Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: Derek on 27th January 2025 at 02:52


Derek, I am sure that if Jill had been your teacher you would have presented her with a Pink Lady or Granny Smith every day.

The point is, this lady had presumably read at least a few of the comments on this board from men who felt uncomfortable during their school days from dictatorial teachers, and explained in detail why , and yet she still felt that there was no problem, or at least couldn't see one . Therefore she has learned nothing. She gave me one glib reply, about doctors, which was totally irrelevant, so forgive me from not presenting my Golden Delicious to her desk.

Simon Godley, I have also encountered in Scandinavia the hope that the British might shed some of their inhibitions about nudity. Certainly the attitude there is strikingly different. In Britain the association between nudity and sex is ingrained, despite the many instances nowadays of non-sexual nudity, such as skinny dips.
Finland came up five years ago in this discussion during a succession of positive exchanges about nudity in schools. On page 154 Paul refers to the Finns' preference for single sex swimming in Helsinki so that they can swim with nothing on.
Derek, I agree with you. It's not just teachers who have left the discussion. If you look back five years you can see just how different the chat was: more tolerant, with people's views being taken at face value and in good faith. It is easy to see why the more confident/positive side of the discussion rarely gets an airing now.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 26th January 2025 at 16:32

"..... I've always thought teachers ought to be much more thoroughly trained and qualified than they have ever had to be. After all, if you are teaching young children you are responsible for their pastoral care and this involves a lot more than teaching them a few subjects.....

.... a class of seven-year-olds will automatically take on trust whatever their teacher tells them. I can remember a number of teachers who were toweringly pompous and/or worse and relentlessly insisted on their own preferred view of the world. (I do not know whether a certain proportion of teachers in general have always been like this or if catholic schools in particular just tended to attract these types.) Such people are failing their duty of care and can actually be harmful......



......But I stand by my previous comment. Nobody expects a recent graduate in their early-twenties to be an expert in child psychology, which is why you look to senior, experienced teachers to provide them with insights into the issues facing the age-group they teach. But as someone who went through primary school in Jill's exact era I know from experience that was rarely ever the case."

I think that their air of superiority and smug pomposity is a built in "quality" of a teacher, whether it is a religious school or not. I think you are quite right that young children believe all they are told by an authority figure. One tribute I will pay to my collection of misfits and heavy drinkers that comprised our elderly teachers is that you would never have known what their political beliefs were - they were never discussed. These days it is only too obvious (which explains, I suppose, why they want to introduce voting for 16 year olds). It seems otiose, to go and cast your vote before going off to school to take part in rope climbing and running on the spot, and hearing what a marvellous man Mick Lynch is. I HOPE these students will start to realize the power they are given, though I doubt it.

In more busy days I used to employ teenagers on Saturdays to pack and despatch parcels etc and I was astonished to hear that school hadn't changed much from my day - still a load of hidebound teachers, dishing out castigation or praise, as they saw fit, still treating pupils as if they were in borstal. One lad I remember was amazed I called him by his forename, because all the teachers used surnames only - in 2010!

Considering that their behaviour can have a profound effect on pupils years after their intrusion, you would think they would be trained to understand the complexities of teenagers lives, and in fact, a teacher in their twenties should remember what it was like to be a teenager themselves, but this is a reflection on their desire to be obeyed and seen as important, just as much as the antique training methods still employed by teacher training colleges, where it is still 1956 and they believe teachers deserve deference and unquestioning obedience.
.

Why is it that anytime someone who has worked in education shows up on this forum that the attack dog suddenly goes for their ankles. The forum has already lost a handful of PE teachers who made it clear why they wished to no longer participate and now we have a lady called Jill who wrote something quite inoffensive who has taken an immediate hit from the usual suspect, yes you know who you are. Is it any wonder there's no follow up when somebody comes on with some honesty and takes their time to share some words here and gets her character and professionalism assassinated, just because many years ago she told some boys in the school to do a bit of PE without tops. So what? It's absolute madness to judge someone like that when you know nothing at all about the person in any meaningful way after just one paragraph written on here. For what it's worth I thought she sounded a very thoughtful person to even be thinking like she was now and all I will say to you Jill is you have nothing to reconsider about the issue you raised here and if I had been one of your former pupils at your primary school I would have had no problem with you as my teacher and I too was rather uneasy when doing PE as a shirtless skin in both primary and secondary schools. But I would not hold my own feelings on something like what PE kit I was made to wear against a primary school teacher from many years ago.

My own sister was a primary school teacher and if anyone thinks you can just turn up brand new at a school and start changing the rules of the game to suit yourself then that just shows how little understanding some people on here have. You go with school expectations and then maybe after a short time you can quietly bring in a few well meaning suggestions to the right people in the right places and take it from there. To turn up as a supply teacher at a new school that just happens to do shirtless PE when you've been told this, but to unilaterally decide you're not doing that is not how it works, even if you are not in favour personally.

I was at school for the whole of the 1970s and did shirtless skins PE throughout those years many times because the teachers told me to do it that way, and although I was uneasy about it in the early days and became a bit more so again in secondary school I also knew that it was all rather normal and expected of us and I'm certainly not going to take any of my ex teachers to task over such a thing. Shirtless PE, like showers after PE with nothing on, was the most normal thing in the world of schools in the 1970s and while it could make you uneasy you would still accept it as quite normal and an okay thing to be doing and nothing very dreadful if you had a modicum of intelligence.

