Burnley Grammar School

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…

Like Chris A says, I also had a PE teacher at school who behaved as if he thought everything I did was substandard or plain wrong in the actual gym or playing fields but when it came to what he wrote down about me he was fairly positive. Work that out.

I qualified as a teacher in 1962, I started at a boys grammar school and there I remained for forty two years until I retired in 2004. I taught French and some supplementary Latin but that was less than 10% of my time. I arrived as the most junior master in the department and retired as head of modern languages.

The school remained a grammar school until 1975 when it was supposed to become a comprehensive. The headmaster and governors certainly didn't like that idea and nor did many of the masters. As many of our boys were from well to do back grounds a decision was made for the school to become independent and so it did. The places of grammar school boys were maintained by the education authority until the left but from September 1975, new boys were fee paying.

It is still a fee paying boys school today and achieves highly with a very high Oxbridge entry rate, better than some much more well know schools including public ones.

It's sad to read accounts of some of you, I don't like the idea that you didn't get a good education or you felt you were not treated well. Let me explain something that you probably know but may never have been obvious to you that may help you to understand your time there.

I was really among the first of a new generation of masters who had not had involvement in WW2. My more senior colleagues had all been in the military in one form or another either in the fighting or in the aftermath or at the very least doing national service.

These days there is concern about those leaving the forces and their reintegration into society. Only yesterday I gave money to a charity to help homeless veterans. Do you think anything like that existed back then? The reality was men left the forces and just had to 'get on with it' making the best out of life that they could. It was not easy and some gravitated towards teaching because there were reduced entry requirements for those leaving the forces, remember that they were almost all men.

PE teachers in particular were often former military PTIs. Do you think anyone ever suggested that they treat adolescent boys aged 11+ differently to how they had treated adolescent boys aged 15+ who were joining the army back then? The answer is no. I coached rugby for many years and worked alongside the PE department to do that. They saw it as their job to 'toughed lads up' because at the time WW3 was still on the horizon and you couldn't have 'soft' lads heading for the military who couldn't play competitively and who would be scared of being naked in front of their fellow soldiers or scared of a cold shower. It's how it was.

When I started, many of the senior masters did have signs of what now would be called PTSD or burn out. Was it recognised? Of course not. Many of them just didn't have the emotional resource to deal with lads of differing needs so discipline and control were the order of the day. When I started, there was a selection of canes in every classroom and they were used, frequently and yes, I did.

I doubt any master disliked the boys he taught or set out to harm them in any way but they didn't have it in them to be interested or kind either for all the reasons I've tried to outline. The best thing I can say to you boys now men, is try to let it go, you can't change the past and it's dreadful to let it consume you into the future. My own father was a WW2 veteran who saw some dreadful things and I've no doubt that at times he took out his unresolved anger on me with his slipper at times. Yes, at the time, I hated him for it, did it last, no. Did I understand why he did what he did? At the time, no. In later life absolutely. Was it his fault? No. Who was to blame? Cirucmstances that were not understood and way beyond the control of anyone.

To a point that anger only reduced with time, many who started with me were inculturated into that world of education and so it took a long time and much change for things to get to where they are today in terms of education. Change was not always easy. Although I used it rarely after the first week of a new term, I was very reluctant to give up the cane. It was swift, effective and a boy rarely wanted a second dose. Punishments and sanctions that followed wasted a lot of time of both the boy and the master and rarely achieved rapid results.

I hope I've tried to put a bit of a different perspective on some of the anger and upset I see here. I don't have any great wisdom, just years of experience. If anyone has any questions they would like me to try and answer, I'll give it a go.

Comment by: Sean on 16th November 2023 at 20:46


I can totally empathise. It sounds just like our old wreck. It really seems looking back, that PE teachers were un-housetrained Rottweilers who were never bought to heel. I suspect our elderly headmaster was scared of ours. Like yours, all but one of our teachers were deadbeats (hello, Mr Laine, if you are still out there) who were more keen to inflict their distain than any knowledge they might have accrued. It would be interesting to bring them into todays slightly more gentle era (I hope!) and see how long they lasted. I remember somebody once saying that teaching was the profession of the unambitious and untalented, and I suspect in so many cases, that is right. Many seemed to have had a problem with self-confidence, needing 11 year olds to call you sir", seems to me a mark of great insecurity. If school days had been the happiest days of ones life, then most people would be suicidally depressed. The late teens and twenties are so much better for nearly everyone.

Do many people reading these pages actually have a clear memory of the first time they had to take a group shower at school and what they felt about it while they were actually doing it that first time and how did the reality of doing so match up with the expectation of what taking showers at school after PE classes would actually be like?

