Burnley Grammar School

John, in answer to the question you pose. I've just been in my nearest park and walked there and back which is about 2.5km both ways. In the park, I would say most men were bare chest as was I. I had worn a T-shirt to walk there through the streets but once in the gate I took it off. I stopped at the cafe where I would say 90% of the men were bare chest regardless of whether they were alone or with someone.

I set off home bare chest but did put my shirt on not because of any sense that it might be expected but because my shoulders were beginning to burn and it was wise to take a precaution.

Tomorrow I will do the same but will remember to take some sunscreen along and equally tomorrow I won't be wearing underpants with my shorts because all they got was sticky and they are completely unnecessary in such warm weather.

Yes indeed, pyjamas were on the school uniform list and in the main they were very welcome. We slept in open dormitories and the windows were open no matter what the weather outside so for much of the year pyjamas were worn. At bedtime we had to undress, put blazer, pullover and trousers in our lockers or over the bedside chair and socks, shirt, vest and underpants had to go in the laundry bin so even on the coldest nights it was pyjamas only. On a very few nights in the summer term it would be warm and on those nights many did used to sleep naked, we didn't have to wear pyjamas, it was just wise to but in the morning they had to come off as you got out of bed and you then wrapped your towel around your waist to go to the washrooms where there was always a shower which was at best luke warm but usually cold - as were the ones after sports.

Robby, as a boarding school back then parents only came at the beginning and end of term if at all. Many did not have cars and so we made our way by coach from school to the station and took the train home. I can't remember my parents visiting apart from the very beginning of my time there when they came with me but it was an expensive trip as they had to stay the night in a hotel and not something they could afford to do often.

On swimming instructors, all the staff at school were men apart from two teachers - one French and one German and of course Matron and the housekeepers. They never came near the pool but of course Matron was around the dormitory at times and always present at medical inspections which happened with the school doc every year.

Is it my imagination or do you see far fewer barechested men and especially school aged boys walking around outside during hot summer heatwaves in the UK nowadays than you used to see back in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. Are men slowly but surely being body shamed into covering up or genuinely becoming more shy, insecure and all round self conscious about how they appear to others?

Hugh,
About your comments of swimming traditions in Victorian times, I did some quick research about it and it is true that men swam naked even on public beaches at that time.
But one must remember that swimsuits, either for men or women, did not exist at the time till later.
So women just wore modest dresses while the men and boys swam naked.
In spite of the separateness they were still in close proximity on the same beach in many places.
When local bye-laws started to be introduced slowly it forbade men to swim naked on public beaches, obviously because of several complaints by women especially if they had daughters with them.
However these laws applied only to men and boys up to about 16 were still allowed to swim and play naked on the beach in front of everyone.
As you say some women would take their daughters to these public beaches to educate them about boys. This is taken from some journal accounts and articles of the time.

Craig,
Don't you think it was unfair for the girls in your class that only the boys were allowed to take their shirts off in class during the heatwave, especially considering that it was just a primary school?
Or were the girls also allowed to take their shirts off?
I don't think that this would have been a big deal for the girls at 10 years old.
In some primary schools it was also common for both boys and girls to take PE classes together in just underpants.
We didn't have this custom at our primary school but I know that some schools did.

Hugh,
Thanks for the information about your boarding school where you said that throughout your time there all boys had to take swim lessons in the nude.
It may have been a boys only school but I have looked way back on this forum and there are some posts which say similar to you but had female swim instructors, at least for the young boys up to age 12 or so, and sometimes even female teachers supervising the boys swimming nude.
They also say that even for swimming galas in front of parents and sisters they had to be nude.
It is hard to believe today that this really happened in some schools where it was normal.
But as another poster said this was a long tradition going back to Victorian times or even before where it was normal for boys up to teens and even men to swim naked on public beaches and sometimes even in public park ponds, especially for boys.
So it is no surprise that this tradition went on in boys schools till the 60s or 70s in England.

Not 1976 but 1983 but similarish to Craig actually. That summer I was at the end of my final middle school year and it was sweltering. On a number of days lots of us were allowed to take our desks and chairs outside and place them under a large tree in a shaded area and were allowed to take our shirts off while we sat at our desks the whole afternoon. Nobody was forced to do so but very many boys actually did this in my class. I did. A fond experience of mine.