Just try and give these teachers a break when they appear on here. I appreciated Jill's honesty, shouldn't others.

Yours Truly, thank you for your thoughtful and kind response to me. Thank you, too, Alan, for all your reflections. Perhaps Jill Paige has not looked back at the discussion.

Hi Alan,

They do say that an MP is the highest-paying position for which you need no relevant qualifications, experience or any level of insight. And I've always thought teachers ought to be much more thoroughly trained and qualified than they have ever had to be. After all, if you are teaching young children you are responsible for their pastoral care and this involves a lot more than teaching them a few subjects.

The big difference is that nobody trusts politicians, we all know not to believe what they say, whereas a class of seven-year-olds will automatically take on trust whatever their teacher tells them. I can remember a number of teachers who were toweringly pompous and/or worse and relentlessly insisted on their own preferred view of the world. (I do not know whether a certain proportion of teachers in general have always been like this or if catholic schools in particular just tended to attract these types.) Such people are failing their duty of care and can actually be harmful.

As regards Jill, it doesn't sound so much like she can't understand it as that she is unwilling to believe it. You make a very good point that even if she had never realised about boys being shy before, having read various male respondents on here by now she should already have been beginning to change her mind. And it is disconcerting to think that somebody now presumably retired never before realised that boys can have body issues.

But I stand by my previous comment. Nobody expects a recent graduate in their early-twenties to be an expert in child psychology, which is why you look to senior, experienced teachers to provide them with insights into the issues facing the age-group they teach. But as someone who went through primary school in Jill's exact era I know from experience that was rarely ever the case.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 25th January 2025 at 18:19


I sometimes think schoolteachers are analogous to politicians - they come into our lives for a few years to cause misery and mayhem then they push off to pastures new, or we leave them, they still not understanding a thing about what it is they are supposed to be the fount of all knowledge about and even less about the lives they meddle with.

Whether the woman we are discussing was merely obeying orders or not, even today - having presumably read some of our experiences - by her own admission - she still doesn't understand the problem. Typical teacher/politician response.!

Finland is the number one happiest nation of people in the world and many of them spend a lot of their time naked with their families and friends steaming away in sauna rooms, many homes have them. I know about this, I've been there on visits to friends and done this myself with them. They are remarkably chilled about themselves and their bodies. Yet when I first went there a few years ago as a British person they laughed at my awkwardness at the home I stayed at of theirs in a place called Oulu, which is beside the northern end of the Baltic, halfway up western Finland. I was invited to use the facilities with them and had to take a deep breath to do so, a refusal would have been seen as very rude. It was their teenage children, boy and girl, their parents, me and my wife, although my son declined. British children don't do this with their old folks, but the Finns think nothing of getting it all out. They even do it with their neighbours, another evening I was there this happened while we went sightseeing alone without them. There are also children at just the age of six and seven there who go to kindergartens and do such things with adults too, and take communal showers at that age in the schools and kindergartens without segregation by genders at those ages too. There is even a civilian or military requirement to serve a set number of days for those over eighteen and under sixty of national service to the country and yet they are so happy and I've felt this every time I've been over there, which is six times now. Every time I've visited I've been invited to join them in their Finnish ways, remove everything. They are so chilled and uncomplicated about it and told me if I went to stay at any of their neighbours even as a stranger I would probably be given similar hospitality. So what can we learn from the Finns and what can they teach us bashful Brits about ourselves?

My own school situation back here at home many years ago was broadly in line with many here in terms of requirements and I never saw myself as awkward but my Finnish friends in Oulu found out about our British reserve, and made me feel wonderful and helped knock some of it out of me, even if they couldn't do so to my son.

Hi Matthew S,

I had long begun to think it was only me who had had these acute inhibitions, and I was admittedly an over-sensitive child. So thank you for reminding me that other children had similar anxieties.

Children develop at different rates in different areas and this should be respected. I don't think any child that young should be made to something they feel uncomfortable with. And in any case, there was never any practical reason for boys to have to take PE classes without tops on.

It's not my intention to be critical of Jill, I am making a wider point about how delicate very young children are. Teachers really do need to be ultra-aware of the potential issues present in the children they teach. These can be potentially innumerable - there was a recent poster here who said that after a spiteful comment from his PE teacher about having 'rounded shoulders', whatever that is supposed to mean, he developed a complex about his shoulders that lasted years. I used to panic when it rained when I was in primary school because I remembered one first year infants teacher letting us out to go home and, on finding heavy rain outside, casually remarking, "Oh no. You can't go home yet!" I thought they could just keep me at school forever and that terrified me.

Really all teachers need to be qualified psychologists. Young children are so sensitive and credulous that an off-the-cuff remark here leads to major preoccupations there. It is literally like the butterfly effect.

Jill was only following the directions of her senior teacher, which is what she was expected to do. He was the one who ought to have been more aware. As a supply teacher she presumably was on something like what we nowadays call a zero-hours contract and if she even had wanted to complain or criticise the school need not ever have called her again.

