Burnley Grammar School

I still believe the small number of examples on this site are the exception. I draw on sources and evidence of elsewhere as well as my own direct and friends' anecdotal experience.

Even in the late 80s the experience was rare in my school, hence my embarrassment at revealing my protuberant belly button never abating.

From a historical point of view, I think the period from the 1930s into the 1970s (and, I suppose, arguably the 1980s) feels so different from now. Not least in terms of ability to purchase uniform, attitudes to diversity, and attitudes to discipline.

Toby, this is the website, still online, of a former primary school. As recently as ten or so years ago, it says in the PDF prospectus, boys did PE in the hall in shorts only.

https://balbystreet.wordpress.com/prospectus/school-prospectus-2012-2013/

Post number 5000 doesn't surprise or amaze me, it's just everyday normal PE as I remembered it less than ten years earlier.

Further to a couple of previous comments a few days ago on gym bars, a good example of using them as punishment from this Jack Rosenthal film set in a post war British grammar that I still remember watching in the very early days of Channel 4.

https://youtu.be/beRBBch-g_c?t=630

Yes Alan, I watched a Wogan Blankety Blank from May 1979 on BBC iPlayer over the weekend and was immediately struck by the picture quality I was seeing, which looked sharper and clearer than it must have gone out at the time when TV's didn't do that kind of definition but perhaps BBC equipment could. Some current TV is being shown in poorer picture quality.

I don't want to shatter Dave's, or anyone else's illusions, but just because something has been uploaded to You Tube in the past couple of years doesn't automatically make it contemporary. If you look at TV for example, you can see programmes made in the 1980s repeated today have the same sort of picture and sound quality as a programme made last week. It might be that the YT film was made 30 years ago. For some reason the quality of VT improved leaps and bounds from the 1970s to the 1980s, and of course, old film and videotape can now be remastered

Post #5,000.

Rest assured Toby I can invite you to be amazed. Secondary school which I went to from 1993 to 1999 in the first half of my time there, so up until 1996, possibly 1997, school "required" us to present ourselves for the school sports hall in trainers, optional white socks, shorts which had to be mostly dark navy blue or black in colour with no highly obvious branding and nothing on top at all, PE was shirtless for me between ages 11 and 14 and that particular choice was made for us. But it came as no surprise because school told us everything before we started there.

I remember the school tour we were given by a chap who was the head of languages who barged us into various actual classes around the school and forced various teachers to stop what they were doing and make a few words for us. He did this in the school sports hall filing us into the side of it while a lesson was underway and the first thing that hit me was that every single one of the lads in there was shirtless. But this fact wasn't mentioned itself by anyone in that moment. Many of them were doing what seemed like running on the spot furiously and nearly all of them looked over at us and stopped. I remember the PE teacher in there asking us what we thought and none of us knowing quite what to answer back. We got filled in on some things we'd do in there. He then gave our school guide permission to look around the changing room nearby which we all went into and stood looking around quite awkwardly, it was full of uniform, shirts, trousers, shoes, sports bags, towels, jackets, coats, etc all over the place from the class we'd just interrupted and one end was a huge communal walk in showering area glaring at us. I remember it looking very clean and dry and thinking it doesn't get used until our school guide got asked about showers at school by someone. When we walked back on ourselves in that area a few minutes later we heard the loud sound of running water coming from the room we'd been in ten minutes earlier and knew those boys must be in the showers. I remember that sound making my heart race. I showered at school nearly every PE lesson until I was 14 and a half and then it sort of stopped being demanded of us so much. This would be about early 1997 and kind of matched with the time we had to do shirtless sports hall PE.

All very much within the past 30 years Toby.

It was the same with me when I'd go on holiday and was never bothered being on the beaches in my swimming trunks with all kinds of people, and girls my age, and others around me, but back at school for PE when we did some gym lessons with a few girls involved I'd instinctively go into bashful mode when my shirt had to come off. I'm applying these feelings to being aged from 12 to 16 years old.

John: Yeah it's a good point I guess. All of they boys ara automatically shirtless for swimming even in co-ed lessons. What's the difference being in the gym? It would've been the same as it has been for many decades in most schools.

Comment by: Toby on 23rd July 2023 at 11:05
I'd be amazed if shirtless PE had been a thing in the UK for the last 30 years or more.


Why would it amaze you Toby? There have been quite a few over the months on here suggest they did so even since the early 90's haven't there, and didn't Nathan quite recently state that his school did some element of shirtless PE now and again too and that skins v shirts is certainly still going on.

Schools all take swimming at some point don't they and in doing that all the boys will go barechested automatically without needing to be told, and that will probably be in mixed company, yet the same level of shirtless phobia or self consciousness seems lacking when it comes to the pool compared to the gym. Why don't people think of swimming in school as the same as PE, when it clearly is. Nobody even today would expect boys swimming to be done anything other than shirtless would they.