I also remember that it was considered too hot to go outside for a PE lesson that summer on a couple of days so we stayed inside in the cooler hall.

I certainly know how hot playground surfaces could get in summer. I used to bring a magnifying glass to school with friends and enjoy focussing the suns rays at a thin point on a piece of paper, wood or plastic, making it smoke and burn, or if being really cruel it could be an insect if it stayed still long enough to be cremated alive.

Fiona, this might be TMI (too much information) as they say but if I'd had my own way I'd probably have just worn the bottoms and not the top like I did at home. I don't think there was anyone who would have slept with nothing on at all if it was up to each of us, but who knows. There was plenty of casual nudity on this trip in our dorm and between it and the bathroom so the not nude while sleeping rule sounded silly I suppose. What the few days I spent away from home did prove was how some so called very cool lads in school actually wore some fairly dreadful pyjamas, such as one with me whose bright red ones with a disney character on it I still to this day remember seeing each morning as he jumped off the bunk opposite me. He would definitely have been better off without them at all.

As an adult I never wear full PJ's, I haven't since I was about fifteen, just some airy night time shorts. Men don't need tops in bed do they?

That's your answer more than in full.

Forgive me Fiona but your line of questioning seems a bit strange.

But if you must know about such things, as we're going to be having a few hot nights to come I'm sleeping in just my skin tonight with a 4.5 tog duvet. ;-)

Richard

~What would you all have worn to sleep in if you hadn't been "absolutely forbidden to sleep naked in our bunks for the ten days we slept together" and had been instructed to "bring and wear proper pyjamas or equivalent and wear both tops and bottoms".

Paul J, I actually agree with you. Whilst we should learn from the past what we should not do is attempt to redraw the past based on today's values and erase the parts that we deem inconvenient.

Well Fiona going on a Northumberland school field trip in sixth form at seventeen there were fourteen boys, me included, in a youth hostel dorm and we were absolutely forbidden to sleep naked in our bunks for the ten days we slept together. We had to bring and wear proper pyjamas or equivalent and wear both tops and bottoms. Our male teacher did share the place with us too. Funnily enough we were allowed to walk along the landing to the open showers naked with our towels when we got up at 7am after stripping off our nightwear despite the fact we could have accidentally bumped into any of about ten girls the same age who came with us but were in another separate room with a female teacher not too far away. I actually think one or two of my friends wanted that to 'accidentally' happen but were disappointed. Waking up with many of your class day after day and staright into a shower with them was an experience in itself, the nearest I got to imagining what it must have been like being a full time boarder but coming from a regular school made it feel a bit weird.

I'm sure many users on here can still remember the very hot summer of 1976. I do because we were actually allowed to take our clothes off in normal classes, something that you just could not imagine happening now. I was a primary school kid of 10 that year and in the month before we broke up for summer, day after day the heat was unbearable even with the classroom windows wide open and there was no air conditioning. There probably isn't even now in most classrooms.

Our class teacher told boys who wanted to that they could work in the classroom with no tops on and our shirts, T-shirt or whatever we wore just hanging on the back of our chairs. Most of us were already coming to school in shorts as it was due to the heat, although you could wear shorts or long trousers as personal choice at any time.

It wasn't just my own class teacher who did this but all the boys in school were allowed to I think. In my own class over a couple of weeks from late June into early July around mid morning we all by choice took our shirts off and worked for the whole of the rest of the day bare chested and went out on the playground like it at lunchtime. Only school dinner kids who went to the canteen for lunch had to put their top on to eat but then it came off again as soon as finished. This went on for at least a couple of weeks or more, maybe 15 actual school days or so. Our school teachers were mostly ladies and we shared our class with girls the same age.

I think there might have been a bit of very young peer pressure even at that age when the majority of boys left our tops off and others felt they had to do so not to be different but my class everyone did and I really remember liking it and not feeling any self consciousness whatsoever.

The last days of total unconditional innocence. I think if the same thing had been proposed in class about three or four years later in high school then it would have been a very different outcome all round.

Another thing from that hot summer I also remember was that when we did PE outside on the school playground the heat of the tarmac surface on our bare feet was incredible to feel and almost unbearable.

Hugh - given all of the openness that you describe in your school environment, did pyjamas figure in your clothing list or did you and your dormitory mates leep naked.