I had a strict PE teacher who a lot of people hated but I went against the grain and rather liked him. I blew back at him once over something and thought I'd really set myself up for some long term trouble but that didn't happen and he followed up giving me a glowing report and when I left school a fantastic reference.

I'm 52 and my main school years are the 1980's.

I wish I could come on here and say that I had at least one outstanding teacher who truly inspired me, but I can't think of one. Most just seemed very average but quite a lot of them also seemed to be in a state of semi-permanent short temperedness. Even the office staff could be like it to us. I was once walking down a corridor in school time by myself on an errand for a teacher perfectly normally when I passed by a teacher who laid into me for being out of class without asking the reason why first. Quite extraordinary stuff and I can name another ten examples in my case of similar shoot from the hip teaching.

To the guy upthread who suggested if he refused to go in the showers at his school in the past then he thinks his teacher would have picked him up and chucked him in and taken no excuses, I can concur with that because I saw it happen at school on at least three or four occasions, including one day when my PE teacher pushed a fully clothed boy in and soaked him and his clothes through to teach him a lesson, and he then had to come back out, remove his clothing and place it over a radiator to dry off. Other boys used to get seriously hassled into stripping right off and going into showers at school if they tried not to. It was like the gestapo at times in our school changing room on the shower issue after PE if you showed any hint of resistence to them.

I was always being told by my parents that schooldays were the best days of your life. It might be for some but not for many. Leaving school was the best day of my life and saying goodbye to most of these people.

In my entire working life I have still not come across anyone as deeply unpleasant as one man who took me for PE in school whose modus operandi was clearly to inflict as much pain and humiliation on as many boys as he could manage to fulfil his own sense of being somebody.

Steve on 15th November 2023 at 17:37

Yes, I certainly was.

I posted a few weeks ago about growing up in a two up two down house with my parents and three brothers. We didn't have much money and my parents worked hard for what we had. I shared a bedroom with my brothers and as there was a set of bunks and a double, I shared a bed with one of my brothers too.

Friday nights was what my mum called 'men's bath night' when I, my brothers and my dad took our turn in the bath one after the other, same water because there wasn't money or time to heat more. After it, wrapped in towels, we had fish & chips for supper so it was a nice night and it was followed by singing while mum played the piano before we made our way to bed.

Communal showers at school were a luxury that I enjoyed and a couple of extra washes in the week did me no harm! Growing up sharing a room with my three brothers and bath night when we saw dad naked too meant I was not in the least bit bothered by showers with my school mates. It was just normal and a shower was a pleasure.

I think at the time, I was far from the only lad in the same circumstances, three lads in my year lived close by but other lads came from the 'posh houses' and maybe had more baths and perhaps privately but back then, few people had showers at home. I don't remember anyone minding showers at school but times have changed.

Was anybody actually enthusiastic about school showers and liked taking them?

Teachers sure loved us taking them, I know that.

Tony on 13th November 2023 at 17:16

I agree, communal showers do seem dated now however they still have merits. For years at a gym I used to use, we had communal showers, they were always very clean and also quite sociable. Then it became company policy to install cubicles - opaque glass with doors, it was a David Lloyd gym.

All of a sudden, the showers began to smell pretty unpleasant and I raised this with the staff and the manager told me that it was because all of a sudden, men had started to piss in the showers, something that never happened in communal ones. It didn't get any better and in any event, my corporate membership came to an end and I started to look for an alternative.

I ended up going to a Better Gym, it's a lot more rough and ready than DL but it's very clean and no strange smells but the showers are communal and I have yet to see a man taking a piss.

I can also see the point of being more comfortable with strangers than with family. I remember my dad wanting to take me to a sauna as a boy. I didn't know much about saunas other than that nudity was normal and I really didn't want to go and got out of it. A few years later, I quite happily mixed with other men, naked in the sauna, that was in Finland where I was working at the time and going to the sauna after work is like going for a drink in the UK.

I found the Justin Hollis comment from a childhood holiday rather telling. Whilst I think I might have felt similar to you if I had been that age, when you think about it isn't it rather ironic that you would have felt better showering in the caravan site alongside any potential strangers in that communal area rather than beside your own adult family. Those kind of free for all communal areas seem dated now.

Gary on 12th November 2023 at 22:37

Generally I would expect someone to disclose their own profession when they ask the question you have so perhaps you would be good enough to do that.

I'm a barrister.

No doubt now I'll be asked for my professional listing by those intent on trolling. Please don't waste your time, I'm not going to do it.

