Burnley Grammar School

Daz1970 and William.

Correct on all counts in my opinion.

I remember being at Glastonbury in June 1997 and seeing some groups of naked men just sitting around chilling out in one of the far areas of the venue. It was the year of the big washout and a lot of mud and rain and there was a lot of that kind of thing going on and some naked men and topless women with knickers making fun in the mud sliding and kicking about in it, possibly loosened up with drink or drugs. This sticks with me as much as seeing Sting, Van Morrison, Prodigy and Ray Davies of the Kinks that year.

When I was at school group nudity was simply unavoidable. As a non consenting child it was all the while but as a consenting adult I have never again been in a position where I have been naked among a group of others.

Whether the net effect of being thrown into communal nudity and school showering was a positive or negative is anybody's guess. I don't think there is anything wrong with it but weighing it up I think I prefer such things to be consensual rather than by mandate.

What can be better in life though than if you are completely comfortable in your own skin and unabashed. I'm not quite there but it's worth aiming for.

I wish to comment on this Alan quote below.

"Rupert: Could Parry not have conducted his little homilies when you were all dressed?"


This take on things literally amazed me and left me open mouthed with the implied insinuation against the teacher.

Daz1970, That's an interesting point in your last paragraph (13th Oct at 21.31) about non-sexual male nudity. It may well be a bonding experience - to a small degree it was at school between the more confident boys but more so in institutions such as sports teams and the armed forces. In newspapers in the 1960s there used to be photographs of professional footballers celebrating a win in the team bath. The photos were discreet but no-one imagined they were wearing swimming trunks. And the Imperial War Museum archive has photographs of nude servicemen relaxing (swimming in the sea off Gallipoli, for example) and generally larking about away from the front line,

Time never flew when we were at school during the day though did it. It could really drag. But it did fly when we were on school holidays. You missed the creme eggs for Easter that go on sale the day after Christmas too by the way, although I used to think they sold those things all year around until about five years back.

I stopped off at a petrol station shop today while filling up and saw mince pies piled high in festive boxes all dated best before Hallowe'en on 31st of this month, so you can't stock up on them early because they'll be out of date by two months by Christmas anyway. If you're scoffing mince pies and other festive goodies in October where's the treat a couple of months from now?

All that indulgence will take a lot of physical exercise to work off. We probably all used to come back to school in early January having put a couple of pounds on after all those selection boxes had been devoured.

Thankyou Peter for your comment. It appeared quite prominently just by typing the school name into the internet. It must be more than 20 years since I'd last done that.

Concluding gym Mr Parry would sometimes speak with us while we were dressed. He'd hold us back to chat after we'd changed in most instances. Quite frankly I would not have cared either way. Nothing inappropriate ever happened thankyou very much. I only have many happy and rather good memories of him and others from a time in school when discipline, respect and hard work went without question and were not seen as something to look down on.

The photograph could not be a more perfect presentation of how school PE used to be for me and I'm sure so many others.

Hi Mike. thanks for your comment. It is just happenstance. I don't live in the same borough now and I very rarely have to venture there (if I do it sonly for work purposes), but I haven't been there now in about 7 years. The dump was pulled down many years ago now, and for once in my life I was glad to see Tesco's. I I'ie in a neighbouring borough because when I started my business it was convenient and relatively cheap, and had commitments. Like nearly everybody these days, business has never really recovered from Covid and all it bought with it. For choice if I had to live in this country it would be the West Country - another country - somewhere warm.

While we are having a friendly conversation a few days ago somebody mentioned why it was time seems to go quicker these days. I think there are two reasons - it does seem to happen after you get to 35, and also it is the way people wish time away. In August the supermarkets were getting out the Halloween stuff, in September the Xmas stuff and now the 2024diaries and calendars form the main display in W.H. Smith.

Thanks again Mike - I think some people just can't believe there were such bad and poor schools before education became quite as politicised as it is now.

Alan - I don't think anybody actually doubts that what you have said about your school is true. Your accounts strike me as deeply authentic, although I will not pretend to agree with everything you say with your wider opinions.