Even so I found her total unawareness that maybe some boys might not have been okay with being made to do PE half naked startling. I think there is this assumption that persists to this day that boys are just more sturdy and more robust than girls and that, as a corollary of that, they are just less sensitive than girls and feel emotions less deeply and therefore need less consideration. This is simply not so. I state this from my own life experience.

At least you were allowed to wear shorts for your PE lesson. For our infants PE classes it was strictly underwear only. If any boy or girl had brought a pair of shorts into school they wouldn't have been allowed to wear them. There again we were allowed to keep our vests on. My primary school seemed to take no account of the dignity of the children in their charge. Contrary to what people thought, or do think, children do have a sense of dignity.

My primary school, and especially the infants, was big on getting us out of our clothes. In fact they always seemed to be coming up with more reasons for why we needed to undress, from PE in our vest and pants to the nativity play to full medical exams and even, in one instance, to to a school trip in public, down a local park.

At least your teacher was kind to you when you asked. If I had asked my teacher the same request I would most likely have been told off for not already knowing how to take my own vest off or shouted at.

Hello, Jill Paige.

Thank you for kindly giving your recollections.

Don't mind my asking, but out of curiosity, when you say you had no PE training as a young supply teacher in the 1970s and '80s, were you told how to use the equipment or did the senior teacher suggest how to reduce the possibility of accidents? How old were the primary-aged children you taught?

I don't think you can be blamed, if you don't mind my giving an opinion, for not realising, as a young supply teacher, that boys showing no outward unhappiness might object to doing PE with no tops on. As you say, boys may keep such things to themselves. Especially when inexperienced, you couldn't have known what was in their heads.

I remember - readers may think this foolishly young, but still it is true - leaving the classroom for my first PE lesson, not quite five, and the pang of discomfort as I became very conscious of my chest being bare in front of the other children.

I remember the tangled logic of the way I responded clearly. At the start of subsequent PE lessons, I got changed into my PE shorts, my vest still on, and went up to my Reception teacher, a kind lady, and asked her to take my vest off for me. She helpfully did so. I was consciously thinking: if the other children don't see me take my vest off myself, they won't think I'm doing this to myself willingly. A way of clinging to self-respect, you see. I'm sure she had no idea I was embarrassed - a sensitive teacher, she would have offered some reassurance otherwise.
Incidentally, this was in 1989.

I had greater problems doing PE bare-chested later on, more at the anticipation of it than the taking part. School swimming was a delight - perhaps the pleasure of it distracted from any embarrassment, and we were in the water most of the time.

Jill, please excuse my going on at too great length - did you go into full-time teaching later on?

You write some very well written and thoughtful posts "Yours Truly" and so have many people here recently, I hope I do too, it's nice to see. I shouldn't read too much into the comment remarking on your own views mirroring Alan's, he's used to those accusations, that's why these IP numbers appeared about a year ago. It did seem to clean up the forum rather rapidly from what I can make out when I dip in again for a catch up once in a while.

William, when it comes to schooldays I think many of the negatives often linger longer in the minds for people than the positives and people feel more inclined to comment about negative things than positive things in this world. Look at the state of twitter/x to prove that point, or the fact that journalists say bad news sells papers and makes people watch the TV news. So it is with forums such as this, and the amount of people who didn't feel they had positive times or treatment in school.

William you've mentioned the ebb and flow of anxious versus non anxious people posting. Aspects of school always made me anxious and I became a very body conscious person by about 11 or 12, but I will not go as far to say I regard my own comments as negative, they are just my own sometimes anxious thoughts about school and its ways from a boy at the time who simply wasn't at all relaxed or comfortable to remove his top or get naked, certainly at first. I so wish I had been, with easy to come confidence. Therein lied the problem for boys like me at schools like mine and other places. Going barechested always made me nervous at school after the age of 11 even though we were always doing it. It was the context I think. So many times I found it totally unnecessary and I especially disliked being told I had to do it at secondary school so much and thought it downright unfair in some situations like sports days and drama classes. Yet at my middle school I did a lot of mixed swimming at the age of 10 and 11 and don't remember any overly unusual problems doing so and was pleased to swim. I definitely changed my attitude to this kind of thing pre and post puberty. Perhaps that shouldn't surprise anyone. I've always valued my own personal privacy and give it up sparingly and in situations of my choosing, although I won't go as far as some have on here and suggest that being made to be barechested or to shower at school was an invasion of privacy, it's close but not quite over the line maybe, even when being forced to spend the sports day afternoon barechested among all the hordes visiting school on such days or having a photo taken like that, although I would have liked to have given my own permission for photos that were taken of me while in my school mandated barechested shorts only PE attire, and my class photo ended up in the local press, the Bucks Standard. Many adult people like to consent to photos when clothed never mind being a child/teenager and wearing just one item, the shorts/trunks.

This brings me to my drama teacher, who I met for the first time since 1987 back at the start of last November at a reunion. I also met a former PE teacher of mine then too. I think I already mentioned him a couple of months back so won't intentionally repeat that. I met others too in various subjects as well as old pupils, some not seen since the 80's.