This would appeaar to be a set-piece display of Physical Education at El colegio "Estudio", an independent, non-subsidized private center in Madrid that covers the entire school stage, from 3 to 18 years of age. Although topless boys and girls wearing tops are seen taking part in a display of vaulting, in other activities both sexes are "fully clad" and in no way does this video appear to represent a typical PE lesson, either contemporry or historical.

@ Dave ... it looks a bit too energetic for me!
Interesting, though, the way that the boys congratulate each other and 'bond' at the end

Dave, from the skills and physiques I'd assume that wasn't a regular PE class.

Interesting that the girls are in tshirts but the boys aren't - so it can't be a safety thing.

I'd be amazed if shirtless PE had been a thing in the UK for the last 30 years or more.

Hi!

This video proves that shirtless PE is still practiced in some school. (from 2:30) Here we can clearly see the boys have no shirt on even in co-ed lessons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO7jR9cK-HY&ab_channel=Fundaci%C3%B3nEstudio%2FColegioEstudio

Without question the most humiliating experience in my life was being belted hard with class watching in my boarding school gym back in 1966 for something I didn't even say at the tender age of just 12. I was laid face down along the PE bench and had my shorts pulled slighly down and a leather strap three times across my exposed bottom. I was wearing nothing else, boys did PE without wearing any tops, shirtless and no plimsolls or socks, barefooted. 57 years later and I'm nearly 70 now and I think about it every once in a while and it stirs the same feelings that never fade. To be falsely accused, summarily punished on the spot, with an audience, nearly naked and thrashed is a lifelong memory. I was always scared of the gym from that day on incase it happened again.

Jason, a part of that where that boy launches himself through the small metal hoop looked more like circus training than PE didn't it.

Here's another 1936 British film showing boys PE.

Take a note of one of the comments underneath which says - This is how you prevent depression in teens.

Physical Fitness - Government's Concern For The Nation.

https://youtu.be/cOsMiLxQHuA

Hi Colin, I've read your comments regarding bare chested PE and absolutely agree. Bare chests are a very easy, effective and practical way to pick two very distinct teams with minimal fuss, it certainly doesn't take very long for a group of lads to strip to the waist and you don't need extra gear. Though the majority of the time indoors we were bare chested when we were split into teams of skins vs vests it wasn't unusual to see vests stick to lads tops. Far more practical to sweat freely.

Bernard: I am afraid we had two teachers at our school who were known for certain propensities, even amongst other teachers (who of course acted like the three wise monkeys). My best/favourite subject was Technical Drawing, ironically it was taken by one of the pair - this one a discipline fetishists who would get the slipper out if he could even see a mark of an eraser on the paper, still less smudges, not hard to achieve when you are using a 4B pencil. When you are doing work like that, you might do even better if you were not having bits of chalk and blackboard brushes whizzing past your head, even if you were not the target.

By the way, you are right, I don't like to be told what to do, either then or now, which is why I have been self-employed most of my working life. I'm the boss!. To be fair, none of my employers were ever as bad as the teachers in our school - they were actually polite.

Colin: I have attached my email address, if you want to contact me privately. I don't want to go into details on a public site.

I was going to respond to Alan in a similar way to you Bernard but I will reply to one or two points anyway.

So to pick up on one or two points from your reply to me.

1. One size fits all.

Nothing is perfect. In a room with thirty or more people with differing ability and attitude to PE you have to make the best of it. But PE was often divided up into ability groups anyway, sometimes within the class structure on the same timetable hour. When you get certain people who are naturally good at something you can actually find some others who it acts as an incentive with to do better. This was best noticed to me in athletics and timing trials we did. Even boys with a lower ability like to try and be competitive in such situations. It's rare that anyone just gives up. Everyone wants to be healthy and remain well and have good fitness don't they, so in this respect one size definitely fits all of us.

2. Browbeat.

I didn't like the use of this word at all. It's a complete misconception. But if we take it to its logical conclusion we are all getting browbeaten into something most weeks, children and adults alike. If you wish to use the word then it can be used against any subject matter at school, not just PE. But what does browbeaten actually mean, well forced into doing something, made to do it. I see there is even an online definition saying intimidated into doing something sternly!

Some people just don't like being told what to do in life. But this doesn't end when you leave school, it actually gets worse!

PE is there to push people into developing skills and abilities they might not even know they even had or were good at until they tried. It's not meant to be an easy ride, it's there to serve a purpose, the clue is in the physical part of the definition. But I also know that it affects a lot of people in a mental capacity as well as physical, many can't wait to leave school and never do it again. That's a shame and where PE in school fails badly if it leaves people not wanting to remain active doing something sporty or just exercising regularly.

