Burnley Grammar School

I was privately educated at a quite well known school in London and was made to live with my grandparents in Finchley during the week so I could attend it, before being driven home up the M1 to my parents on Friday evenings and then driven back on Sunday evenings ready for the new week. I hated Sunday nights, they were my least favourite time of the week as a schoolboy. PE was the following morning. We did so much PE it was insane. Shirtless PE was the majority of it at the hands of any of at least six named teachers, one of whom ended up with a final warning over his behaviour.

I felt very uncomfortable every PE lesson for 5 years, I'm not saying that half of the teachers were perverts but them being in the showers with us three times a week to "check" we were showering properly was humiliating and degrading.

Pupils who were reluctant to shower were bullied/beaten and humiliated in front of the rest of us, and belted or plimsolled and whole lessons seemed to be more about shouting and humiliating us then about sport with many of these men.

I really hated PE at school due mainly to the attitude towards us, It was a pity because I enjoy playing sports and set school records in some of the athletic events, many which were done in forced bare chests including sports day.

This was 1967-1972.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 3rd June 2025 at 01:20
Secondary school imposes more than enough challenges on vulnerable young people without forcing them to strip nearly or actually naked.

Comment by: Matthew D on 4th June 2025 at 22:34
I was required to maintain PE alongside my A level studies when I stayed on in the sixth form of my school in 1983-5 and this was a school where PE kit for boys was only a pair of black shorts in the school gymnasium wholesale for the lot of us regardless of what year or class you were in and that even carried on in the lower and upper sixth, including mandatory showering, communal and nude. We were not allowed to dip out of that continued requirement at the time which did rub quite a few of us up the wrong way I recall. Eighties schools loved the shirtless look in PE!








Yours Truly I agree with you, and what you didn't need was a teacher like mine who I previously mentioned dragging me aside without a stitch on myself and reading me the riot act over an innocent mistake I made regards PE equipment. Who wants to deliberately pull someone over and give them a bollocking in a changing room without clothes on, not only is it unfair and unjustified but it smacks of wanting to add a touch of humiliation as well. If you're a kid in school and get treated crap by your teacher then how are you supposed to give back the respect they automatically expect you to give them. Even children and teenage boys deserve a little bit here and there.

Matthew when you're a sixth from student you are volunteering to attend school, you no longer have to be there. The idea is you are specialising in a handful of core subjects only, so unless one of them is actually PE at A level I fail to see why it should be mandatory to carry on if you don't want to do so, and as for showers and shirtless with it, what happened to the idea that being in the sixth form gives greater freedoms at school and less hassle over rules you once had to follow?

Further to the comments previously raised about physical education into sixth form.
I was required to maintain PE alongside my A level studies when I stayed on in the sixth form of my school in 1983-5 and this was a school where PE kit for boys was only a pair of black shorts in the school gymnasium wholesale for the lot of us regardless of what year or class you were in and that even carried on in the lower and upper sixth, including mandatory showering, communal and nude. We were not allowed to dip out of that continued requirement at the time which did rub quite a few of us up the wrong way I recall. While I was at school a friend who was eight months younger than me was doing a job, getting a bit of money to spend and seemingly growing up while I was still in school doing the things he'd left behind. Lots of boys used to get hauled into the Head of Sixth's office over issues around PE. In our sixth form we were expected to join other classes once a fortnight on a cross country run too, some of which were shirtless. Eighties schools loved the shirtless look in PE!

Comment by: Ronnie on 2nd June 2025 at 22:47

It was an unusual start to that last junior school year. When our new teacher came into the class she made everyone get up from their chosen places and line up along the back wall. She then placed everyone where she wanted starting from the rear desks, girl boy, girl boy until all boys were seated, except me and quite a few girls still left. She then placed these remaining girls together, and then the last girl at the desk right in front of hers. I was still alone at the wall then, so she summoned me to sit next to this girl, so that’s how I ended up sitting there. There seemed a couple of rows of girls behind me, and with all my friends towards the back, so I felt a bit isolated and didn’t like this arrangement at all. I thought it was a bit unkind of her to do that, but I got used to it.