My drama teacher was actually far more interesting than the PE teacher to try and get a handle on. My drama teacher was a relief stand in PE teacher sometimes, often taking rugby in PE during winter months. Those who read here a lot may recall what I've previously said, that nearly half the drama afternoons (double periods) I did in school over nearly 3 years to summer 1984 were done barechested in a mixed class situation, and he put me on the school stage 3 times in a role where I didn't have a top on, either the whole time or partly in one case. There were also 7 other times I did something similar with my clothing on just to make quite clear.

I had a chat with this gentleman who took my drama classes during the early 80's for a couple of years, along with others. I made sure to confront aspects of his teaching in a polite questioning manner which attracted follow up comments from others with me who were part of the same I did. He was a young teacher at the time, barely 70 even now. He was completely unapologetic about his teaching methods however and admitted that he probably thought eveyone was the same as him in his views. He considered our drama classes to be exercises in confidence building and bringing people out of themselves into a sense of discovery. I threw a comment he had once use back then about "using our bodies to discover ourselves" or something like that. Most irritating of all was how he described drama classes as places where he expected to be able to draw out inner confidence that he knew was there but was hiding unseen. He knew for example that lots of people, boys and girls, were not confident when asked to perform or play roles or dance and it was his job to change that. Under questions about the extent of our own drama being conducted barechested half the time he cited this as one tool in his confidence building technique, and admitted to me and those listening who had been subjected to such classes of his that he deliberately liked to push people well beyond their comfort zones and if he identified those he saw as lacking confidence he would push them further forward in many ways, including in my own case and others giving me a barechested role on a stage in front of my the rest of school, and a complete all boys cast barechested role in front of parents once. He rattled on about confidence and belief in oneself. I said that this didn't work and just made things worse in many cases and that I regularly came into his drama afternoons apprehensive, and did he not understand how it felt to be a 13 year old boy forced to spend the afternoon in a drama studio among not just boys like in PE much of the time but up close with girls in our class that age too. Not too much comment about that came out. We often did touchy feely stuff with them with our shirts off, our school blazers, ties and shirts were often made to come off on arrival for the next 2 hours of so, plus our shoes and socks, often just left with dark grey long trousers on, a really awkward feel weird look, worse than just shorts actually which at least felt natural, although sometimes we wore shorts if asked to bring some or changing into various clothing in the drama wardrobe for stuff we did.

I was always surprised when I had an older middle aged lady for the final year of my drama in secondary school and she carried on in much the same way as he had done. I had not expected that. He was the head of drama and I have now found out that she acted under his general guidance and did so quite remarkably closely and so in my third year it carried on the same as the first two. He was completely unrepentant about his time at our school and said he wouldn't have changed a thing and would do the same now. There was no hint about how he must have affected so many boys over the years at school like this and even though I explained the effect of these lessons and the way he did them on us, and even handed him a printed copy of a couple of my history posts here from way back, there was no sense of genuine understanding other than a "sorry if you felt like that" and a clear indication that he thought he was right.

Someone with me had a PE lesson before lunch followed by a drama class afterwards and mentioned going from one class to the next and not wearing a top sometimes because they went from the gym to the drama studio which meant shirtless at school after 10.50am until leaving time at 3.35pm except for lunch hour. I said at least you got tow such lessons out the way on the same day and mentioned my three PE classes and drama being on separate days meaning 4 shirtless school days at some point. The drama teacher found this amusing. I told him he didn't make anyone more confident with his methods and quite the reverse but he seemed to be one of those types who was set in his ways and thought he knew best even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

There was somebody else once who wrote on here about having to do barechested drama lessons in school, so if you are still reading I'd love to hear a bit more of your own experience on that and from anyone else who faced the same.

Hi William,

Yes we did swim and I was fine with that. Again it was all about the context. It was better than football. Anything was better than football. And unlike rounders or shot-putting it was teaching us an actual useful skill.

I do agree with you that there has to be a certain amount of compulsion in education, otherwise all too many young people would never try anything that seemed challenging.

Yours Truly, Thank you for your comment. I do see your point about settings and I had no wish to sound unsympathetic, but did you swim at school and how did you feel about it?
I was exactly the sort of shy and fussy boy who would have opted out of showers and gym given the chance. For me, not being given the choice worked, because I had to cope with it and found that I could. It was a lesson learned, which gradually made me more resilient and confident.
I don't think there was a "no pyjamas" rule; it was the boys' choice.

Hi Julia,

I am not Alan. He is someone else. If you are suggesting we are the same person, well, you'll have to explain to me the benefit of posting the same things multiple times under different aliases, because I can't see any.

Your point is irrelevant since mammograms, smear tests and prostate exams are necessary medical procedures carried out on consenting adults, unlike school PE practices. .

If Alan and I came across as a bit curt - and I hope I was not - it was because the Jill's first paragraph seemed very dismissive in an 'I can't see the problem therefore there is no problem' kind of way. And it seemed like such an obvious point that I was surprised I had to make it to anybody. I do also feel that her 'everything in the right proportions' comment was misguided. Would anybody anywhere expect teenage girls to do PE in bikinis?


Hi Alan,

I hadn't even noticed the user ID signatures. That is a good point.