I think I would have chosen to leave an area that I held such negative feelings about. You sound like you remain close by to this day.

Good to see another old Burnley Grammar boy appear here.

How did you discover this place out of interest?

Mark: I can assure you I went to a secondary school when I was 11, it happened to be, in a VERY run down area in East London, and though, the EA naturally allocated resources to bigger - and frankly, better -schools, with more gifted pupils, we were, as I have said, quite small - we were a sort of overspill school (and I can assure those who don't like me, it was not an approved school!. As far as I am aware only one of my ex school attendees went to prison, that for GBH when he was 21).
Despite the grandiose claims of politcians the GLC wasn't all about "Nuclear Free Zones" (which I am sure China or Russia would have strictly observed!) or the North Islington Lesbians Street Theatre for Peace Group. There were (and indeed, are still) run down areas in parts of London which have not yet been gentrified with luxury flats and gated communities. It was a very rough area - and still is.

I wish other men who had been to schools like mine would write on here.I assure you what I have told you is true.

As regards all this gung -ho talk of nudity I am reminded of some lines in "Carry On Camping"where Sid James takes his girlfriend Joan Sims to the cinema to see a film about a naturist camp:

Joan: It's disgusting!

Sid: What do yo mean disgusting? - it's perfectly natural and healthy - you wouldn't think anything of it if we went round like that all the time

Joan: Oh, yes - I suppose you'd rather we all sat here stark naked?

Sid: It wouldn't bother me

Joan: It would if your ice lolly felli in your lap.


Rupert: Could Parry not have conducted his little homilies when you were all dressed?

I think Mr Parry would be well into his mid or upper 90s in age by now if he were still with us, maybe more, which is possible based on a guess of his age which I do not know. I'm not good at guessing ages but he might have been around the age of 40 when I went to Burnley Grammar.

There was nothing sordid about him in any way. I do take great exception to such throwaway comments like that. When I used the term hands on as a description it was to describe his keen interest and direct approach to us all. But teachers like Mr Parry were always comfortable handling us in PE, look at the picture holding the young lad in place for his handstand as an example of this. I do wonder if any PE teacher is allowed or feels able to ever touch a child nowadays in the name of PE instruction and if not then maybe that is in part due to the paranoia of those such as the gentleman on here who considers Mr Parry's behaviour sordid. I was as unconcerned about a teacher sharing a shower as he was. It could not have been more innocent I can assure you.

I cannot remember at this length of time too much detail on what the little chats we used to have involved suffice to say that they were always amicable, friendly and full of good advice.

A few names from those days I shared school and the gym with, they might just catch this someday - Christopher Jeffs, Bobby Darrell, Richard Marlowe, Robert Pacey, Henry Gresham and Giles Morton.

I very much hope and would expect that each of them would say something very similar to me given the chance to do so. We would be 66 and 67 years young now.

Adding to Derek on the army shower Sgt video.

How self defeating was that video. If you're going to make a video whose main point is that nobody cares about what you look like naked then surely that video has got to show you...naked! Not go all fig leaf on his groin and start hiding him.

I also don't think I agree with the basic premise of that video either, that nobody cares what you look like naked. People are always interested in what others look like, no more so than in a communal shower situation if you are all thrown together into it. You just don't exactly shout about it too loudly. Look, I'm perfectly straight but when I was in the showers at school I was always keen to compare what others stacked down below and knew damn well they were probably checking me out in judgement too. It's what boys and men do in such places so why pretend otherwise.

Another point rarely allowed to be said is that a lot of straight men do actually enjoy communal nudity with each other as well or would do if a situation allowed it for them anywhere.

Jim's showering boot camp You Tube clip.

Sgt Volkin says 'Just to prove getting naked is no big deal I'm going to take my pants off'

Cue the big blackout on screen. Proving male nudity is a big deal!

Classic.


But he did well to acknowledge that even those wanting to join up and serve actually have fears and hang ups about sharing the showers with each other, and these are young adult men choosing that life.