Hugh, isn't that difference in Victorian England between the sexes quite striking in the complete extreme between the male and female persons. You made a fairly good and accurate point about it however they were not always segregated. Well off Victorian mothers who could afford day trips to the seaside around about the 1870's and 1880's would often use these trips as a subtle kind of sexual education for their daughters who while they were modestly attired at all times were allowed in close proximity to fully naked young men, including post puberty, in order to see them up close while they were on the beach or swimming while naked. Quite what some of the young men would have made of this I've no idea but it seems they were actively encouraged not to hide themselves if they came near to some of the opposite sex on the beaches in this era and it was tolerated. Quite the contrast. I presume if a well off family with a son and daughter went to the beach then the sister got a chance to maybe see her brother like that with it seeming perfectly acceptable, whereas if he had just stripped off naked back at home for her to take a look at it was probably thought of as immoral and unacceptable.

As for naked swimming in a British school setting as has been mentioned, I do remember seeing a documentary about 30 years ago now featuring a school where the pupils could turn up to lessons or not whenever they felt like it, and it had no uniform and looked like a free for all kind of place but seemed to ultimately work out quite well despite the anarchic nature of the rules. In this profile of the school they definitely showed the school swimming pool and it had completely naked boys swimming in it and beside it, in a mixed gender setting with girls alongside them in their costumes. Although from what I remember of this I think to call what went out on screen an actual swimming lesson was probably pushing it a bit. I think this went out on Channel 4 circa about 1992 or so. Maybe others can fill in a few more details if they have any idea what I'm talking about. As for wider naked school swimming I'm doubtful of that outside of boarding schools maybe. The thought of anyone doing that in a comprehensive or secondary at any point seems a total no go area.

Certainly Mr Dando is well known for his cut and paste jobs. So much of the latest effort seems to be fictional to me where any elements of truth have been muddied by wilder embellishments. The UK in this regard is most certainly not the USA either.

Robby - he didn't type it all out manually, just copied and pasted it verbatim. if you must look, it's at:

https://asstr.org/files/Authors/puericil/www/2019/Reports_Forced_Nudity_03to05.html

but I wouldn't bother if I were you.

I think being made to do circuit training (press ups, sit ups, squats, bench lifts, burpees, wallbar leg lifts) or proper PE (vaulting, hurdles, ropes, heavy medicine balls) good teaching, rather than abuse. Corporal punishment was a physical punishment appropriate to a physical activity and my father approved of my master's approach.

Robby, I went to boarding school in 1965 at the age of seven. Throughout my time there we swam naked in the school pool. Given that we also slept in dormitories where there was no privacy, used washrooms with communal showers, had toilets that had no doors on them, only waist high partitions between each can, medical inspections we all had to line up naked for and the ultimate sanction was a bare bottom caning, swimming naked didn't really rate as something to be bothered about.

Remember that from Victorian times, women used to go down to the sea in bathing machines all dressed in their voluminous costumes. Men did not and there was certainly no mixed bathing. Men went to a separate part of the beach where they stripped off and swam naked and most probably thought nothing of it.

Trunks only became normal when 'mixed' bathing became normal when swimming pools started to be build for the masses which was definitely a late 1960s and onwards thing.

Even if we had a swimming competition against another school - of course only a boys school, naked was normal and I don't remember seeing trunks in my time at school. I think I got my first pair when I went to university and the pool started to have mixed sessions but at the beginning there were men's days and women's days. I don't know what happened on the women's days but the men's days were naked in 1973. By the time I graduated in 1979, all sessions were mixed so trunks were always worn.

It's just a measure of how things have changed, it's not necessarily better, swimming naked feels very free compared to either tight speedos or the drag of wet shorts.

Tom F, I don't think we should view the past through the lens of the present in the way you suggest. I don't regard my time growing up as despicable in any way. Times and values change. When I was a boy, I experienced nothing other boys didn't, it was all quite normal and I was a very happy child.

Attempting to reframe the past in the time of the future is misguided and wrong. Please don't do it.

I was amused by Mr Dando's last post of 2nd June about the compulsary nude swimming for boys in schools, although it seems to be exclusively about American schools in the past.
I didn't read all of his long, endless post which must have taken him all day to type. :)
But I wonder, how common or rare was it for boys in British schools to take swim classes in the nude?