Maybe I should just choose a name. I just tend to want to keep myself to myself and online pseudonyms are just a part of that. But perhaps you're right and it's time for a change. I am nobody special and I have nothing to hide.


Hi William,

But this is the exact point, isn't it? One view - the school's - did indeed prevail. And if you found yourself at odds with it, well, that was just your tough luck.

It all depends on context. Most people of both genders are quite happy to hit the beach in next to nothing. We associate beaches with holidays, leisure, fun, sea, sun, etc. The school environment, with its challenges, obligations and trials, carries a very different set of associations. What feels fine in one setting does not feel the same in another.

I have no doubt many boys were fine with the topless kit. Some of them have posted as much on this thread. But then many more were not. The point is, people should have the choice. There was a recent poster on here from, I think, the Czech Republic, who stated that at his school there is no set PE kit and the boys just wear what they feel comfortable in. He did indeed say that some of them do it in nothing but shorts, but this is through their own free choice. There is no pressing, practical reason for any school to demand a specific PE kit, as long as what the pupils wear meets safety standards. Really this whole PE kit thing is just another part of this British obsession with making children and young people wear uniforms.

I had heard before of private boys' schools that had nude swimming sessions but the no-pyjamas rule is a new one on me. What is wrong with wearing pyjamas, for God's sake? Everything I have heard about UK public and prep schools has led me to conclude that depersonalisation and degradation were viewed as essential elements in the moulding of boys. Those men you mention developed confidence despite their experiences, not because of them.

The older I get and the more I hear about the bizarre customs and practices that pertained in those places the more grateful I feel for having been born poor and working-class.

You might want to re-read Jill's final paragraph. In it she concedes that she just never realised that there were boys for whom topless PE was an issue and makes the very salient point that boys are very reluctant to talk about their problems - I know I was.

Jill, I suspect there are many men reading this conversation who agree with your first paragraph on 22nd January. I am frankly baffled. Did they never go swimming? I was skinny but gym without a top never bothered me, and I quickly got used to the showers. Both helped me to develop body confidence. I was at a boys school.
Yours Truly has said to you that because boys had no choice and got on with it doesn't mean that they were okay about it. True - but neither does it mean that they weren't okay with it.
Over the years this conversation ebbs and flows between the anxious and the confident where gym and showers are concerned, and the anxious have been in the ascendant for some time. The expression of one view tends to attract those who agree with it.
About three years ago some men who had been at boarding schools described their experience of nude swimming, no pyjamas in the dormitory etc with some confidence. I think that was in the Hesketh Fletcher thread. Perhaps they hoped to escape the inevitable response from Alan telling them why they were wrong to describe in positive terms an experience he would have found abhorrent. We are allowed to feel differently about our experiences. One view does not have to prevail.

Comment by: Julia on 22nd January 2025 at 23:13




"Have you not heard about mammograms Alan?

Strangers, including a man, have asked me to remove my bra more than once in the past. I was absolutely fine with this.


I am struck by the clear similarity between yours and Yours Truly's postings on here in terms of attitude, reasoning and all round style of your arguments."


Julia - there is a great deal of difference between a medical professional ASKING you to remove clothing, when it is part of a procedure, which you might have REQUESTED, yourself and a here today-gone tomorrow, ten-a-penny teacher TELLING people of the opposite sex to remove their tops.

Do you not see that?

Finally (I hope) can I just set your mind at rest about the canard you are trying to spin in your final paragraph?. A couple of years ago, a few mendacious posters tried to imply that I was posting under multiple names. I got so fed up with this, that I suggested that our unique internet IDs be published after each post. My number ends with 252. "Tours Truly" has a totally different one. Those posters claiming that falsehood strangely disappeared as soon as the new system became operative. I wonder why?. For the sake of transparency I also always leave my email address, and all my writings are mine alone - I don't use aliases.

I agree with much that YT says - I just wish he would pick a name so that he "came alive" so to speak with the rest of us. It is not unusual, as we have seen on the board on many occasions, for men to resent the double standards displayed by so many schools in the past, and the very dark motives of some of the teachers concerned.

Comment by: Alan on 22nd January 2025 at 15:23
How would you feel if somebody you barely knew told you to take your bra off?.


Have you not heard about mammograms Alan?

Strangers, including a man, have asked me to remove my bra more than once in the past. I was absolutely fine with this.


I am struck by the clear similarity between yours and Yours Truly's postings on here in terms of attitude, reasoning and all round style of your arguments.

"
Comment by: Jill Paige on 22nd January 2025 at 11:01


"I've never understood boys who have medium sized average build with everything in the right proportions being worried, upset or shy about taking their tops off, whether that's in PE class or anywhere else for that matter. Could someone make me understand why it becomes such a big deal especially in the whole school and PE environment....."


Jill, a woman once asked Louis Armstrong to define " rhythm" to her. He replied "if you has to ask lady, then you ain't got it"

You say you were a teacher - they love implementing rules without any regard on how the impact individuals don't they?. We are all individuals but the educationalists tend to forget that while they are digesting the rule book.

How would you feel if somebody you barely knew told you to take your bra off?.

Sorry to be so brusque, but perhaps it might help you to answer your own question.

Hi James P,

It certainly was a double standard and a particularly glaring one given just how cold that winter was. And forcing girls to wear skirts because they were deemed 'gender-specific' was archaic.

