Burnley Grammar School

Graham Butterfield, thank you for your comments. I don't doubt my old teacher's good intentions for a second.

Everyone else - please don't mind my asking, in all seriousness - does anyone have any pleasant recollections of their schooldays they would be happy to share?

What kind of a pupil were you when you were actually on the gym floor or out on the playing field Alan at the time in the eighties I believe it was with you? Did you display your aggrieved personality or just keep yourself quiet and endure it to yourself?

Does anybody else think that the retired PE teacher Graham has just been called out as a voyeur on here by Alan just for explaining how child welfare works?

Guess what Alan, most of us probably quite liked doing PE at school, got on well with at least one or two of our teachers and couldn't care less if they saw us naked showering in the enclosed male space of the boys changing room and didn't think they were voyeurs because they dared to look at us, commonly known as doing their job properly.

Everyone has bathrooms in their homes that they use daily. Thanks for telling us.

What use is that for those who go out to PE first period in the day at school, who might be out on the football pitch doing that or rugby, not just sweaty but dirty too? What about in the gym, especially in summer where the sweat is dripping off you if you're doing the lesson properly. What use is the bathroom at home when you've finished first period PE exactly, like I had many times myself.

Sorry Roy. It is just that I get really annoyed reading the damned silly. excuses that are dished out on here for voyeurism - from the "hygiene" excuse (not needed these days as everybody have bathrooms in their homes, which are usually used on a daily basis), to "discipline", and now setting themselves up as part-time NSPCC hobbyists.

Certainly in our school the regime was carried on because our teacher enjoyed it, both the looking and the opportunities it gave him to make snide remarks.

It is about time the profession and it's admirers sorted their story out and got it straight (if you'll pardon the pun).

Nathan, I remember in the early 1980's when I did an after school sports club that there were three particular PE teachers at the time who would actually share the shower with us and at the time it started I was only a first year kid. The after school club had various ages from a number of years and we all mixed. Even though it was an after school club outside of school hours we were still treated like we were in school properly in a normal PE lesson and told to shower. Yet the PE teachers never shared the showers with us in normal school time PE lessons, only the after school sports club ones.

I suggest a published works by Dale Carnegie would be a good read for you Alan.

Graham Butterfield: I had no idea P.E. teachers were so solicitous. What a pity this years Nobel Prizes have already been dished out.

Comment by: Alan on 10th October 2023 at 03:22
Mark and Matthew S:
I am sorry to be blunt, but do you really believe that teachers were looking for signs of ill-treatment?





Well I have sat this out for a bit but now is a good time to re-enter the fray. I think it was me that made the original comment a long while ago that was noted by Matthew.

The answer to the question above is, yes. Very much yes as well.

I'll be blunt too. The way the question above is asked is not a correct representation. It is about being aware and observing anything notable or possibly suspicious, but not actively seeking, looking or searching out ill treatment evidence on anybody on purpose. Showering gave good opportunity quite clearly for screamingly obvious reasons to notice such things in a subtle manner. Tim appears to fully grasp this.

The school medical in years past was once quite thorough and could also be used for this as well as it's primary focus, although such a thing was at best annual or sometimes maybe just once in school life and in the way it used to be given is no longer as common, rare even. Boys (and girls) used to strip down to their pants in the medical room to be checked out when I first began teaching.

By the way, there is a world of difference between corporal punishment (which I am not in favour of) and ill treatment.

If I noticed anything the first thing I would do would be to approach that pupil and ask the question and if I didn't feel satisfied with the answer then I would mention it to colleagues and there would be a heightened awareness in future. PE teachers are uniquely placed to be able to do this on a regular basis.

Without getting too technical on here, there are certain minor injuries and scrapes that can happen during the course of PE that show up regular, such as shins and knees. Certain types of bruising are also commonest in PE.

I hope the current PE teacher will feel able to back up what I'm saying even though he started his career the year I ended mine, 2015. It's good to see that our profession is defending itself on these pages against a tiny minority narrative of one.

Michael 10th. October at 08:10

It was normal for boys back then to have an array of knocks and bruises up and down both legs, and I certainly did, probably not helped by being centre forward for my junior school football team. I left junior school in 1967, and as you’ll remember, boys wore shorts all the year round and in all weathers until secondary school in those days. Mine being shorter than most of the other kids too due to having a mother who came from Berlin, who certainly didn’t like the longer shorts many boys still wore then, which would be more fashionable today. Due to this I also remember seeing big red hand slap marks on the inside of my thighs, seeming to take a long time to fade, which were the routine choice of reprimand, given out only to boys from our elderly headmistress, for what seemed very little misdemeanour.