Andy - "Fortunately, our professions are not riddled (well perhaps with the exception of the current government) with people out to serve themselves and their own ends. People are there to behave professionally and do a good job in the service of others."



You spoke of "our professions" Andy. Is this teaching, if not what is your profession out of interest, without needing any details, just the generality will do.

Bernard on 12th November 2023 at 00:03

Thank you - I like you prefer to think the best of people unless and until they give me a reason with evidence to think otherwise.

Fortunately, our professions are not riddled (well perhaps with the exception of the current government) with people out to serve themselves and their own ends. People are there to behave professionally and do a good job in the service of others.

Other thinking is, in my view, rather disturbed.

Comment by: Original Andy on 11th November 2023 at 21:46
Nathan Hind on 11th November 2023 at 14:19

"I totally agree with you however there is a long, long history of the sort of posts you refer to and all are utterly unhealthy however both the subject of your post and Dando continue unabated to the point where I wonder whether they are one and the same."


It is strange, "Original Andy", I get exactly the same impression (about people being one and the same person) with your good self and a certain "doctor". I can assure you and everyone else , I am NOT Mr Dando, and just to answer Nathan, it is, as I have often pointed out, not my view that all teachers are of dubious character (though I still maintain that there are far too many control freaks), but we can't just close our eyes to the rotten apples - which, I agree, you find in all professions - and pretend they don't exist. I am sure at the time of the "expenses" scandal in Parliament some ears ago, many politicians regarded it as "unhelpful" that the public learned about it. They like to believe that they are so much better than everyone else.

Nathan Hind & Original Andy - I agree completely. The vast, vast majority of teachers were and are genuine and well-meaning. To be obsessed with the few that make the headines for the wrong reasons is indeed unhealthy and unhelpful.

Nathan Hind on 11th November 2023 at 14:19

I totally agree with you however there is a long, long history of the sort of posts you refer to and all are utterly unhealthy however both the subject of your post and Dando continue unabated to the point where I wonder whether they are one and the same.

A good experience of school and in particular of PE is simply not allowed.

Privacy issues surrounding school showering are being mentioned here. I'd like to use the word dignity instead, and suggest that personal dignity and a respect for anyone's personal dignity is a more appropriate way to look at it and that everyone should have personal dignity respected and if someone feels that their personal dignity is not being upheld by a mandatory requirement to shower at school then they should have an undeniable right to decline under the same principle as conscientious objection.

I was a slightly bigger guy at school than others and found that showering opened me up to comments I would not have received if I had not been told I had to do so after doing PE at school.

I'm not sure there is a lot more to be gained by placing too many of those type of newspaper items on these pages Alan do you. I don't think you'd want to become like Mr Dando who was regularly posting the PE arrangements of various named schools he disagreed with, including my own school.

99% and more of teachers are not like those articles. Do you really think we are? By all means be fully aware and alert but don't taint everyone in the process, that helps nobody at all.

Privacy can work differently depending on who you are with I think.

I was at secondary school from 1969 and into most of the early seventies. It was drilled into us from day one the expectation that we all must use the changing room shower following PE classes. There were no exceptions to the rule, never mind what you might have felt about it, looked like or anything else, at the end of PE it was everyone in, and no hanging around about it. I was able to deal with this in school quite well as PE was one of my favourite subjects anyway, which always helps I suppose. I never felt too self conscious doing it, it was part of school life for us more than once a week and as we were all being treated exactly the same there was little to really complain about.

Then in 1972 my family went off to a fixed plot caravan park on the Essex coast near Frinton for a week over summer holidays using a caravan my uncle had owned at the site for many years. It was our first time and we spent a couple of weeks there. Although the fixed ploot caravan was quite spacious for our needs for the holiday it did not have anything other than a small kitchen sink and there wasn't even a toilet in it, but the site provided public toilets in a building nearby, along with a washing area and shower facilities. It was a communal open plan very un-private shower that anyone on the site could make use of at certain times of the day, something like 6am to 11am and again 6pm to 11pm I think it was. Everything was separated into male/female use apart from the other.

You can't go anywhere for two weeks and not bath or shower, and a bath was not an option like back home, so we had to shower in this communal area and a couple of days in my dad took me and my much younger brother who was only 7 along to shower. I was 14. My mum and sister went to the female area. Now I had not bargained on having to shower at the same time as my own dad and didn't want to do that but he was adamant he was not letting me and my brother go along to the public communal shower on site to do so by ourselves without him. Understandable in many ways but I kicked up a real thing about doing it by myself but he wasn't relenting. Just like teachers, you didn't argue with dad, he said you're doing something and you did it. At 14 I felt I was big enough and careful enough to be trusted to take me and my young brother to use the site's communal shower area by ourselves.