I still think it is true though that girls' feelings were and are more likely to be shown consideration than those of boys. Also, these girls got a result in the end. Reading other posts on here, especially Kathy's, this seems to have been a fairly common thing, that schools were ultimately willing to make concessions for girls but that boys had to be made to knuckle under.

At my school the girls had to shower as well and it is only through reading this thread that I have become aware that seemingly many schools allowed girls not to shower at all while enforcing it for the boys, which is really blatant. 11-to-6-year-old boys are just as ,likely as girls of the same age group to be sensitive and self-conscious.

Your PE teacher sounds like an absolutely standard example of the breed for the time, ie. a total bastard. It really is striking just how many men who went to to school in the 1960s, '70s and '80s have recollections of irascible, tyrannical PE teachers. What was their problem? Because there obviously was one. Why were they all so angry? It's as if that generation of PE teachers had been specially bred in subterranean kennels in Mordor or somewhere and poked with sticks to make them vicious.

Regarding your 'open door, friendly chat' anecdote, it reminds me of our very first PE session where our PE teacher told us how we were to come to him if we were being bullied and that it wasn't 'grassing or squealing or whatever', and just thinking how he was absolutely the last person I would go to about being bullied. Which, as a matter of fact, I already was experiencing. You could just tell that he had only said this because he had been instructed to do so and he was obviously one of those hard men who think that victims of bullying have brought it on themselves by being weak.

Hi Jill,

It's embarrassing. It's as simple as that. It is embarrassing to be made to do PE, or any other activity, half-naked. And if you're then forced to mix with girls who are allowed to wear more clothing that makes it worse.

Those boys got on with it because they knew they had no choice and it would be useless to even complain. It doesn't mean they were okay with it.

I know everybody is different and that there will have been boys who didn't mind doing PE topless and even boys who enjoyed it. But judging by the number of male respondents on here who complain about exactly this detail from their schooldays, it plainly was an issue for a lot of boys.

How would you have felt if you had had to take those classes in your bra and knickers? Exactly.

I've never understood boys who have medium sized average build with everything in the right proportions being worried, upset or shy about taking their tops off, whether that's in PE class or anywhere else for that matter. Could someone make me understand why it becomes such a big deal especially in the whole school and PE environment.

I was a young primary school supply teacher for a period during the 1970s and 80s and remember taking children for their hour of P.E. The class was nearly always combined, outside sometimes things separated and boys went to do something different to girls but both remaining under my supervision. I had no special P.E training at all. The boys went to the school hall for P.E without their tops on with their chests bare and all the children were told they must be in their bare feet. I asked a senior teacher what he required of me and he told me. It never crossed my mind for one moment that there might have been any boys who were unhappy not being allowed to do the P.E with a top on. I do know one thing though, boys do not like to talk about their problems even at a very young age.

Yours Truly - Girls having to wear skirts on cold winters days while the boys had their long trousers on is at least one double standard example in favour of us boys at least isn't it. There are not many we can claim against the girls, although when it came to doing PE at least the girls didn't have to go either inside or outside exposed to the elements above their waists like we did in my schooldays gym & games classes.

Perhaps the most remarkable double standard sits in my old school handbook I was given on entry to comprehensive school telling me all the rules and regulations, all the do's and don'ts, all the teachers names, all our uniform expectations, all the lessons, you name it it's in it, even a map of school. Back to showers I'm afraid. Girls have the option to shower if they require one & bring a towel if required, it mentions for PE, whilst we were told - boys must shower after PE and make sure to bring a towel. Why the difference? I wouldn't have a clue if any of the girls took up their 'option' but I bet they didn't. Meanwhile us lot were rounded up and shephered in the showers rapidly when we got back from PE and watched closely while we did it.

I wanted to take the girls 'option' not to shower too. Our PE teacher said his door was always open for a friendly chat anytime so I took my opportunity to do so, went along in my lunch hour and mentioned if I could not be made to shower, if not always at least perhaps some or most of the time. Well it wasn't a friendly chat at all. I was accused of wasting his precious time being silly, told I could not opt out of showers and would do so like everyone else - all the boys that is - after PE. I was even told that if there are any more boys like me thinking of coming to him with the same question tell them not to bother. There ended our laughable friendly chat in a mere minute or so. A couple of the other boys did know I was going to ask and would have gone to him if I'd been successful. Anyway I continued showering with the class in the usual manner we all did then with each other and tolerated it rather than got used to it.

Others have been remembering that anxious first time showering with school mates. Here's mine, it will have been in late 1976 when I started at the top school in Harlow, Essex. I started at twelve. I did it twice because the teacher thought about five of us hadn't done so when we had. We came out and had towels around us but there was this boy who hadn't yet and we thought he was going to get off not doing it, so a small group, must have been five as I said, began pulling at him to get in. The PE teacher then came up and noticed us doing this and asked our small group if we'd had a shower. We said yes, he didn't believe us because we had towels around our waists and made us remove them and go back under the running water, as well as the reluctant boy we'd been pulling to try and get him to shower like we had. Because we'd been messing about like that he told us to stay under the water until he told us we could move out. The one we'd pulled at was let go. We stayed and that teacher threw the switch and turned the water slowly to cold on us and made it clear we were not to mess about in his changing room at school or upset others. The first one to move away from the stone cold water would receive an hours detention after school next day. He stood watching us, the switch was beside the showers telling us to keep our heads under properly. It was freezing cold, we made various ooh ahh noises, nobody moved and he gave up after what felt like an hour but was in all probability just a couple of minutes at most. This was my first ever time in the school showers, I did it twice, got a hot and then a cold one. We thought it was funny afterwards.

