Burnley Grammar School

Danny - All I can think to say is thank god that was not my school. What were they thinking of?

I was at school a bit later than you, late 90's, and all we got was skins v shirts every couple of weeks. Funnily enough I feel sure I was a skin at that more often than not. Who got to be was unscientific and just a teacher pointing at you. I feel blessed that was all I had to do shirtless.

Comment by: Finn on 3rd January 2025 at 23:40
"Someone mentioned doing sports day shirtless with parental attendance. I had to do something similar in 1989."




I think you're referring to me.

You did it once, I did it 5 times, in July's of 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986, and the temperature didn't have to be hot outside either, or sunny, although it was mostly, certainly in 1983-85. I remember each one quite well.

Although my Buckinghamshire school did barechested PE all year round in gym or sports hall, and all summer long outside, I was still surprised and taken aback when we were told the actual sports day afternoon would be the same for us like in normal lessons to ourselves. Although I'd had 9 or 10 months of barechested school PE by that time and had got used to it, I didn't really want or feel any enthusiasm to face sports day in front of onlookers including my family barechested. But the choice was not mine to make and there was no escaping it. The no shirt rule at school was simply unavoidable. I think I was more anxious the second year we had sports day as I was fully aware what was in store again so I had time to get nervy about being thrust publicly out amongst all comers in just my shorts/trunks, and that was by the time I'd been doing barechested PE at the school solidly for almost two years. School sports day was like a mega sized multi task PE lesson on steroids, 4 hours of everything with a onlookers everywhere and no hiding place from your embarrassing slip ups or failures to what you looked like doing it all.

I also remember the headmaster walking around and no matter how hot it was on one of these days he was in his usual dark grey suit and highly polished black shoes with his neck tie done up perfectly, looking very important and watching everything.

What Finn says makes a whole lot of sense to me. If you're not shy and are body confident then you probably wonder what all the fuss is about. But if you are shy then things can become a major big deal, like school PE lessons in places where they made you strip right down to maybe just shorts in PE and forbade you putting tops on. Bare chests and shirtless are not for everyone. Boys in school would never dare admit it too loudly of course but many older people who've now left school far behind are able to do so from the safety of time and being adults a while and looking back evaluating things and sounding off online where they can find other likeminded people.

I don't consider myself shy at all, and I'm quite confident and think I was at school. I was athletic and fit and in good shape all through school years but I still had my moments with feelings of insecurity about myself and had all the nervousness that goes with being forced to shower at school and get naked with a lot of others. I was not bothered too much when I had to remove my top in various PE lessons, but full nudity in the school showers did create nervous tension for me, certainly in early days doing so. Most boys, whoever they are, whatever they look like, whatever they think, do not submit to school showers voluntary and do so under duress, we all knew that.

'Next to nothing on' Alan, they looked at us with nothing on, my PE teachers could probably recognise many of the class by just what was between our legs as much as above our neck!

There's not one member of my family that has seen with with nothing on since I was about 12, yet all my PE teachers did. Think about that for a moment, and it seems rather mad in so many ways.

Comment by: Finn on 3rd January 2025 at 23:40

"I was at state school in the eighties and used to get really weirded out about going shirtless for PE lessons and didn't like teachers telling me I couldn't wear the top that school provided. I always felt it should be my decision if I wished to be shirtless or not, that seemed quite a personal decision to me about myself that I didn't think anyone else had to the right to dictate....."

This is exactly my point, Finn, and especially now that you have pupils forced to stay on past 16. There is something very dubious about teachers desire to see young lads with next to nothing on, and when they loiter in changing rooms and showers.

I suspect some pupils who went to boarding or grammar schools enjoyed their subservience but the ordinary lad who goes to a state school, often much against their will at later ages, is not like that. What they wear should be their choice. I'd even extend that to school uniform (one of our local schools has a bottle green uniform which looks hideous)

I was at state school in the eighties and used to get really weirded out about going shirtless for PE lessons and didn't like teachers telling me I couldn't wear the top that school provided. I always felt it should be my decision if I wished to be shirtless or not, that seemed quite a personal decision to me about myself that I didn't think anyone else had to the right to dictate. Someone said to me back then that I must have a phobia about it. I was the same about being forced into showers with nothing on which I found an abomination that they had the right to do that with us, to strip us all naked when they said. But when someone suggested I had a phobia about being shirtless I didn't think I did, I just thought I was shy, that's all, and shyness isn't a phobia it's just a normal human condition as much as others who are greatly outgoing and carefree about themselves. I always hated being so shy about my body in those days. PE teachers didn't give a toss about any of that though. I did an enomrous amount of shirtless PE lessons. It was never essential that the boys were all shirtless in any of them, it was just a teacher choice that we did because they liked it that way and how we looked, nothing more. I'd have respected a few teachers who might have gone shirtless with us and taken the lead but none ever did this.