Jim, your comments:
"Nobody cares what you look like naked in the military he says in the video. Takes his pants right off and says there you go. While a big black box covers him up. Censored! So somebody did care (YT rules of course we know that) but the irony of the video was unintentionally amusing."
I certainly agree. Surely the new recruits were present so would see everything. So why make a video?

So how many people went to your secondary school exactly Alan? You make it sound more like a primary in your description.

At my secondary there was a main school hall and a separate gymnasium plus another sport building too. We never took PE in the main hall at secondary, whereas most who go to middle schools probably did as that was likely the only large part of the building to do such things.


Interesting comments from Rupert there. It would be good to hear some more as you are one of the few that have actually gone to the school named in the title here.

Although Alan tries to make his suggestions sound reasonable it is clear that they are based on the aggrieved experience of one individual rather than on any practical analysis. To have all gym and games lessons at the end of the day would be impracticable: the numbers would be too great and the gym master would be redundant for most of the day. As for showers at home, if boys have played rugby in wet weather and are covered in mud are they supposed to put their outdoor clothes on their muddy bodies so that they can shower at home, thus making their uniform and home shower filthy? Wouldn't most parents ask why on earth they had not used the showers at school?
Army education on hygiene has nothing to do with humiliation. The Army knows that not every youth of 17 or 18 has fully grasped that bodily hygiene means more than spraying on deodorant. It is too important to be left to chance.
I hardly wanted to enter this debate but I cannot be the only one who is fed up with Alan's opinionated assertions which are based on an experience that most of us have not had. I did not hate gym, the gym master or communal showers and I question the value of someone who did telling the rest of us why he is always right and the rest of us wrong. No doubt I will be told that I am "obtuse" or worse.
May I say to Matthew S that there was much at school that I liked. But since this conversation is about gym I would single out "pirates" at the end of term. We loved it.

Comment by: Rupert Channon on 12th October 2023 at 21:43
"Ron Parry was still teaching PE at Burnley Grammar when I was there in 1968-72. .... he was a very hands on kind of chap. Showers at Burnley were mandatory, communal and nude. He was also one of those teachers who openly showered in front of his classes and many times I saw him do so unconcerned. He'd sometimes hold boys back for private little chats about things, myself many times, alone ...... " am I allowed to say that sounds quite sordid.?. I can well believe it though.

I would like to see him explain that in 2023, though I imagine he is long dead.

As for the other comments about not having PE sessions in the morning - the first PE sessions of the day never happened till the second half of the morning, as our 'gym" was in the school assembly hall and the early part of the morning was for assembly and the headmasters attempts to be Jason Welby, and after that R was busy with whatever he got up to in his little office. Also, to be fair, it was a one storey building and by my later days there (and I know a lot of you won't believe this, but it's true) there were holes in the roof and if it was raining, the floor was wet where the buckets were unable to catch the drips, and the floor was deemed hazardous. It is, I agree, amazing that the ILEA didn't sanction repairs, but remember this was a small school, and at the bottom of their list of priorities, and was anyway scheduled for closure and had been al the time I was there and before. It was only originally intended as a "temporary" building, and was in a commercial area with lots of independent businesses cheek by jowl.

I think some of you who wrote about only having one teacher per subject, and clearly don't believe me, have probably never ventured into a small East End school at the end of it's life, but we didn't all go to "working class poor boy" Starmer's paid-for Surrey Grammar school!. No teacher really enjoyed working at our school, and they really showed it.

Based on the exchange between Alan and Charlton I felt sure I'd once seen what Charlton described on one of those reality fly on the wall shows but haven't found anything. I did come across this which made me laugh.

Nobody cares what you look like naked in the military he says in the video. Takes his pants right off and says there you go. While a big black box covers him up. Censored! So somebody did care (YT rules of course we know that) but the irony of the video was unintentionally amusing.

How To Take A Shower - Boot Camp.

https://youtu.be/e4_JOGsK9nc?feature=shared

On what basis should you not be playing football at the beginning of the school day? Such an odd comment that.