I was never too wound up or concerned about showers after PE lessons in the seventies, everyone knew that everyone did this whether you were boys or girls at school by the time you got to the age of twelve latest. I don't really get being wound up nowadays about it much either. I'm not wound up that school made me shower after PE and think it was perfectly sensible in most cases to do so. It got rid of the hang ups about being naked even in the worst of those diffident and introverted boys eventually. Someone here has just mentioned them being a rite of passage at school, I definitely agree on that one.

Rope climbing is one of those school gym things they made everyone do, not just in secondary school or even primary school but even in the first school. All the schools I went to had ropes hanging from them, including in both my first and primary schools in the hall and secondary in the actual dedicated gymnasium proper that they had. I can't remember going all the way up to the roof but I do remember climbing halfway and hanging there. Schools still have ropes these days. When I went to cast my ballot at our polling station last summer it was in a school gym and there were ropes hanging there tied up out the way. They make us all climb up ropes but almost nobody in their adult life is ever going to need or want to climb a rope for any reason at all unless they become a sailor and want to climb rigging and even that wouln't be a single loose dangling rope. Even if you were in a burning building up a couple of floors and a rope was lowered you would be going down, not up it!

Ronnie, when testing I fail to see the fairness in pitting a boy against a girl in a swimming race to test your abilities, even if she beat you.

I was made to parade around the school gym shirtless time and time again at school during a my schools from an early age. My attitude to this definitely changed when I was around about 12 or 13 years old. Many boys suddenly hit a wall at that age when things change about how we feel about ourselves and we become super aware of how we look. Although I was used to doing PE shirtless across my school years some self doubts about my body began creeping in by secondary school age when PE was taken more seriously and we were all growing up faster. I'm not especially shy but I did become aware of many of my perceived imperfections by doing shirtless secondary school PE amongst others. I was one among a number of boys who was lined up by a PE teacher and accused of having rounded shoulders which immediately gave me a hang up for years afterwards. I was also accused of running like a girl, whatever that meant.

Look, I didn't overmind doing PE shirtless but others did. It's not nice to be told to remove your clothes if you don't want to (showers even more so) or feel happy alright about it and are only giving reluctant pressured consent. But they shouldn't have done that and then made remarks about us that preyed on our minds once said.

Comment by: Ronnie on 20th January 2025 at 06:27


I think your experience, Ronnie, just sums up what a bunch of spiteful, dictatorial, petty buggers they employ as P.E. teachers - the more arrogant and insensate they are, the more they like them. I am sure even in their dotage they enjoy looking back at the misery they caused for many.

For most people, P.E.is a very small and insignificant part of their lives (unless they intend becoming professional sportsmen) yet the teachers who practice it seem to think their subject far more important, and their place within the profession more significant, than it actually is.

Hi Kathy from Maine,

Your story really says it all, doesn't it? Your school was willing to let the girls rebel but when the boys tried the same thing they had to be crushed. As a male the double standard is something you have to get used to as you go through life. Everything from how many office environments will force male employees to wear a tie while their female colleagues are allowed to wear more or less anything as long as it's not jeans or jogging bottoms, through to the brutal callousness of divorce courts, and still conscription in many countries.

'Severely strong-armed' is a very telling phrase. What methods were used to bully your male classmates into accepting the shower regime?

In my opinion, to use the threat of bad grades against a student for anything other than bad academic performance is excessive and frankly malicious. Especially since PE is utterly irrelevant to the rest of your life.

I think it was Susan Faludi who once made the observation that at the exact same time that young women were mounting protest marches under the slogan, 'my body, my choice', for young men of the same age their daily reality was 'my body, no choice'. I see that you graduated in 1965. Those of your male classmates who didn't make it to university will have been faced with being conscripted to fight in Vietnam.

I can only remember one stand-off in my school days and it also concerned a group of girls. Here in the UK all schools have always had uniforms the details of which are specified by the school. My school, along with most schools back then, had a strict 'no trousers' rule for the girls. We had several violently cold winters in the 1980s and there was an incident where several girls who had turned up in trousers because of the cold weather were immediately sent home to change into skirts. Several parents complained, pointing out that skirts and ankle socks were simply not adequate or appropriate attire in sub-zero conditions but the school just doubled down, leading to a stand-off lasting several weeks. In the end the school compromised, decreeing that from then on girls could wear trousers in severe cold weather provided that the headmaster had given prior permission to do so.

I think the rationale was that trousers were not deemed 'gender-appropriate' for girls. This was nonsensical given that a) this was the 1980s not the 1880s and girls and women had been wearing trousers for decades and b) girls were still expected to wear ties, which definitely were not gender-appropriate for girls. Go figure, as they say.

