Burnley Grammar School

I think what you really mean Steve is that receiving the cane was akin to a group initiation of sorts. You were obviously prone to peer pressure far more than some are. In your situation I would never have felt such a need to belong in that manner and am glad I've never felt the need to buckle to what others in a group do. It's nice to stand apart from the crowd sometimes and in your case most certainly so.

We often hear about how some teachers might have actively enjoyed dishing out canes, slippers, slaps or whatever else but I'm sure there must have been a few at school who discovered they actually liked a cane or similar on them and took that on into adult life further. But then we don't need to return this forum down the fetish route so I'd better shut up about it right here and now.

I was never a fan of vests, never wore one under usual clothes. I think if it's to be a top in a gym class then a proper T shirt looks better. Only a certain physique seems to suit a vest. Lanky boys with long weedy arms always looked rubbish in the things and for some reason for those with un-vest friendly bodies, thin arms and upper bodies the vest would actually make them look worse than if they simply had nothing on at all, so I get where Chris is coming from on that. Plus, why were PE vests nearly always white which is the worst colour for a vest. Dark coloured vests look classier and better on pasty skinned white boys. In my opinion of course.

Comment by: Tanya on 3rd January 2023 at 01:57

Chris Overby giving Fiona a little bit more information on vest use than she was probably expecting when she asked the question. LOL.

Well, I certainly wasn't bargaining on the bedroom revelations!!!

Nathan

It's not so much "wanting to be caned" as wanting to be "part of the group"

No one wanted to be different from their friends and that was part of it. It's like teenagers now wearing the same branded clothes, they need to belong.

Seems a bit odd to "want to be caned".
As the phrase would be today, I was co parented by my Father and Nan.(due to the demise of my Mother when I was 8.)
I think that as we lived with nan my dad was pleased to follow her guidelines. This meant in winter in junior school having to wear thick woollen vest (T shirt style) under my shirts and the worst thing was that they itched so much. (forgive the "too much information") but I also had to wear underpants of the same material but not briefs but old fashioned style trunks. I was please when spring came and I could revert to wearing cotton underwear. As I say due to my nan's influence I always had to wear a singlet and I only discarded them when I started work at 16 and it was considered that I could make up my own mind.
I was wearing grey shorts at secondary school until I was 13 and considered tall enough to wear longs.
I even remember that when we went on holiday the swimming trunks were made from wool and were saggy and uncomfortable. Again I was pleased when these were ditched.
With regards to entry into secondary school when doing pe in shorts (and they were) and no underpants and no top worn indoors seemed like "Freedom" from the restrictions of the rules at home

All boys try to "fit in" at senior school, to not stand out or be different.

Certainly at my school this meant stopping wearing a vest as soon as you saw that your mates take their shirts off for pe.

It meant various other things as well - we had standard pe/cross country kit, but it was expected by my group that you did pe stripped to your shorts, that you ran cross country striped to the waist and (most importantly) that you had been caned.

By 6 months in, I had been slipped in pe, but not caned. While it hurt much more than I expected, I was happy to get my first caning, and to have the welts next day when we showered after cross country. Important to belong !!

Chris Overby giving Fiona a little bit more information on vest use than she was probably expecting when she asked the question. LOL.

Yes Alan, the pens thing now seems odd doesn't it. Same with me. A lot of fountain pen for m y initial year in secondary then suddenly it stopped and onto normal pens. Can't think what that was all about but I do remember getting regular ink cartridges for the things and they could be hugely messy, I had a few Charles III moments with the ink on my hands in school and even down a few white shirts I think, and that wasn't coming out easily if at all.

To Fiona, I was another vest wearer. I'd always worn one until about 12 or 13. But hardly any boys in school seemed to wear them. I noticed this when starting secondary in PE that when they took their shirts off they were instantly skins underneath, whereas I had this white vest on. The vest made me self conscious in that situation. I think I kept getting told I had to wear it to be hygienic but never liked wearing the same old white vests my mother kept insisting I stick on. I even had to wear it in bed under my PJ's. I started to secretly remove it at night after lights out and the feeling of just having my PJ top on was so different and nicer, it almost felt daring to not wear the vest. Then after a while I began to feel even more daring and wanted to feel what it would be like to go to be with no PJ top on either and full on bare chested and it was brilliant. The only thing that then concerned me was being discovered in bed like it and getting a telling off. My father used to sleep in bed with nothing on at all and never hid the fact from us children. I finally got rid of the vests by the turn of 13 never to be worn again and instead began to use one of them as a cloth to wipe up after the occasional wet dream. So They had further uses!