I’m not sure she was infatuated, but she certainly singled me out right from the start. It seems a bit silly to try to think this through after all these years, but they’re just childhood memories of how things were. Around that age of 10-11, I think we’re just starting to become a little more self-aware and learning who we are in the world, and it was certainly around that age that I started to become just a little bit self-conscious during certain moments: swimming lessons in front of her and the girls for instance. But, I do remember that early childish feeling of thinking she liked me for some reason, so quite liked something of that, but also found this new feeling mixed with awkwardness during moments of extra attention in class at times. Mixed up early emotions I suppose. I do remember one girl who sat behind me saying, ’She likes you’ and a few other girls calling me, teacher’s pet, which I certainly didn’t like as I never thought of myself as that sort of kid at all. I would never have brought her an apple! One time when we were on a school trip where she’d arranged a football match against a boys’ boarding school, we were all practising the day before the game when she came up to me and said she'd only selected me to play because I was tall. I remember this hurt me a bit because I’d done quite well at school football, being only one goal behind being top goal scorer and captain of our team. Slightly odd she said that to me I suppose.

When I refused to take my shirt off I think she tried to encourage me saying, ‘Don’t be soft’ or something like that, until she gave up and asked another boy who sat along the wall to my right near the back. I think she’d written out the various body parts on the board and expected a boy to stand there while she pointed at ‘muscles’ or ribs etc. while everyone stared. Absolutely no chance I was having any of that. It was yet another example where a boy would be expected to just strip off in front of anyone on demand, while being confidently instructed to do so by any teacher, wasn’t it? As though it was expected all boys wouldn’t or shouldn’t have a care in the world about such things, while all the other kids, most likely the girls, giggled along. Strange how many adults always tried to condition boys to believe they should do this in front of anyone without a care, when in reality there was absolutely no truth in it whatsoever...I just happened to mention this to my brother some years ago as he’d been in her class four years before me. Apparently she’d asked him to do this too, and he’d also refused. He mentioned the boy she’d replaced him with, and it was an older brother of the boy she'd told to do it in my class! What a déja vu moment this must have been for her, though she didn't mention any of this at the time. There are other things I could say about this teacher, but nothing that would be too concerning to most I suppose, just unusual, though she'd have to be more careful today. Most thought she was a really great though unconventional sort of teacher, as do both my brother and I

The school thing perhaps was a bit unusual perhaps, but I’m not really sure. As I mentioned previously, I'd actually done really well in my final year in her class, it's surprising what receiving some extra attention can achieve, even though there were other aspects of all this that I didn’t like at times. It was thought a better school than the more local one, though I hadn't planned to go there. I didn't go for that long in the end anyway, before I realised it really was too far as I was still limping about at that stage. I still have a vivid memory of the family discussion, and it being left to me to decide whether I would prefer to transfer to the nearer school. I think it was only the distance that swayed my decision. I have a memory of lying in bed looking at my new school uniform on a hanger on the front of the wardrobe, and thinking it would have to be changed again as I fell asleep.

One or two short points.

First to Romy, I have never found it necessary that any teacher should be needing to keep any type of register like you describe, which I have heard before too. Eyes and ears should be the register and paying attention. A register for school attendance is obviously a vital tool but I cannot see why something marking pupils down for showers is and do not approve personally with that approach. I also do not approve of some teachers who would create unofficial little 'period books' for girls either, something I have come across over the years, mainly longer ago.

I do believe a fully functioning school should be offering showers to pupils after PE, and this is still a legal requirement to have the means to shower after PE available on the school site in working order.


Greg I am interested in your teacher wishing you to move to another school alongside her. Was there any pressure applied to do this? At face value I am not agreeable to teachers acting like this but there may be far more to your story so I will not be too judgemental. Was this teacher so exceptional with regards to your own teaching that she was vital to remain part of your education at the time, if so, how was that? I think it is a reasonable point already made that she might have taken a liking to you beyond the purely educational. Asking you to remove your shirt in a class may be indicative of her feelings.

Teachers and pupils of all ages have long been known to have crushes on each other.