Ron Parry was still teaching PE at Burnley Grammar when I was there in 1968-72. I liked him and he was a very hands on kind of chap. He was one of those PE teachers who was insistent that boys gym should be done only in a bare chest and shorts. That photo tells the truth as I remember it. It was a strict gym rule rarely broken in his classes. Showers at Burnley were mandatory, communal and nude. He was also one of those teachers who openly showered in front of his classes and many times I saw him do so unconcerned. He'd sometimes hold boys back for private little chats about things, myself many times, alone or in small groups of three or four.

Your former school is an even stranger place than I could have imagined if it never put PE in the timetable first thing Alan.

But then you have told us your school, a secondary boys school if I remember correctly, only had the one male PE teacher and that doesn't seem at all normal. Exactly how big was your school if it only had one PE teacher and could manage not to bother with PE early in the day.

School for me began at 8.45am and one year I had to start Tuesdays and Fridays with PE which began immediately after form registration period was over at 9.10am. Often on PE days the form teacher would cut the registration period shorter than he had to so that we ended up going along to PE to change even earlier so that we were actually changed and ready for 9.10am prompt for the PE teacher, whether that was going to the school's gym or out to the playing fields or associated adjacent surfaces.

If you are saying only daft schools stick PE, or football, on in the morning then what else are the PE teachers meant to be doing exactly, unless you are saying only outdoors PE like football, rugby and the like should not be in the early morning and presumably the gym is fine then.

Comment by: Alan on 12th October 2023 at 03:09
And just to throw a question out - what daft school would schedule football as the first lesson of the day?
I would suggest some of you need to get over your Stockholm syndrome.




You are just looking for a reaction for the sake of it with these two comments which can't be taken seriously.

Charlton wrote "They even show new privates how to wash their privates in the army, well they did in the eighties when I joined."

I wonder if THAT was really necessary in 1985?. I don't disbelieve you - I have heard of something similar elsewhere, but it just seems to confirm that one of the main purposes of officialdom is to humiliate the plebs. Most people are perfectly OK with hygiene a lot earlier than 18. I admire you for joining, it saved those who did not wish it from the terrors of conscription but I cannot imagine WHY anybody wants to be directed and dictated to on any aspect of life at any age, especially in the later teens. Life at that age is for self-discovery, and freedom, in my opinion. You are a long time dead!.

Mick - even our wreck of a school never scheduled football or any other sports lesson as the first lesson of the day it was a serious question. I'll leave you to your John McEnroe quotes.

Quote <And just to throw a question out - what daft school would schedule football as the first lesson of the day?>


^
What kind of daft person would ask such a daft question as this?

To use an old tennis legend, you cannot be serious!

Outdoor toilets did not end in the 1940's Alan. My parents home still had just the one outside toilet until 1972 believe it or not, and they lived in a rather nice district of north London, Finchley! It was in a bricked area joined next to the coal bunker. I remember being in it one day in the 60s when the coal man came to deliver and the noise as the coal was emptied right next to me like the walls were coming down around me. I remember sometimes putting a jacket on when I required more than a quick tinkle.

Jason: I don't know if you were being obtuse, or if I didn't make myself clear, - if the latter, allow me to explain. One of the many excuses given has been lack of bathrooms at home - just the other day somebody told us that in 1985, which I remember well, his parents didn't have a shower. I remember because we had one) for a mere £5 or so you could buy a shower attachment which connected to the taps in the bath which allowed you to shower., to avoid bathing in your own dirt. I used it every day. The outdoor lavatory/tin bath routine must have ended in the 1940s, along with the "I have a bath once a fortnight whether I need it or not" mentality. MOST people are clean these days and we have deodorants etc.

Geoff seems to be trying to provoke bad feeling. A lot of the pleasure teachers get is the "power" and "them and us" routine. They give their orders (or did) knowing they couldn't be disobeyed. Even Nathan told us a few weeks ago that the PE staff at his establishment were not allowed to use the pupils showers (and quite rightly so IMO when the pupils were using them), but they couldn't use them after school students had left "because there is no lock no the door". How terrible!. Good to know that the us and them routine is still alive and well in 2023 schools- no privacy for the students, many of them now much older than the old school days, but the blushing teachers have to be safeguarded.

And just to throw a question out - what daft school would schedule football as the first lesson of the day?

