seemed as though we were bombarded with all types of newness, and strangeness, at that age of 11-12. Different environment, different subjects, teachers, uniform, expectations, everything associated with that big change…maybe even a part of thinking we were all on our way to growing up. Whatever we encountered seemed to include something of being daunted and of the unknown, so much so that we didn’t have time to acknowledge it, of understand our situation, before we found ourselves actually doing it. All part of being that age I think, and I’m sure much the same for that age group today. I'm sure just verbalising these memories benefits us all by helping us acknowledge what this age group deals with.

Your second point, ‘Teachers sure loved us taking them, I know that’ comment? I think there’s certainly truth in that. Now, unpicking all reasons for them ‘loving us’ taking them, would uncover many reasons…