Showering with my class in school was okay but having to shower with my dad at the caravan site communal facility at the age I was did make me feel he was violating the privacy I expected for myself at that age from my own parents, but dad didn't see it that way at all back then. I can still recall the sights and smells of that particular building.

Keith on 8th November 2023 at 21:44

I totally agree, I never felt there was anything wrong, inappropriate or indeed anything else negative. It's what lads did. Communal showers still exist albeit in smaller numbers than they used to but just a few weeks back I was camping and the onsite washrooms for men at least had communal showers and they were in use by me and many more. Nothing to worry about and nothing to fear and so much better than cubicles and towel dancers.

Christopher W: The teacher concerned should have been sacked. far too many get away with their voyeurism, and it still goes on:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12725735/Eton-College-teacher-charged-sex-offences-boy-private-school.html


Clearly the man - even if he didn't touch the lads - was getting gratification from what he did.

At one time, being an estate agent or used car salesman was regarded as shaming. The more that comes out about the teaching profession, the more that interpretation can be put on that profession as well. Not all of course, but there are far too many rotten apples in the barrel, and it seems far too often a blind eye is drawn over very dubious behaviour

On this whole privacy point that has been made, I never considered having to share my own naked body with other naked bodies when we had to go for showers after PE to be any sort of invasion of my privacy and still can't really think of it like that.

Part of what that teacher in the press article did actually happened at my school in the late 70's when a teacher of mine took a number of illicit swimming lessons in the school pool with a group of boys on Saturday mornings under the guise of extra tuition and allowed them to go full skins top to tail if they wanted. He got a slap on the wrist and Saturday morning extra tuition came to an end abruptly. There was never any suggestion he made anyone do anything they didn't want to do or did so himself and it was put down to losing control or something like that, very conveniently.

Kevin: He had TWO criminal convictions. A jury decided, based on the evidence they heard that he was guilty both occasions. He was bloody lucky he didn't have to serve his sentence for the second one, as clearly the first one hadn't taught him to mend his ways. In my view he should have been imprisoned. The naked swimming behind locked doors as late as the 1990s also tends to suggest a certain tendency.

As regards ogling boys in the shower - I am sure a lot of teachers did- and do - get pleasure from it, which is why I think there should be more privacy especially for older lads.

That Romford Recorder item that's been left on here about the teacher says something about ogling in it. But how do you define someone who is just looking at someone and ogling them in a changing room then? Is it just staring at someone, I felt that lots. Because when I had to shower in school the teachers were always paying close attention to all of us and if that counts as ogling then it was probably going on in every school in the country at one point a few years ago.

Malcolm your comment today will be very familiar to all of us who are your age. In those days you didn't have to be a bad boy in school to feel the wrath of teachers and false accusations or agenda driven teachers could set out to make examples of us. If you were genuinely innocent of something it could actually be much worse if you then denied it until you were blue in the face, so being innocent and facing a punishment could mean you got a much harder punishment than if you had been guilty of something. Innocent boys did admit to things they didn't do in school just to prevent worse if they made a big deal of it.

My example is this. It was during the winter freeze up of early 1963. We all went to school. Now they'd get three months off. One of our teachers had a small car that snow had been piled up around in the school car park which was down the side of the school out of direct view of anything. Snow and ice had also been pushed into the rear exhaust. As it was freezing it remained solid. I'd been seen near this car and was accused of doing it. I think it was mistaken identity. The teacher came back to it and couldn't drive it away immediately and had to burrow snow away from it. When he started the car it backfired and exploded in some minor way because the exhaust was blocked.

I was known for one or two minor little fun pranks and got hauled in and told to own up and they told me what for. I had not done it and been anywhere near that teachers car. I would have been 14 in early '63. I was completely disbelieved and ended up with six strokes of a cane across my bottom in the heads office in the presence of my class tutor. My parents were then told and at home I got another thrashing from my fathers belt in the same place. The school didn't believe me and neither did my parents, they took the school side. There was nothing I could do or say to change things. Because I kept denying it I fared worse for not manning up.

When that happens to you and you know you did nothing it really does alter your view of people and things going forward. I stopped pulling pranks and became a lot more subdued. I can't even beginning to imagine what it must have felt like to face a hangman's noose knowing you'd done nothing wrong, but in that case you'd not have long to remember it like I have for 60 years.

I could have taken the school punishment inflicted on me for doing nothing but the real killer for me was my parents not believing me, that was the worst part, but was largely symptomatic of the times then.