Things have certainly changed in many ways in today's schools.
I went to a state school in the 60s. In primary school we didn't have any gym or PE coach and we did our PE lessons in the schoolyard with white PE shorts and t-shirt, sometimes shirtless if the weather was fine and our normal class teacher was our coach, although we did just basic body exercises and running around the schoolyard. I think this was normal in non-private schools at the time.
Did any posters here have an actual gym at their primary school?

In secondary school it was different, with a fully equipped modern gym and showers with individual cubicles, although they didn't have any curtains so it was more like semi-privacy, but probably better than the gang showers that many describe here at their school.
Also as against primary school where corporal punishment was very common, it was quite rare at secondary school.

Time passes and reconditions us to what is acceptable. What now reads as quite dispicable would have once read as acceptable.

To teacher Robert. Good post, confusing and contradictory but communal showers definitely have not been phased out like your late 90's item suggested they intended at that stage. My eleven year old will be joining Wootton Park school in Northants in September this year and I've just received the details of the uniform and other required bits and bobs. I'm being told he needs as they put it, a towel for showering, as part of his P.E uniform and having made my own enquiry I'm told it's a single shower room. I'm fine with that if he has to use it. I haven't broached the subject with him direct as I see no point in making a big deal of such a thing. I'm 44 and did this in school throughout the first half of the 90's and although I remember feeling somewhat apprehensive over the summer holidays after the first time I took a communal shower with my class together fully naked I walked out the changing room afterwards feeling really pleased with myself and wondering what all the worry had been about as it just seemed a sensible and normal thing to do. I know not everyone feels the same obviously.

There is nothing on his P.E uniform that openly suggest any element of non shirted lessons but I did quite a few lessons in school with no shirt at times and I think most senior school kids shoud surely expect it at some point in time, swimming aside. Some ladies on mumsnet that I read seem to have a problem with it but as a father I don't and I wouldn't really expect my own to be concerned if he was told to do so. I'm sure my own would still be the mainstream opinion on things like this.

One thing that is grotesque is the physical abuse of kids just for under achieving tasks in P.E. The comments about that like the one from Roy C or teacher Robert, or Ian 2 beggar belief even by the attitude of those long past times.

Paul J, very similar memories of early 60's PE in boys grammar in Scotland. My joke is that I bent over the horse more times than I jumped over it!
In addition to bending over the horse, our teacher used to pace up and down between the stations, taking pot shots at our backsides. We likened it to the galley scene from Ben Hur, where the overseer lashes away at the slaves!
Also he often used a short, thick strap - I think it may have been an Irish punishment strap, much used by the Christian Brothers. Significantly more painful than the plimsoll - nearly as painful as the cane.
But the belt over the hands (aka the Lochgelly) was the workhorse in Scottish schools and he used that quite liberally - almost as a teaching aid. We'd have to form up at the end of most periods and watch him belt a queue of boys. An impressive show and I found myself making my appearance on quite a few occasions.
Just for the sceptics - a survey in the late 70's showed that a boy in years 1 to 3 of secondary would get the belt on average three times a term.
But I think it was effective, and I kept up with the circuits and cross country (shirtless in the early mornings) for many a year.

Rule by fear or intimidation never works. We did gym in just navy shorts and nothing else. It must have been about '68 when I was given the one and only physical beating I ever received in school and as others have said, not for doing a thing wrong but in my case I kept failing to climb confidently up a rope all the way to the top and sit there hanging for something like 15 to 20 seconds or so like he wanted and some boys managed easily. I think I was one of about three or four who didn't do it despite being given a number of chances and we got threatened with corporal punishment, which made no difference as I still failed and ended up with my shorts pulled down to my knees and a couple of very hard cracks of what must have been a cricket bat or similar across my behind along with the other couple while in the gym. It hurt a lot. It was the moment I completely lost any respect for the man that did it to me. When we changed and showered me and the others who had been hit were trying to look at our sore behinds at the redness and we even got told to stop doing that and wasting time by the man that did it to us. I would have been 12 then. I could still feel tenderness two days later and see the pink mark fading a week later.

That is a story I never even told my own parents because I was so ashamed. That kind of thing never leaves you. I have absolutely no doubt at all that the bastard that did that took some kind of satisfaction in doing so to boys like me at that age.