Irony of irony though is that school PE in the gym did sometimes require the wearing of the actual school PE vest which was also mostly white. Never wore an actual T shirt in our gym, it was always school vest or no vest. Some of our teachers liked to take us to the gym in vests and others liked to take us bare chested. The ones that insisted we must do gym
bare chested seemed to be the ones who ran PE as the hardest taskmasters and were the stricter kinds of people. Coincidence? Personally I liked being bare chested in the gym rather than having the vest, I think we looked better without them, but I would say that after having been inflicted with an unwanted vest for the first dozen or so years of my existence. I had a casual school friend who wasn't very confident and almost seemed scared when he had to expose his upper body completely for some PE in school, but for me I felt it gave me confidence and thought nothing of it. The dreaded vest was worse.

My experience at a boys only grammar school in the early 70's was that aged 11, around half the boys wore vests at the start of the first year.

After a couple of PE/games lesson, numerous boys went home saying "Mum, no one wears a vest, I get teased" So, rapidly vests wearing declined to a "hard core" wimpy few !!

Vests automatically came off anyway. Indoor PE was in only shorts, cross country always shirtless all year. No underpants under shorts allowed naturally

Hi Fiona, Yes the majority of my PE class did. We were all expected to be barechested for gym or indoor PE so these were removed when changing. The schools PE vests were light blue and only worn for cross country and athletics however cross country was run either with half the class in vests or everyone stripped to the waist. A couple of my friends said they'd stopped wearing vests after a couple of months at school with their parents saying they old enough now they were going barechested in the gym which made sense while others just stopped wearing them. My parents didn't approve of vests and with the teachers preferring me to be barechested so it was very rare for me to wear one.

To Robert Coulson (I keep wanting to say "Mr Coulson" as he was a teacher). I think some petty "rules" were ridiculous. For example, nothing to do with PE, but at my school in the early 80s the "rule" was you used fountain pen for essays and pencil only in your "rough book". Ballpoint pens were strictly forbidden. Even though a "Bic" cost 9 pence, and even W H Smith were reducing their supplies of "Quink" ink (the cheapest as I recall).

I can't imagine why this rule remained, that late, though it didn't bother me, as there was no personal humiliation involved, but some lads found fountain pens difficult. As a natural rebel I think rules were made to be broken.

Damon Sullaway on 30th December 2022 at 16:13
Don P on 31st December 2022 at 17:52

I was interested to see both of you mention boys in your PE classes going to school wearing undervests. Was this the norm in your schooldays, or was vest-wearing a minority, albeit possibly seasonal, activity?

Responding to the good read by Damon surrounding his 1981 lesson.

Brief exposure to the cold is known to have health benefits. Often followed by a quick warm up. I noticed a mention was made to it doing you good. Being diplomatic without knowing the man involved I'd say he was being just a bit too enthusiastic at that time. I would not have done that myself in those conditions but it was just about within the limits of acceptable I'd say for circa '81, as long as you were kept moving well and no standing still, which would be important.

Damon your teacher was definitely a sadist. If he wanted to get his top off in that weather that was his look out, he had no right to make half a class do the same in those conditions.

I had one just like yours.

Did anyone at all actually believe a word of the Allen Williams comment of 21st December?

No, thought not.

If a PE teacher can't be bothered to look after himself to a reasonable degree how on earth is that same teacher meant to motivate others to do the same when they look back at someone like Ryan's barking his hypocritical orders. Although come to mention it, going into reverse psychology thinking, maybe looking at such a "sweaty, overweight, middle aged pig of a man" citing that poster's description, it could be just the incentive to ensure you don't end up looking just like that teacher.

Was he one of those who whipped your shirts off in lessons too? Imagine a PE teacher so unfit he was jealous of his pupils!

Those who can do, do,
Those who can't do, teach,
Those who can't teach, teach teachers how to teach,

Those who can't teach teachers how to teach ... become experts in education.

Damon, Skins vs shirts football was the norm at school and once the teams were picked any hesitation stripping off wasn't tolerated by the teachers and resulted in laps of the football field either at lunchtime. Cross country runs were always done as skins vs vests and there were 2 others who were also "good" at sports and were always the first picked to strip off for that too being seen as "a good example"
Indoors all lads were expected to be barechested so it didn't matter, those who did wear vests under their school shirts removed them when changing.

I'd call Damon's teacher nothing more than daft, an idiot more than anything else.

But what do they say;

Those who can do, do,
Those who can't do, teach,
And those who can't teach...are PE teachers.