Until this thread I hadn't thought about school showers since I left but now I think about it they may have had a bigger impact on me than I realised. I have huge self image issues mostly due to being over weight (loosing it tho, thank you weight watchers) but even if someone tells me I look good for what ever reason I don't believe them, in my head I just can't understand that someone would find me attractive. Unsurprisingly this had led to no self confidence which affects my social life (or lack there of). Being so embarrassed and self conscious of my body at that age could have been the beginning of all this crap.
Our girls PE teachers even kept a shower register and ticked us all off into them, checking our hair and the wetness of our skin on the way out, we got looked at and touched, so I agree with the dignity thing, it was girls too. We all lined up to shower and felt so insecure doing it.
Not saying it's the only cause and I'm not fishing for any sympathy, but I thought it was a point worth raising. We all know how self conscious developing young women are, little things can really affect your whole life.

At least we didn't have the added concern about going topless doing the PE lesson itself.

I think Jason describes what is very typical of the PE teacher style of approach, pretend that everyone who is a young male at that age is basically the same and likes the same things and feels much the same. Would it be fair to suggest that most PE teachers, I can only judge from my own ones of course, played to the stereotypes of expectations they had out of us boys in school.

Dismissing any concerns as unimportant if that teacher has obviously noticed something is the reaction most here would have expected themselves I suspect.

I can recall one of my own PE teachers being fond of using the phrase 'knock you into shape'. What this seemed to mean was he would try damned hard to make you like doing rugby matches, and I remember he wanted to see all the rough and tumble that goes along with rugby playing. I remember being open to giving rugby a go and seeing if I liked it when I was at school but it soon became clear to me that it just bored me and it held no interest for me at all but we got sent out to play rugby games a lot over winter. It was obvious one of our teachers liked the physical contact sports like rugby and encouraged some rough and aggressive play, even approving of some of the scrapes that happened and showing little concern by a grazed knee or two.

If you was to look at the collection of boys in my PE class who went out to play rugby for instance, there was no doubt that the majority of them probably held the same view as me, and not only did they not really want to be playing it, they probably didn't even want to watch it on television either.

Comment by: James on 3rd June 2025 at 08:23
Your Truly,
and
Comment by: Yours Truly on 3rd June 2025 at 01:20



Speaking personally, I could just about accept that we all went through the humiliations 40 or 50 years ago, when educationalists and teachers were frankly more ignorant, as had generations before ours, but what really incenses me is that young teenagers today have to go through the same situations, now that schools are supposed to be full of child psychologists, "pastoral care", and virtue-signalling teachers who read "The Guardian" and espouse any right-on nonsense, trying to give the impression they are "caring". Kids mature much earlier these days and the fact that some teachers still infantilize them, bossing them about as they did in the old days is a very poor reflection on how teachers are taught at teacher training college, and their ancient standards. Perhaps our gormless looking Education Secretary would be better advised looking at that, rather than worrying her little head about teeth-brushing.

I never will have children, but had I have done, I would have ;paid for private education so they didn't go through the terrible state system - and it has been terrible for decades, regardless of which party has been in power.

Your Truly,

I agree it was demeaning for boys to strip naked for showers and just wear shorts for PE and games,especially as we were going through a period of adolescence.I don't think our feelings or opinions were ever taken into account.Wearing just shorts for PE was just considered our uniform and we didn't warrant any privacy.

Hi Jason J,

You were at secondary school at a similar time to me. Your PE teacher sounds like a typical example of the breed. What was unimportant was your feelings and that was the agenda. I really do not think teachers should have the power to strip children, and certainly not children going into their teens, like that.

When I was eleven Mondays, with their inescapable football matches and the degrading gauntlet of the showers afterwards, hung over my head all day and weighed me down with this sense of dread and depression.

It was all to no avail. It was no character-building. It did not make a man of me. It just made me needlessly unhappy.

What did the girls wear for PE in your school?

Secondary school imposes more than enough challenges on vulnerable young people without forcing them to strip nearly or actually naked.

Greg, your teacher sounded infatuated by you!

How did she react to your refusal to take your shirt off for her at the front of the class. To be honest I think I might have done the same. What did she hope to show off to them for heaven's sake? Did she choose someone else who had to do it, or even get a volunteer, I bet not a volunteer, even confident lads would probably pass on that one in many cases. They wouldn't do the same for the girls anatomy would they!