John, I can certainly remember one particular PE teacher in the mid 1970s at my all boys grammar school who used the slipper - a large plimsoll to make sure we were all trying as hard as we could.

Particularly for circuit training which we did once a week he would have the stations set up and we worked in pairs. You worked round the stations changing every time he blew his whistle which was about every two minutes.

He used to stand in the centre of they gym close to one of the stations that was a vaulting horse and he would look round continuously to make sure everyone was working hard. Anyone he spotted not trying as hard as he thought they should or could was called to the horse and those who were using it allowed to pause while the lad went over the horse for usually four to six hard whacks of the slipper, gym shorts were thin and white and underpants weren't allowed so those whacks stung and you had a red bottom for the rest of the day and it usually ached the following day too. I would say two or three lads got it in each lesson, I got it no more and no less than any other lad.

I still loved PE and circuits and pirates and the other things we did and the slipper or for that matter the cane which I also got quite a few times was just part of being a boy at school back then.

Incredible that you could once get corporal punishment for not trying hard enough in the eyes of a teacher which is slightly subjective in itself. Physically disciplining pupils to incentivise them into doing better, that wouldn't have worked with me and would have had quite the opposite effect, and in the changing room too. Why would any teacher want their class to actually fear them with that kind of threat hanging over them. I'm not completely surprised at that 50's behaviour. Good old days, no way were they.

This might help Alex's question about shower provision just a little bit.

The Secretary of State for Education released school regulations in 2012 that dictate the standards facilities should now adhere to, and outlined everything you must install in order to be in line with the set regulations.

Suitable changing rooms and showers had to be provided for pupils aged 11 and over who receive physical education.
Facilities had to be maintained to a standard that was deemed as reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of pupils.
Acoustics and sound insulation had to be suitable with regard to the nature of activities which normally take place in any room.
Toilets had to have an adequate supply of cold water, and washing facilities needed to have adequate supplies of hot and cold water.
Hot water was not to pose a scalding threat to anyone using it.


Yet in a press released article dated December 1999 the following was being suggested;

Old fashioned communal showers are to be phased out of British schools, the government said yesterday.
The notorious "run through" showers should ideally be replaced with individual cubicles whenever the facilities are refurbished or built, according to new regulations to be published next month by the department for education and employment, which has had to bow to modern expectations of privacy and religious beliefs.
Communal showers, wash rooms and changing areas are frequently blamed for turning pubescent girls off physical education, although in the state sector, communal wash facilities are more common for boys than girls.

But the facts are today that schools are expected to provide the wash facilities needed after a PE class. The last state school I worked at until thirteen years ago still operated with full old style communal showering in the changing area which boys were expected to use fully stripped down after PE unless they had a very good reason not to do so. As the 1999 article just above says, it was state school boys who have always felt the full demands of communal showering and girls often didn't even have to take it up if they chose not to.

When I think back to my own education which was a private one at an all boys school in the late 50's and early 60's I had two lengthy PE classes every week and all of us seemed to have reached a high level of ability and fitness and we were expected to perform gymwork and team sports to a high standard. My own late 50's teachers would sometimes administer occasional corporal punishment back in the changing room itself after PE for misbehaviour or even just a lack of effort.

My favourite time teaching was probably throughout the 1970's and well into the 1980's when I was younger and fitter and we could get on with the job with less interference and paperwork compared to later. For example I don't really understand why the showering issue became more contentious as time went on to the present day.

Aren't school's legally obliged to provide full showering facilities?

Tony,

Certainly when I was in the navy there were ceremonies for new guys when they first crossed the equator, usually involving King Neptune coming aboard and declaring penalties on 'new jack tars'. These varied enormously depending on how busy we were and what else was happening and the sea conditions too - it wasn't always 'plain sailing'!

When I first crossed the equator it was a fine day, there were four of us up before Neptune and there was no pressure on time. He ordered us to the barber and said we would be inspected afterwards on deck. We were shaved and I mean every last hair from our bodies, head, chest, pubic, arse crack, legs, the lot and then smeared in grease to go back on deck where Neptune waving his sword inspected with a fair amount of prodding and poking to make sure a thorough job had been done.

Once over, we were allowed to shower and then served a brilliant lunch by our mates as a reward for our good humour.

I couldn't complain, I was party to many similar things happening in the coming years and they were just a good laugh which did no harm to anyone.