I had a middle aged PE teacher, I use that description loosely, back in the mid to late eighties who was actually bigger and more rotund (fatter) and more unfit than every single one of us in his class. We saw a pair of his shorts lying about and I think the label said 40 to 42 inch waist, someone just had to go and look. Visualise actor Ricky Tomlinson as his character Jim Royle, that was our Mike Stanton. My waist was just 28 inch at my adult height by 16 when he last took me for PE. Most of us could have given him a lesson instead, he used to do very little apart from stand around beside us watching and wailing at us and if by some miracle he chose to spring into some kind of limited action he'd be sweating like a pig and wiping his brow with the bottom of his trackie top or along its arm. No idea how he ever got the job or how he kept it. Despite that it didn't stop the sod laying into most of us about our own fitness failings as he saw it. The temptation to answer back when he did this was overwhelming. Nobody could be bothered to even give him a decent nickname and he was simply known as - the lazy fat b*****d, an accolade he truly deserved.

You've probably assumed by now that I must have gone to some down in the dumps bog standard comprehensive somewhere. Oh no, the old folks forked out a pretty packet on private education after I left my state primary school. They didn't get what they paid for where PE was concerned with this fella.

So Damon after reading what you said in that remarkable comment I thought I'd actually look up the precise meaning of the word sadistic that you used. From my source it says it means someone who derides pleasure from seeing the pain, suffering or humiliation of others. Only you can say if you felt any of those three things.

Alan you said -

"I remember a comedy series a few years ago "The In Betweeners", where one teacher who is called "paedo Kennedy", has a "thing" about one boy in particular, because he is quite naive, and is treated as a figure of fun. The writers claimed the series was based on their own experiences and surely they should have realised that such a character, real or imaginary, is a menace, not funny at all."


How old is that show, about 10 to 15 years ago now? It just shows you how far we have come, not since the 1960s/70s/80s or even 90s but since the last half of the 00s (noughties). I don't think they would do that now with a character like that one. I know the show and who you mean, although I'm a firm believer that comedy should have no limits or off subjects. Look at Little Britain, made about 15 years ago, yet treated and disowned by its creators like it came straight from the worst of the 70s.

The wife saw this site and has encouraged me to tell this story of mine. So here goes, sorry if I babble on a bit with it and it's too long. 55 year old male who has plenty of crazy school PE memories, here is one of the belters.

I think there is a difference between what are described as sadistic PE teachers and abusive ones. There is also a grey area in the middle where those two merge somewhat. Many people who talk of their sadistic PE teachers for example are probably overdoing it just a bit when all they mean is they sent them outside in a bit of drizzle or shouted a bit at them in encouragement or such like.

I had a PE teacher at school who for me falls into that grey area and this draws together the shirtless debate and that old favourite of schools dividing those with and those without. In some ways wasn't skins against shirted a good case of PE teachers divide and rule.

I started a decent secondary in 1979 at 12 and just about every lesson in the gym seemed to end up as skins against shirts at some point because we would always end up doing some kind of team games following on from the individual disciplines. Isn't it funny how everyone who did this seems to think they were the ones on the side of the skins the majority of the time in these lessons. I'm the same too and I don't think it's my imagination either. If we got picked out by the PE teacher's own choice I was always one getting told to remove my shirt and we always had to do it quickly. The slightest hesitation in getting that top off and into your bare chest was seen as reluctance. Now I know lots of boys don't give a damn one way or another about such things but I also know in my own class there were lots who hated this constant ritual we did and it did foster some resentment. Me, I was averagely self conscious I suppose when I had no shirt on in school. Wouldn't have chosen it myself if presented with free choice but could live with it easily enough without feeling it was a full on traumatic experience like others. Just your physique at the end of the day, we all have it. I think school showers throwing everyone together naked was quietly hated by everyone wasn't it just because of the fact they always made us have to do it. Even at home at that age most boys probably had to be told to get a bath or shower, mostly baths back then or we wouldn't have had them as regular as we should have done. Although not a fair comparison as I never shared the bath at home with my friends or anyone else!

Bringing me back to my main point drawing the skins against shirts issue alongside the sadistic or abusive issue. We went out in all weathers, everybody used to, rain, shine, sun, wind, sleet or snow. You name it we went out in it. I'd been at secondary for a couple of years, was in my third year by the time and so knew the ropes and it was all now very familiar and didn't think there was anything left to surprise me by the age of 14. There was no high turnover of teachers, they were all the same regulars we had as always, but there was one who let's just say I was more wary of than the others, nothing more than that. It had snowed a few days previous and was lying on the ground, a decent fall, maybe 6 to 8 inches and a large part of the school field had been cleared by a small tractor a caretaker seemed to get hold of or arrange at some point with snow around some of the edges piled up by it. We're talking December 1981 if anyone knows that time. The clearance still left the pitch mainly white but at least usable to some degree. I'd seen the tractor clearing it one morning break as some of us looked on with interest. I lived in Northamptonshire at that time.