Wanting you to follow her to her new school feels almost creepy to me Greg, I'm surprised your parents went with that if you already had a school lined up that was nearer and the more obvious choice. As you say, it didn't work out. Do you think she took a bit of a shine to you, it seems like it doesn't it. Kids in class know when teachers favour others or become the teachers pet type of thing.

On one of my first ever secondary school PE lessons that was done shirtless the gym teacher we had that day actually picked up on my reticence about leaving the changing room to go down to the gym for PE in his required bare chest style kit with white shorts, no plimsolls, and told me to stop worrying myself over things that were unimportant. Well it was unimportant to him but a quite big deal to me at the time because I had never been shirtless in company for any great length of time and was a natural top wearing kind of boy, it didn't matter what kind of top, any would do, I preferred a t-shirt but a vest was fine, however a bare chest felt huge to me and I think I felt slightly intimidated by everyone else being shirtless around me too in PE gym classes at school. Like many things at school, going shirtless at my secondary for PE was compulsory, boys walking to the gym often passed the girls going to their PE as well and got seen. I was never 100% comfortable being a bare chested "skin" in PE even after five years doing so, and the same went for showers, there was a total lack of personal dignity involved in the way school operated the PE showers and demanded their use for everyone. My school years were 1985-90.

Greg 2, I went through a similar thing to you,my form teacher who was also my maths teacher,when we registered and gave our names she enquired how many boys were wearing short trousers and I put my hand up along with one other boy who we became close friends,Like you we were ordered to sit at the front of the class.Of course I was made to do simple chores and run errands for her.She was very keen on playing tennis and I with my friend were made to be ball boys.

Comment by: Russ on 1st June 2025 at 15:18



The reason I mentioned those two cases, Russ, was to disabuse David of the idea that the teaching profession is made up of Pope Leo's and David Attenborough's. I find it frankly incredible that anybody can believe the teaching profession is as pure as TCP, especially where all boys schools and boarding schools are concerned. He reminds me of all those people, not just hysterical teenagers, who refused to believe that that the late Michael Jackson was a predatory paedophile, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Nick Baines;
<I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there was a remarkably normalised and accepting attitude to a large group of men and boys on a trip of this nature, many who didn't know each other, to just mucking in and thinking nothing of communal showering and all round general naked situations with each other, and none of us were naturists as far as I knew, just normal sons and dads on a week away during the summer out of sight of the female members of our own families. It certainly gave me a confidence boost in many ways.
In many ways this was the far more healthy attitude than the more paranoid mindset some people have today.>



There's nothing wrong with fathers and sons of any age sharing in this way like you stated, and I think you accept this, despite your admitted initial teenage misgivings. I'm 62 and go regular swimming with my 31 year old son and his 7 year old, my grandson. We always go into the same changing cubicle together and get out of our clothes and into swim shorts and don't waste time towel wrapping needlessly or facing away from each other, what's the point in all that silly behaviour.

Comment by: Gary on 26th May 2025 at 02:48

‘So you played on the school football team like me Greg.’ I did Gary, in fact I’d played in the school football team since junior school, so from around 10 years old or so. I did become increasingly interested in football, which amused my two older brothers as they had no interest really. I even went through several whole seasons doing all the matches and cup games with Subbuteo from the age of 12. I’m sure the continued calculating and adjusting of all those league tables, together with monitoring who scored all the goals -since I’d put little numbers on the backs of all the players’ shirts- really helped my maths in the end!

We didn’t have showers for junior school football, thankfully, as we were unusual in being the only school in the district to have a female teacher as our football coach. No girls were in the team then. She was my last junior school teacher, and on arrival in her class she made every boy sit next to a girl, probably to quell the boys' behaviour.