I would suggest some of you need to get over your Stockholm syndrome.

I'd quite like to know how Craig got on with his midnight bareskin run on Tuesday and also ask if he'd still do it in the kind of tipping down conditions I arrived at work in late tonight. I remember those kind of very dreary dull rainy day cross countries at school where the darkness was already evident with lighting up time and the sun had set even before the final school buzzer at 4pm. Yes we finished at four! They knocked almost half hour off the school day about two years after I left.

There was no last lesson bonus of just clearing off though. We still had the same routine shower just like when I did PE first thing. The most irritating teacher was the one who kept us out right to the last minute bang on 4 o'clock.

Some people like discipline. It's why I joined the regular army as a private on leaving school in the mid eighties. I liked the feeling of belonging, of bonding with others tightly. I didn't mind being shouted at, told what to do, how to do it, being called by my surname, losing all my privacy morning, noon and night. We used to get 20 minutes each morning for what they called a sh*t, shower and a shave. That is not very long when sharing with a lot of others. They even show new privates how to wash their privates in the army, well they did in the eighties when I joined. I didn't do it for long, saw some sights, travelled far, made friends and most importantly although I was back in civvies by my twenties it gave me enormous confidence and positive character changes. Ironically the PT we did in the army was mostly done in vests, unlike my school which always went without the tops completely during gym. But so what to that I say.

I'm a fit and active 60. I left school 44 years ago, can it really be I often ask myself, as it feels so recent when I talk of the second half of the 1970's, where did that time go so terribly fast, does anyone actually know?

My PE teachers were no angels in comprehensive secondary school that's for sure. Some were what I'd call a bit full of themselves, loud and overbearing. I'm sure some of them liked to play up to the stereotypical image. I used to meet one of my PE teachers out of school in town on weekends and he'd talk to me like a completely different person, then back in school come Monday he was what I called back in PE mode.

I can remember getting pulled halfway across a football pitch by my earlobe by another PE teacher once for a dangerous foul I did bringing somebody down. It seemed like everything was generally more physical in those days whether it was the visuals of going naked for showers and being able to check exactly what your mates had hanging there or feeling a teacher grab you or slap your head or in some rarer instances the plimsoll came out. I saw a big thrashing in our changing room as a 12 year old that has never left me, on a boy's bare behind for what I think was not showering or something like that. In 1975 that was par for the course.

I think many teachers just preferred the quick sharp pain rather than dragging out an hours detention because it meant some poor teacher had to supervise it. A good friend of mine from school who remains in touch has often dined out on his caning at our school three times in one term for going down town in his lunch hour for smokes when banned from doing so, saying that every time he had the cane it made him more determined to do it again not less.

In my primary school the head teacher, a woman, once pulled three girls out of the assembly we were having, the whole school was sat crossed legged on the floor and all the teachers in chairs along the edges of us all, and the head took it upon herself to lift their skirts up and smack their knickered bottoms for talking during assembly.

At home I remember being smacked regularly by both my parents, at least a couple of times per month is my guess. My father's smacking really hurt the most and could sometimes make me cry. My mother's less so. I don't think they smacked me past the age of 10 though.

Graham.

I don't have time to go further tonight but I would just like to jump in and say that you wrote a good common sense post right there and there is nothing I disagree with, despite the fact we come from completely different teaching generations. I'm more than happy to back up everything you said.

The word 'solicitous' was used. I had to just make sure and double check it meant precisely what I thought it did. It means showing interest or concern / keen or anxious to do something. Is it really so hard to believe that applies to nearly all teachers.

Steve - yes I quite enjoyed p.e. at school - the academic side of things could get a bit intense so p.e. came as a welcome break even if it could be quite cold outside in winter in just a pair of shorts. I also got on well with the p.e. teachers - they were generally very encouraging.

Geoff - I'm sure Graham was a very conscientious p.e. teacher - certainly not a voyeur. I caught up with one of my p.e. teachers in a pub a while after I left school. He told me that they were supposed to keep an eye out for possible abuse - made possible by our minimal kit and passing through the shower area on a regular basis.