Nutrition was mentioned a few days ago. I think there could and ought to be an academic aspect to PE where nutrition and mental aptitude is factored into the PE sphere. Without the fuel and the mind the body can't do it's job properly.

I read the piece about the boy with the GP note and that should have been accepted unconditionally without questioning. That surprised me a lot, if the facts were as presented and I don't doubt that for one moment.

3. Barechests for PE.

This one seems to draw a lot of attention. I am familiar with this myself from both sides, being both the pupil and teacher myself. I am fully aware that it might not suit everyone. But how many things during the course of a school week don't suit everyone? Special treatment opt outs are not the way to go in most cases and are often detrimental.

I see no major problem with the full class bare chests for PE issue or the asking of PE to be done ,compulsory, like this when required. I required it too many times to mention and have no concerns about that. Think of it like going to the doctors and being embarrassed without needing to be because the doctor has seen it all before and there is nothing to worry about. It's much the same really up to a point. We all worry about how we look, either to ourselves or others, I fully get that. But look at what the previous comment by Grant says. I can confirm his comment multiple times over. In PE and notably even in PE with bare chests, Time and again I saw people come out of their shells and bloom with confidence they didn't think they even had. I'm sorry when it doesn't work for some people and leaves them so deeply unhappy. Only a very few bad apples would be setting out to make anyone unhappy. There were always a hardcore who refused to try or truanted and were full of excuses on why they couldn't do things, they left me unhappy! I used to give them reasons why the certainly could do them.

In your case Alan I'd quite like to know how your average PE class panned out from the moment you walked into the changing room, did the lesson, and up to finally leaving the changing room and off to what came next. What did you do, what were you thinking, what did you wear, what were your interaction with your teachers and also fellow pupils? How did you yourself project yourself at the time in these situations? If you've got the time to spare for a detailed breakdown of how things were for you in some greater detail I'd like to read and understand it further and maybe give you some follow up thought if that is not too cheeky of me.

Sometimes we can have a psychological mindset that we need to unblock to move forward.

Josh, I was exactly the same as you in my teens! Shy about being barechested in public and couldn't make myself do it of my own accord outside of school... it was almost like I needed an authority figure to make me take my top off. That's the role my PE teacher filled I suppose, he was an imposing figure and in most lessons he would divide us into groups of vests and skins. Sometimes there was no obvious reason for it, but if he decided to make me a skin then of course I had no choice in the matter!
But I still found it difficult to take my top off voluntarily. Peer pressure probably helped as I got older though.

Alan - I appreciate that there was something terrible about your school p.e. experience that has left you very negative about p.e. and that no-one will ever change your views. I wonder if you have such negatives views about other parts of your school life where you were "forced" to do things you would have chosen not too.
As I've mentioned before at my school we did all p.e. both shirtless and barefoot though never thought about it as being forced to do it like that - that was the way it was done and we just got on with it. However, we all had to do Latin to "O" level and there were plenty of boys who resented being "forced" to do this.
Perhaps an important part of school is teaching youngsters that, if you expect to get on in life, you have to obey certain rules whether you see any value in them or not. It is, of course, sometimes possible to get rules changed if enough people feel strongly enough about it though it is wise to pick your battles. In my school there was far more anti-Latin sentiment than concern about our p.e. kit and I believe the Latin requirement was reduced soon after I left the school.

Barechested PE rocks.

I was the unconfident kid when I went into mandatory barechested PE classes in my youth and it was transformational in how I came to view myself and behave.

At school I was initially very shy about it and the only time in my youth that I ever took my tops off (other than washing/showers at home and in school) was when made to do so in very many PE classes. But I so wanted to do so in the summer months away from school but had a complete mental block and inability of being able to do so voluntarily by myself even when I actually really wanted to. I just couldn't do it unless made to do it by a schoolteacher in PE. Does anyone else here recognise this behaviour of mine in themselves?

The old footage of cycling and PE, brought back memories.

Certainly that was exactly like my PE lessons, other than we had to be barefoot as well as shirtless. We were scared of the PE teacher, after all he could slipper us, and even used the cane - you stood to attention when addressed (surnames naturally).

In the background there are numerous boys up on the wall bars, maybe as a punishment. Any minor error (or slowness) got you a period hanging from the gym wall bars with us (and it hurt your arms like hell), let go too quickly and you were likely to be stretched over the gym horse discovering how much a hard caning hurt !