I do have some lovely memories of her final year class, but also a few moments I found slightly uncomfortable. In may ways she was a really great, if slightly radical teacher, but straight off she made me sit right at the front of the class, though next to probably the prettiest girl in the class, with our desk right in front of her desk so that it touched the back of it; somewhere I’d never have chosen in a million years. When she discovered I was quite capable at football, she made me centre forward and captain of the school team. Following this I learnt she’d also put my name forward to become a school prefect, which really surprised me. While sitting there she'd frequently ask me to the front of the class to demonstrate things, or to just clean the board, but when she ordered me to the front telling me to remove my top clothing to help display an anatomy lesson, that was the last straw and I flatly refused. There were a few other awkward moments; pulling me across her knee to playfully slap my backside as everyone in the class laughed along? But contrasting with this she'd always make sure I'd completely understood all she'd been teaching, which really helped my learning and enabled me to advance in her class from an average, mid-range, drifting kid, to attaining 5th position in class, from the final year grading exams, with this being written into my final junior school report. She then encouraged me to follow her to her new secondary school she was transferring to, even arranging that I be in her form. This school was acknowledged to be a very good school and I did go there for a short time, but it proved too far to travel each morning when still recovering from my leg injury that happened that intervening summer between the two schools.

So, I arrived even later at my 2nd choice secondary school, and school football did eventually follow, but had to wait, as did gym and games lessons, until my fractured femur had sufficiently repaired and healed. But, I can’t describe how great it made an 11 year old boy feel when I discovered that some of these new boys at the school had remembered my playing junior school football against their school teams, and so told me to get my leg better soon as they needed me in the school team!

You are quite accurate with your memory of the changing and showering and using their different facilities when visiting other schools. It was always a slightly odd experience to share all this with different boys and with their different teacher hanging around, and with all of them you'd just completed the competitive combat of school football. But boys as you'd inferred are naturally tribal, and so just like your school, we all stayed with our own when back in the changing and showering areas. But to be fair, I seem to remember we were left to our own devices quite a lot, and sometimes boys of the away school would make their own way home following the game as they obviously lived not too far away; some of us probably did the same on occasion when we'd played at our school ground, unless we were all particularly muddy...which sometimes could be the case after returning from our standard winter school football pitch!

I seem to remember on here many months ago that you were finally going to lay off this persistent narrative of yours Alan and put it to rest once and for all but you appear to have slipped back into the same cycle again.

I think most sensible people understand fully what you are saying but David G is correct, perhaps it should not surprise anyone, but we are all coloured by our own lived experiences and if you have rather poor ones when young it probably is difficult to get over the fact that most of us did not go to some of the darker places you speak of but you do appear to be very fond of revisiting this aspect of your life rather than setting it aside and aiming for something more positive going forward.

I had a teenage experience of communal showers against my will, at first, away from school in a family orientated situation with my own father who took me then aged 14 and my then aged 10 year old brother on a camping and trail walking week with a number of other fathers and sons in the mid seventies.

It was one of those boys things we did with dads and left the sisters and mums back home to give them a break from us all, and lasted a whole week away. Generally it was great fun, it took place during school holiday time in August 1974 in the Brecon Beacons.

We all went off on the same coach with each other from Bootle, I think there were about 15 dads and sons on the trip we undertook, some of us knew each other, others did not very well but we were all from the same area and a couple of boys were from my own school too but most were unfamiliar and it was a week I made a few friendships.

I remember when we arrived where we were staying being surprised at how rudimentary everything was.

The tents were not ours and were rented and very large and we had to share, something like eight persons per tent, boys wanted tents to themselves without adults but every tent had a couple of dads in it keeping eye on us overnight.

I remember our days beginning right on 7am on this trip, and everyone from that coach piling into a communal shower block on site at the same time and dads and sons all sharing openly together at the same time with each other, including teenage lads like me who got dragged there by my own dad first morning very reluctant to do that at my age I was then in dads company like that. Very embarrassed I was at first. I remember everyone on that coach every morning for the week we were there in that communal shower, fully on naked, all the boys (sons) and men (dads) side by side. The boys were aged anything from about 6 to 16 on that trip. None of the dads of 1974 seemed bothered by stripping off and darting straight into a communal shower with other men and their children sons and mixing it up like that, and my dad was like this too. My dad had come with his two sons, me and my brother, some had come with one son, others with two. I don't remember anyone sitting the communal showers out and not doing it on that trip. The kids were all told to by our dads and the dads all seemed fine with the arrangement. By the close of the week I think we had all become remarkably alright and normal with it after four of five goes at it. All the boys there over eleven were probably well versed with communal showers from our respective schools anyway, maybe some even shared with a teacher from time to time.