When my next PE lesson for outside came along on the timetable the snow was well and truly set in and covering the ground and the temperatures were not allowing any thaw even by day so must have been zero or below, quite similar to the recent spell earlier this month infact. The sky was mostly clear and sunny, despite all the snow and very low temperature. This was going to be our football PE lesson and we did go outside to the part of the field where the pitch had been cleared, our teacher bringing out a netted bag of bright orange balls, it must have contained a dozen or so and some poor chap had to drag them out. I'm sure we used to play with white balls or possibly a mixture of colours and someone always got the job of filling the net bag and taking them out with us, me included. We'd get into a bit of kickabout practice and instruction for a short time and then get stuck into a game for half an hour more often than not if it was a footy PE lesson.

Now skins and shirts wasn't exclusive to the gym, we did it outside too but not as much, mostly a good weather thing. We'd go out always in a single layer long sleeved top at that time of year (our autumn/winter kit) and any boys that came to school in undervests had to take them off before putting on the school PE shirt. The shirt was school issue and not especially thick material. It didn't offer much warmth on a freezing day but was good enough for more normal conditions for that period in the year.

This day we'd done our kickabouts with the balls and they'd been collected back in and the PE teacher was left with just the one ready for an actual game. I feel sure we had bigger teams than 11 a side as well, there must have been because the class size was 30 or so. We were already freezing cold after half hour outside when that PE teacher, this was the one I was wary of, cheerily asked the question - 'who fancies 15 minutes of shirts against skins?'. Naturally we thought he was joking and just having one of those cheap laughs with us and no hands went up unsurprisingly. Then he said 'come on' and I thought, no way, he's not joking is he and before you could blink he was removing his own pullover & other top, yes, he had a couple of layers himself. He said if he could do it, we could. For a few moments we had this ridiculous sight of a shirt free bare chested PE teacher in front of a fully shirted class of his on a snowy school field until he walked up to each of us and tapped our shoulders dividing us into two groups. We knew what was coming but neither side knew which side we would be on. When he'd split us into two groups he did the skins routine on us by asking our two groups to decide which was going to be which among ourselves, quite unusual that was. Of course no side was going to volunteer to be a skins team and a squabble broke out until he intervened after a few seconds and decided for us after all. I was on the skins team. He clapped his hands and told us to get on with it and take our shirts off. You just didn't argue with it, crazy as it seemed and must have looked. So for 15 minutes just like he promised, I was a shirtless skin with the others on my side, about 15 of us, on a school pitch, snow piled up at the edges, chasing a bright orange ball over a still white cleared pitch with the shirted side trying not to laugh at us and failing in a few cases. But although our PE teacher had been the first to go shirtless in front of us as some kind of encouragement, after about two minutes into our game he grabbed his own pullover and put it back on again, the right old fraud. Nobody said anything though, we carried on as we had been told, complaining only silently in our own heads in those moments. I know I was!

It was absolutely perishing. This day stays with me. The sight of our skin colour changing rapidly into a red/purple/bluish tint across our chests, arms and back of our hands. The temperature that day was not just freezing point but well below I'm certain of that. The usually soft grassy pitch was rock solid hard. I could not put my shirt back on quick enough after those few minutes of madness. That teacher told us it had done us, and I remember the exact words 'the power of good'. There was no need for a shower afterwards as there was no way any of us could have sweated a bead however hard we tried and worked out there, but we still had to do so all the same, and after all that, the water pipes had been frozen up or something and the shower water was much colder than normal, adding insult to injury. We must have been so cold there was very little to check out if you know what I mean.

A few of my good friends I saw out of school were half frozen to death on that skins team that day and that evening after school one of them came and called round for me and we sat in the bedroom listening to our tapes. He asked me if I'd said anything to my parents about it and I said no I hadn't even thought to do so. I only occasionally said much about things like PE to them anyway or other lessons unless they asked directly. Often it was 'okay in school today?' and yes would be the reply from me. Mum was in every day when I came home and I got that same question most days. I probably gave the same reply that day too. The friend in my bedroom didn't say anything to his parents either. Out of the 15 of us I find it hard to believe none of us mentioned that mad 15 minutes to anyone at home. I think if I had done myself it would have been a case of 'that's strange' and left at that. My wife knows this story, my parents still don't! Perhaps I should tell them and see the reaction to it for a bit of fun.

So can I claim my PE teacher as sadistic or abusive, or is he in that grey area of doubt based on that day's lesson.