But your mentioning of the traditional boys black eye, is what brought a particular memory back to me. During my last year in junior school we were having a games lesson, being a game of rounders, boys against girls, as out fantastic female teacher always seemed to want to do. She would always be on the girls team. I was bowling, and she was next in line facing me with the bat. Now, she was a ‘heavy’ woman, but always sporty, and in fact ran our boys’ school football team. I must have thrown a good bowl and she really swung for it, supported by all her weight. My vivid memory is not having time to get out of the way as the ball increased in size until a total eclipse and it hit me right in the eye. I don’t think I was knocked out but it did knock me off my feet and onto my back seeing stars. I remember coming round with all the girls, including her, fussing around me, which I quite liked I think. We had a line of basins with mirrors above in the toilets where I looked at my eye seeing that it had become very red. The next morning it was black, and seemed to stay that way for at least two weeks.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, (plus possibly later), it was nothing unusual for boys to sport the occasional "shiner" (black eye); or bruises, scratches or minor cuts.

It was a more 'physical' time, when boys were almost expected to get involved in 'rough and tumble' with each other, and accept corporal punishment from parents and teachers as routine.

With this 'fisticuffs' normality as the background, a boxing match in the gym was sometimes arranged by my PE teacher, as a means to settle a dispute.

Although just another avenue of violence, at least the bout was supervised and brought to an end in a timely manner, with the loser having graciously to accept defeat. This was far preferable to the potentially serious outcome of an uncontrolled fight in the school yard.

Discipline: however you define it. Isn't that what is missing from today's society?

In reply to Alan's posting of 03.22:
Yes ... I really believe that teachers were looking for signs of ill-treatment (and possibly signs of illnesses that parents may not have realised were there).

Alan ... “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, ..., than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Mark and Matthew S:

I am sorry to be blunt, but do you really believe that teachers were looking for signs of ill-treatment?. Explain that theory when in my day and earlier many teachers used physical punishments themselves on boys (and girls as well I expect). Who's is to say some mark might not have been inflicted on the lad by one of their number rather than their parents?.

Anyway, when you read - far too often - of the appalling injuries inflicted on children by their parents, often leading to death (which is why we read of the cases since the parents are in the dock charged with murder), clearly it is a gambit that doesn't work.

Anyway, if it gives you comfort, believe it if you will. but it seems a desperate theory, but then, as T.S Eliot wrote "humankind cannot bear too much reality

Matthew S.

I think it was explained briefly once before by one of the retired PE teachers that wrote here that being able to see pupils without clothing also served as a means to observe any unexplained cuts and bruises that might be signs of maltreatment in the home.

I had some scratches from the family cat once when I was in school and had to explain those to a teacher who questioned me when seeing them across my shoulder.

I realise these are only small details, from somewhat later than most of the other recollections, but they might be of interest.

In my first, or one of my first, PE lessons at junior school in the early 1990s, we got changed in the classroom beforehand. The boys put on white shorts with our chests bare; the girls wore white shorts and white T-shirts. All of us had bare feet. The teacher handed round an open metal tin in which we placed any spectacles, sleeper earrings, watches or other jewellery.

We filed along the corridor to the school hall and the teacher told us all to run round the hall in circles. I had been very self-conscious in earlier PE lessons in infant school, but that was easing, to my relief, and at that moment, not quite eight years old, it was rather exhilarating to be scampering around the parquet flooring at peace with myself.

As we children were running round, the teacher, a kindly lady, suddenly called me over. On the side of my left foot, there is a dark, large, flat mole. She pointed at it and asked, "What's that?"

I explained (not much troubled), she accepted my explanation and we went back to the lesson. Only now, as an adult, does it occur to me that she was, perhaps, discreetly observing the children for any, very rare, signs of mistreatment (partially explaining the minimal PE kit) and that the mole could easily have been mistaken for a cigarette burn.

On a lighter note, I am invariably reminded of PE lessons from when very young whenever I hear "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

Good luck with your continued 'bareskin running' Craig. I'd sign up if I was in your locality.

There are some good lines in your post there William. Your final one about the strict discipline but also still having fun is right. Both a disciplined lesson and fun are not mutually exclusive of each other.

For just one year only when I was in my early teenage years the girls and the boys in my secondary modern school in 1970/71 shared the indoors gym PE period together. I do not know why this was. The boys in that class were never there in the school gym with anything worn above their waists in those lessons. I was always under the impression that boys really liked being undressed like that and preferred doing anything physical with a bare chest if they could. Until we were put in with them we never really knew what they wore for gym but I don't think it would have come as any surprise when we did find out. The gym there was taken by two women who alternated each week with us.