I remember in the warm light evenings after our day doing things in the locality and a lot of walking there was a lot of shirtlessness as we relaxed and many boys and quite a few of the dads discarded and kept tops off voluntarily, and because we'd been walking a lot we kicked our shoes and socks off and went about for an hour or two dressed down quite a bit, often in just shorts, kicking a ball about or splashing at a nearby water feature pond and stream, infact I think one or two boys even went the whole skinny dip a couple of times.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there was a remarkably normalised and accepting attitude to a large group of men and boys on a trip of this nature, many who didn't know each other, to just mucking in and thinking nothing of communal showering and all round general naked situations with each other, and none of us were naturists as far as I knew, just normal sons and dads on a week away during the summer out of sight of the female members of our own families. It certainly gave me a confidence boost in many ways.

In many ways this was the far more healthy attitude than the more paranoid mindset some people have today.

Comment by: David G on 31st May 2025 at 23:13


"Allan quote: "a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be."
I wonder why you always use words not in general use, such as "jejune" that most people have to look up in order to fully understand what you mean!
That says a lot about you!!"

Leaving aside your critique of my vocabulary, David (and without wishing to be pedantic I have only one "l" in my name), I find it hard to believe you are as naive as you come across here.


Are you seriously suggesting that every teacher - or priest, doctor or politician is as pure as the driven snow?. In that case perhaps you could tell us all why so many teachers, especially P.E., teachers get found guilty after a trial by jury, no matter how fervently they plead innocence to acts of indecency against pupils?. Why there are cases where such men, yet to be taken before a court, flee the country and resist attempts at deportation?. There are two eighty something old buggers at this very moment hiding in South Africa, hoping death gets them before the police ( the Nicky Campbell school case). They seem to proving their own guilt. There is a case in my own county (Essex) where a P.E. teacher got sent to prison once for 22 months for truly disgusting behaviour with whole classes of pupils (forced naked swimming , behind locked doors and sexual acts etc) then went on to commit similar crimes in another school who were daft enough to take him on. Those events took place in the last 25 years. Go back before then, and many more were hiding in plain sight.

"There is nothing sexual in naked children" - perhaps not, but those "children" are often turning into adults by the time these teachers think it is perfectly acceptable to watch them at close quarters while they shower, and getting changed. I had one just like that, and it seems many others on here did, too.

David, not all sex pests are nasty working class men in blue collar jobs, or no job at all, who get drunk and go to strip clubs and wear dirty macs - many are people in "honourable" professions who like people to think they are models of probity. I really think you need to get out more, and read local newspapers, often national newspapers, if the case is egregious enough. I cannot stand people who defend the indefensible. Naivety is something people should grow out of.

I think that is correct David G.

I am not the same Chris who placed the Dando 'Zzzzz' comment, that was someone else. I think it was interesting to note that website bang up to date from that catholic school was making it quite clear they expected PE showers to be taken in that school. Only recently I read another comment from someone else saying his own son's school website appeared to be hiding such things off the website but doing them in practice, including shirtless PE to some unknown extent. I have no issue about either.

Alan I am aware that there are 'wrong 'uns' in schools in this particular job, but that's like saying all men are rapists and all that kind of tainting everyone in a certain group with the same brush when we are only ever talking about small minorities.

The angst that many felt over being made to do their gym lessons or any other PE without their shirts on or being faced with compulsory communal showers with absolutely nothing on at all is all legitimate for debate and empathy over, without a doubt it is and I won't argue with that.

I was thinking about that comment upthread recently where someone equated being in school getting told to shower and how a workplace adult reaction might be to the same demand among colleagues. If my boss was to tell me I must communally shower with those I work with as a compulsory demand in the workplace I had to follow I think I would be quite utterly pissed off with him or the company for such a demand, but if I thought my job may be impacted by a refusal and a loss of salary I hate to admit I would probably agree to do so while remaining miffed. I was not I might add a shy schoolboy showerer or shirtless pupil in my time, I just regarded myself as middle ground feelings on it, neither enthusiastic but not concerned too much either. Would most not be in my category would others say?