I was a stereotypical small, thin, slow, asthmatic boy with glasses so I didn't really enjoy PE at all. Always skins except for rugby and football. I was not made to look good as a skin as a child. Did the teacher care, of course not. We did rugby, swimming and cross country running in summer (skins) and winter and rounders (skins), badminton (skins) and tennis (skins) in summer. I hated rugby because I don't like physical contact and it often got quite rough; I had to take off my glasses too so I couldn't even see the ball. I disliked swimming because I was sorted into the beginners group despite the fact I was actually a fairly decent swimmer (bizarrely the sorting was done as a race over a length between two of you - I was pitted against a girl who swam competitively for the county and she beat me by something like a minute and a half) and I detested cross country because I was painfully slow at running and had no stamina. Rugby and cross country were done at the school sports fields right next to the North Sea and it was always absolutely freezing cold, windy and utterly miserable. I was completely useless at rounders because I have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever but tennis and badminton were ok I suppose. We were skins in the gym with girls and did rounders skins with girls outside. Then the showers came, they forced us to use them naked with 36 others, jostled by the bigger boys and teased quite often, even grabbed in a headlock once, told to get back in if I tried to get out too soon, the dream place of the school bully.

Although asthmatic I had to climb ropes and do everything. After many attempts I got to the top of the rope and could tap the roof high up. Then I panicked about getting down safely and got halfway down, was shouted at to move myself and fell off a long way down. Hit the mat but it didn't save my arm which was fractured. Teacher called me a stupid boy. My arm ended up in a plaster cast. Unable to do PE for a while but anyone on a medical exemption was still required to arrive at PE and change into the kit just to sit it out. Spent a couple of months as a skin (no top on - bare skin) with a plaster cast sitting watching others in gym. It was hard to change like that, so pointless and cruel and silly.

Michael W, don't mind my saying, but if there were no PE staff available at all (due to sickness or other reasons) and no written guidance for you, it seems unjustified and illogical for them to have criticised so strongly.

Please excuse my curiosity - and other posters a digression - but how did your methods of teaching languages change during your career? Does the ability to speak another language alter, subtly or otherwise, how you see the world? I am intrigued by the opportunity to hear your answer; I regret knowing only my mother tongue.

Comment by: Hamish Kempster - ex parent governor 1982-4

The profession I started in 1978 was a very different thing by 2017 when I left it Hamish, sometimes for the better, rather a lot for the worse.


Comment by: Michael W on 19th January 2025

Most non PE teachers placed in your position would have done the same. Michael. I full endorse your comment about those on the PE staff.


Comment by: Spencer on 17th January 2025

I'm very surprised you got as many as four chances there Spencer. You'd have been given a second chance only in most places. A lesson learned the hard way for you.


Comment by: Danny C on 7th January 2025

Your school was not too ususual for the 1980s. I have seen such sports days take place myself. Not everyone will be happy with such requirements, obviously. I have seen drama staged in ways you describe also.


Comment by: Yours Truly on 7th January 2025

You mention double standards. Yes, these are not imagined and are real. Women were allowed to enter boys very private areas and did so, men were not allowed to enter girls.

Comment by: Carl on 19th January 2025 at 14:15


"

Alan, do you really have to bring Hitler into these conversations? You could say that same thing about many people given authority status, PE teachers or just teachers in general are not alone in sometimes being a bit keen to over assert themselves.

Michael, nothing much you did wrong in my book there. What's interesting though is that there was presumably nobody in the class that day that told you they wished to shower and they all went off. If it had been me there I would have asked to shower becasue I was always quite keen to do so after PE. I may be a rare view but I always felt totally comfortable with such things and regarded the school changing room as a private area even with many others about. My preference in PE was always to remove any top I had on if I could practically do so and I did this voluntarily many times at school when I didn't have to and others kept them on, although our own gym spent a large amount of time shirtless anyway and I think boys looked good that way in the gym....."

Carl. As Hitler has been dead these 80 years I thought he was a fairly safe name these days. I am sorry though if it cause anybody anxiety, though I stand by what I said.

I am a little confused - you regarded the school locker room as a private space even though you had loads of other people around you, you liked to remove your shirt at every opportunity, even when you didn't have to and you think "boys looked good that way"

I see. - or at least I think I do.Clearly you enjoyed displaying yourself. Others don't. We are all different.

Alan, do you really have to bring Hitler into these conversations? You could say that same thing about many people given authority status, PE teachers or just teachers in general are not alone in sometimes being a bit keen to over assert themselves.

Michael, nothing much you did wrong in my book there. What's interesting though is that there was presumably nobody in the class that day that told you they wished to shower and they all went off. If it had been me there I would have asked to shower becasue I was always quite keen to do so after PE. I may be a rare view but I always felt totally comfortable with such things and regarded the school changing room as a private area even with many others about. My preference in PE was always to remove any top I had on if I could practically do so and I did this voluntarily many times at school when I didn't have to and others kept them on, although our own gym spent a large amount of time shirtless anyway and I think boys looked good that way in the gym. I always liked removing my top outside any time I could at school and nobody told me to put one back on. When I ran the cross country I nearly always threw my shirt off and hung it around my waist from my shorts, and some others copied this.