Nathan
I think the "gotcha" was more fun than serious. The consequences of your using the communal showers with the boys are obvious. I suspect that most parents do not raise concerns about showering because they do not want their children to make mountains out of molehills. Recently some contributors have written at length about their dislike of bare-chested gym or showers but in the great scheme of things these are not great challenges compared with the mountains we all face later in life such as bereavement and grave illness.
I thought the first main paragraph in your comment on 1st October was full of common sense and put so well that there is no point my repeating it. In essence, challenges such as communal showers are better faced and surmounted than avoided. The sooner the child starts to get over some of the molehills in life the better equipped he is for coping with more serious challenges later on.
Like you, I just got on with showers. Nervous the first time but soon got used to them. Not wearing tops or pants never bothered me; neither did being called by my surname, which is so much more practical when two or more boys share the same Christian name. In my 1960s grammar school we had lots of Michaels, Peters and Davids.
It was a good education and I left the school with more bodily confidence and resilience than when I arrived. The discipline was strict but we still had a lot of fun.

It seems a shame that for sometime now the comments on this site have moved away from the original idea of comparing experiences of PE lessons.
My experience of PE was no worse or better than some other lessons that I did not like e.g. TD (technical Drawing) now I think called Design and Technology. Also I was not a great lover of Geometry.
Having said that in PE I preferred climbing wall bars and ropes compared to having to clear the vaulting horse.
Yes, we did have communal showers after the lesson. For me it was not a problem because a lot of my fellow classmates were in the same Scout Group as me and we went to camps together which meant that we slept in tents and we were used to undressing in a confined space. Also for many years in the late 50s and 60s I shared a bedroom with my elder brother , and when we much younger had a bath together in the old tin bath.
I understand that some people may have experienced concern using group showers, but my attitude has always been whether showers or camping we were all lads together.

I can conceive how my previous comment might be perceived as rank hypocrisy but realistically what else do you do. The follow up comments were well made. Practicality limits the use of too many personal and private shower stalls, and communal washing is faster and mostly efficient, and as was mentioned if privacy is your top priority then it takes a hit in those circumstances.

But as I said before, in all my time which is now approaching 9 years doing my current job, only a couple of times has any parent even brought up the issue of school showers in a slightly concerned way, and both were reassured of their concerns and went no further. That's a lot of parents over 8 or 9 years that could say something and don't and everything is open and clear about requirements in PE.

I would certainly have no problem sharing a communal shower alongside those I work with if that was necessary. Trouble is that our private one is barely big enough to move around with one person and we are not allowed to use the pupil changing room shower by ourselves as staff because it lacks a lock on the door unlike our staff area which can be locked.

Don't forget that teachers like me were also made to take showers at school after PE, so I've been on both sides of the fence. They were very strict in my upper school right from the word go but I just accepted it for what it was and got on with it.

So I don't really feel I was caught out with a gotcha moment.

Matt - that's more than I did. The school shower amounted to no products or deodorants at all, just walking under some rather lukewarm water and rubbing the water over us with our hands, kind of like a pretend wash I'd almost say. I don't remember seeing anyone bringing any products into the school changing room or taking anything into the showers other than hooking the towel nearby and that's the lot. A rite of passage for sure like Greg said, but also just going through the motions for the sake of doing it even if it wasn't making much difference to our hygiene. Standing in the showers just getting wet was the main thing with my teachers, not the act of actually washing properly.

Our bareskin running whatsapp group had a record turnout this lunchtime, we had 15 out of 18 on the group turn out and run bare chested for approximately 6 to 7 miles. Although this is meant to be a male only group for obvious reasons we did allow a couple of eager female partners to tag along today, not bareskin for them obviously.

When we finished we all went into a pub garden for refreshments and got some good reactions as we sat together but perhaps the funniest was from an elderly lady who came up to one of us and asked us why we were out like this on 8th October, bless her. We go out all year we said and at night too. Today was almost too warm for a bareskin run, mad considering like the lady said, it's October.

Next run is a midnight one on Tuesday, so far we have 4 takers for that.

My son is at school right now and group showers regularly there after PE. They must.

He also takes a packet of wet wipes, deodorant and original source branded gel with him quite a lot.

You won't hear me complaining about it. Been there did it all myself.

Mike and Julia, such nice words.

I agree with you Greg. Lovely Julia. A little bit of love goes a long way and it doesn't always have to be tough love. The kindness of strangers is often rather special when you come across it.

Julia 7th October 18:36

That's a lovely and caring post, Julia. Thank you for contributing it.

What Alan proves is the huge life long damage bad schooling and teaching can have on someone leaving it very hard to get over and let go. There is clearly a deep sense of resentment about your education Alan and for that I would like to offer my sincerest sympathies for how it has affected you and add some positive best wishes in future to you.