Hi Chris,

'There are 2 completely different issues being discussed here.

1) Humiliation/embarrassment that a child feels having to shower with their classmates. This is a valid debate.'

Well said. You have made an extremely important point here.

'There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem.'

That's just not true, is it? In fact, that is a very naive thing to state given recent history.

We have all been hearing for decades now about all the CSA in the catholic church across numerous countries. There is also the English public school system where abuse of all sorts was traditionally spun as 'character-building'.

Alan's problem is he was once a victim. It's the same problem I have myself and presumably the reason we get accused of being the same person (although in my case it was the typical callousness of 70s school teachers, nothing that happened to me was ever sexual). You are confusing the issue to suggest that Alan etc are the only ones with a problem.

'There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting'

Ha ha! How I wish I could hold you to that! My teachers right the way through seemed to think it was essential. We were made to strip naked for intrusive medical exams that were held to be 'essential' - only to discover at secondary school that other children from other local primary schools had never suffered them. I have already said everything I want to about the illogic of communal showers for pre-teen children. Even the Christmas play seemed to necessitate removing most of your clothes. Teachers should never have the right to order a child out of their clothes unless for health reasons and they are literally dying at that moment.

'but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual.'

I agree with you but it doesn't mean that teacher isn't indulging in a little power trip, like the woman teacher Greg2 referred to who habitually passed through the boys' changing room while the boys were undressed.

I meant to say Allan can't disassociate himself from his experiences

Allan quote: "a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be."
I wonder why you always use words not in general use, such as "jejune" that most people have to look up in order to fully understand what you mean!
That says a lot about you!!

Comment by: Chris on 30th May 2025 at 22:51

....."There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual........"

I think Chris is correct with his views .I don't Allan can't disassociate himself from his own experiences.

Comment by: Chris on 30th May 2025 at 22:51

....."There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual........"

Chris you are being truly ingenuous. What about paedophile teachers, and if you don't believe there are any, I can point you to several court cases where this is the motive, and the culprit has been found guilty as charged. In other cases, though it was known at the time by pupils and other teachers alike, they were brushed under the carpet to save getting the school a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be.

Oh dear - someone has woken Dando up. Zzzzzzzz!

I found it embarrassing when we had an audience when we were participating at PE,especially as I didn't consider that we had appropriate kit.Of course we were topless and just wore our shorts to which we had become accustomed as even older boys were dressed accordingly.As we were all dressed the same for our usual activities and weren't seen by anyone except the teachers who took us I didn't find it embarrassing.
Same as at home ,as I was expected to strip off in front of my parents.

There are 2 completely different issues being discussed here.

1) Humiliation/embarrassment that a child feels having to shower with their classmates. This is a valid debate.

and

2) There is something terribly wrong with a teacher seeing a child naked.

There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual.

So every kid has a get out clause.. if they're asked to do something they don't feel comfortable with they can be excluded? Would a child ever learn anything in life with that approach?

I know I'm making a bit of a jump here but sometimes it's the uncomfortable things we're made to do as children that teach us sometimes things aren't as bad as they seem in our heads.

I preferred doing a lot of PE without a top on and being bare chested. I was always quite keen to take a shower afterwards too. I was completely comfortable with the whole arrangement which all seemed sensible.

I don't see the problem with the audience participation events either. If you were someone who already did gym at school without a top on all year long wouldn't it seem odd that the teacher might change tack and suddenly require shirts or vests on boys upper bodies just because of an audience which is only their family anyway. You have an audience in PE anyway, the others in class and the teachers. Nobody was bothered to strip off in front of their own family were they, removing their top, surely? In most cases they are probably admiring how good you all look.

I always thought myself and the boys in PE looked great doing it all shirtless baring our upper bodies and getting them some fresh air, both in or out. I often chose to run cross country without my top on and either carried it in my hand or tucked it in my shorts. Some boys copied me, although nobody was forced to do so but our teachers didn't mind one bit.