Iain Dale and Tanya make a good point. You can have all the CRB checks going, but if you have a dim-witted headmaster so intent on denying he has a rotten apple in his barrel, men like that can continue to indulge their fetishes (it is noticeable that many such men have a sadistic streak in their make up as well) .

After a couple of years in the Sixth form college, once they get bored with not being able to dominate what are then young men, not boys, they could well creep back into the comprehensive or whatever and continue their fetishes. The lads in the Sixth form college are probably too old for them.

Considering how "woke" we are all supposed to be these days I am surprised that this particular issue still comes up time and time again (look at all the junior "talent scouts" and trainers who end up in court, and sometimes in prison), yet it is almost treated as a joke. I remember a comedy series a few years ago "The In Betweeners", where one teacher who is called "paedo Kennedy", has a "thing" about one boy in particular, because he is quite naive, and is treated as a figure of fun. The writers claimed the series was based on their own experiences and surely they should have realised that such a character, real or imaginary, is a menace, not funny at all.

Like many on here, I remember playing football outside and one team having to strip to the waist.

It may have been freezing cold but refusing wasn't an option, firstly you did exactly as a teacher told you, and secondly any delay in taking your shirt off would result in the slipper back in the gym, or even maybe (if they were in a bad mood), going over the gym horse to be caned.

(I promise having been caned like this a few times, being shirtless for 30 mins in the cold, was a much better option).

Knowing how these things work they probably sent that teacher off to the sixth form college with a good reference or something similar and no stain on his character.

Jimmy T: I fully understand your anger, but if it is any consolation, as far as I am aware, very few schools could compel sixth formers to take part in PE lessons, and most would only take part if they wanted to. I am sure they would be canny enough to know the tastes of the teacher.

It does beg the question, though of how pederasts and other neer-do-wells got moved on, to protect the schools "good name", and escaped a court case, and in rare cases, might still be treated in such a mild way.

Robbie your reports on football mirror mine. The first time we did games which would be in September at the start of the school year we all went onto the pitch and were expected to be "able to play football!" Like you I had no idea and no interest in the game. What happened was those who were capable played and the rest of us just kicked a ball around away from the pitch until we got bored and then usually sat down and chatted until the end of the lesson.

Jimmy - The trouble with what you said there is, okay so he went off to a sixth form with older lads but what was to stop the same man a year or two later coming back into teaching the younger ones again elsewhere and repeating the things you saw and reported. You never said but reading between the lines it looks like that headmaster was yet another one who wanted it all just to go away somewhere else.

One thing about being sent outside onto the school football pitch that made little sense in a so called educational establishment where we were meant to actually learn things was how the boys got sent out to "do football" and were expected to stand on the pitch and start playing as if we knew all the rules of the game. I hadn't got a clue and it held not a great deal of interest but at least if they'd tried to tell the half of the class who were disinterested in football or who knew nothing of the rules it might have made it just that little bit more interesting. It was always just show up and start running and kicking. No actual instruction. Quite mad. PE teachers seemed to think boys at 12 are pre-programmed to adore the game. Such a myth.

I was at grammar school in the 50s where teachers were ex military who had a quick teacher training course to fill the gaps caused by the war. Our PE bloke was another sadist, his idea of teaching us cricket was for the class to stand in a ring close to him and he would throw the ball for us to catch. A hard ball, close to, was painful and you had learned to play cricket when you cried with the pain.

My own son Rafe who was at a standard comp hated sports because of their master and mindful of my experiences I thought he was just being awkward. Until one day after games he came home with black and blue legs, also reporting that his friend Adam was going to hospital after being hit on the head. This was with those Indian clubs. I asked why had this happened and he said it was all to do with the showers when selected boys were made to go back into the showers alone with the teacher who also stripped off naked with them. The two boys refused and that's when they got hit.
I was into the school first thing next day, the Head was aware that there had been an incident and boys hit but had no idea about the showers goings on. The particular teacher was the son of the Chairman of the governors.
I agreed not to complain to the police provided that the teacher was removed from the school immediately, he was transferred to the local sixth form college on the assumption that he would not bully 17/18 year old boys.
On reflection I think I was wrong and should have reported him and am ashamed to this day that I allowed this man to slip out of answering for his activities and remain amazed that people like him did such things in a busy school. The Head believed me, saw the boys bruises and even got an admission how they came about. This happened in 1977. Within a few weeks I regretted my decision and it has haunted me ever since to this day.

Skins vs shirts football was a big thing our teachers insisted on though everyone went outside with the school rugby shirt on. Once the teams were picked the skins team made their way to the nearest sideline and quickly and without fuss stripped to the waist.