Comment by: Colin on 18th July 2023 at 12:26

With all due deference , Colin, if you are a sports psychologist, I am especilly surprised that you seem to imply a "one size fits all" approach is appropriate useful or necessary. Presumably you wotk with people who WANT to excel at a sport, and good luck to them, but you have to bear in mind at school there are pupils who have little or no interest in games and "gym" (a local one in my area which opened with great fanfare just a couple of years ago has recently closed down) - those pupils are more interested in the sciences, or the arts. You cant force people to like a subject, and bullying them will never work. There has been a recent idea floated by our Prime Minister in waiting , for example, that all school children should be made to play musical instruments. Not all children are musical, I'd like to see any music teacher worth his/her salt trying to force a boy to play the trombone or violin. Then there are the practicalities - not every home has the money or space to spare, because practice is essential. Imagine three would-be musical children in a high rise flat - and more and more people live in such situations these days.

By all means encourage those who are interested, but you cannot browbeat anybody into liking your subject just because you do, and for teachers to become petulant with the kids because they do not like or cannot do what is requested of them seems puerile in the extreme. We have had in recent posts an exmple of a teacher so conceited he was not prepared to accept medical opinion - just how stupid and vainglorious was he?

Just a comment on Ricks last posting.

As people know we had National Service in the UK from the late 40s through to 1960. There is a suggestion that many of these young men were not particulary fit and that school PE teachers put these lads through it in the gym to try and develop a degree of fitness which would help them though the first weeks of basic training. Many of the PE teachers would themselves have 'done their time' and seen their unfit peers suffering and were trying to ease this 'rite of passage'.

Without checking I think I am right in thinking that the first Outward Bound School (Aberdovey) was established during WWII to teach seamanship & survival skills who might be joining the Merchant Navy and facing long voyages in open boats after their ships were sunk.

Christian on 17th. July.
What a silly thing to do by your Gym teachers. Especially as you appeared to be still recovering, and doing well to be back in school. It’s hard to understand how they could totally disregard the medical advice forwarded to your school. No wonder your dad was angry, good for him. I hope they were both told and made to understand the error of their ways. Then subsequently to mark you down is just childish. I’ve detected in the past as an adult, when sometimes having dealings with teachers how some seem to take on behavioural standards of the age group kids they associate with all day. Sad really. At least, despite my perpetually grumpy Gym teacher, he was sensible enough to leave me out of things until informed I could join the class proper. I can’t remember him making any allowances for me from that day onwards though, which I managed to cope with.

Robbie on 18th July.
I enjoyed that film, which I hadn’t seen before. These old films are always particularly interesting, as they really capture a snapshot of how the world was back then when growing up, so thanks for the link. It was made at a time when children’s films were frequently moralistic, and I would have been in early junior school at that time. A few years later I also did a similar cycling proficiency test. I remember that on passing, we received a pennant to attach to handlebars, and also an orange and green metal badge to wear. I noticed during the closing titles of the film, they showed the same triangular symbol, which was the very design of the triangular badge we all received.

How come all us boys who were in school in the 70s and 80s weren't also going through all these alleged intensely militaristic PE routines to knock top level fitness and total subservient discipline into us when we were constantly being told WW3 with the USSR was about to break out at any moment and we lived in fear of that at any moment and the Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Granted that no amount of fitness was going to save us from the dreaded 4 minute warning.

Very good post TimH. It would be interesting to know what the daily food and drink intake was of those boys back then compared to now. They looked good on far less one must surely assume. No hi-energy drinks and bottles of water constantly at their side. Just a drinking fountain somewhere, like I used at school. Remember those.

My brief: Ex-PE teacher of 15 years standing. Now a 69 year old part-time sports psychologist.

I have a bit of a problem with two of your comments Alan.

1. Gung-ho physical fitness.

What is wrong with physical fitness, even a bit gung-ho as you put it, or done with a bit of collective purpose. I wonder just how many of the boys of the film in '36 if they had all been around 40 or 50 years later would have rubbished their school PE class like that. Not many I'm sure.

2. Discipline fetishists.

Again, what is wrong with discipline and using it constructively such as we saw in the PE class of '36. It was discipline for a purpose and in no way is that any kind of negative as you attempt to paint it. The film was a good example of well practiced discipline in a hugely beneficial manner. Many of those boys probably felt the cane too at some point in school, now I've never been a fan of that at all but the PE discipline should be highly regarded, and that includes what they did, how they did it and how they dressed.

So both the points you raised as negatives, physical fitness and discipline are infact massive positives for a good, healthy and well lived life and physical fitness and discipline for me both go hand in hand with each other and are excellent for the brain and that modern word nowadays, mindfulness.


On the war point. What's wrong with being physically prepared just incase? What's the alternative, be unprepared, unfit and lose a possible war? Of course nobody in our country was looking for such an eventuality or wanted it but we didn't have the luxury of ignoring it unfortunately.