Someone mentioned doing sports day shirtless with parental attendance. I had to do something similar in 1989 and it was perhaps one of my most unfavourite days at that school, horrible teachers took us out like that because it was so hot on the day and decided we didn't need our PE vests and we'd be more comfortable shirtless. I tried to wear my vest and was told I had to remove it and get outside without it. I called the teacher that told me to do that every name under the sun under my breath. I hated taht I was so shy being around so many people shirtless but couldn't help the way I felt and thought everyone was looking at me like that, even though there were dozens of other boys just like me too.

Comment by: Will on 2nd January 2025 at 09:08


"I went to boarding school in the early 1970's and much of what Simon describes happened to us.....
....There was nothing unusual in all of this, it had gone on for ever."

Frankly, boarding schools are infamous for employing perverts - they have a freer run, so to speak, but with all due respect the 1970s are 50 years ago plus, surely it is time we updated our attitudes and behaviour to school students. What might have been "acceptable" back then (though, not to me and others who think like me) is not acceptable today.

I went to boarding school in the early 1970's and much of what Simon describes happened to us.

Indoor PE was always shorts only; hanging on the wall bars was common, first one to drop got more punishment (usually a run after school).

Every morning we had an early morning run, always stripped to the waist (so shorts, plimsols, no briefs, no socks).

There was nothing unusual in all of this, it had gone on for ever.

Comment by: Quentin on 1st January 2025 at 00:00


"Grammar school lads" often seem to experience Stockholm syndrome and seem to enjoy the humiliations they were subjected to, and, - with all due respect, Quentin (a really good grammar school name, that!), you seem to think that everybody should be treated as if they were in the military. Times change - it is 2025 now. Even the military has changed with the times. If this lack of empathy is typical it is a very good thing that grammar schools are on their way out.

Simon's comment from later yesterday shows just what sadistic bullies were allowed into the profession, and it is good that there is at least some protection against their abuse these days, though sadly there are still rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel.

My school was standard bare chest and bare feet in the gym in the 70s here in the UK. I had one old bastard of a PE teacher who liked hanging the class by the high up wall bars along one side of the gym if we weren't up to scratch for some reason and he would single various boys out for attention by throwing a football straight at out bare stomachs while we hung there, sometimes aching in pain with our arms outstretched above our heads. It was a form of borderline abuse. Many of us used to be very unhappy and dread this kind of casual low level, what I can only describe as violence, against us because when a grown man aims a leather football straight at your exposed body it hurts when it hits you. If he hit you and the ball made you lose your grip and fall off the bars you were in even bigger trouble.

We used to run the cross country with the same man in 1975 and that was done shirtless, white shorts and black football boots, not ideal running shoes other than on soft ground. If you slowed up he'd physically kick you up the backside and very hard. I lost count of how many times I saw this happen on cross country for the boys who struggled with it, and they wonder why so many people have such poor memories and dislike for school physical activities.

All boys should be made to do PE shirtless from an early age, and certainly by the time they are ten or eleven. It's a perfectly normal and healthy way to do physical exercise, the most normal way of the lot. Those of you that did so are the lucky ones, not hard done by.

I was a grammar lad in the 60s and did nothing but PE this way. No alternative was allowed.

Further to many of these comments about schools and going bare chested, I didn't have any brothers so didn't get any feedback like others did.

But I remember very well that I knew going to the comprehensive (1980) involved doing PE in a bare chest a lot. But I don't know how I knew this so well. I had no brothers who could tell me, no other family at my school and knew of no friends with older brothers who said anything. But I just seemed to know this, but can't account for how I would know this before actually attending the place and finding out for myself.

I had a babysitter when I was about 8 to 10 years old who came and looked after me regularly who was at my school, I think she was about 14 or 15 at the time and I do remember asking her lots of questions about the school and she told me that they always gave the youngest couple of years there the most homework and you got less the older you got.

I definitely thought ahead about what a comprehensive school would be like when I finally got there. I'd never done any bare chested PE at any of my previous schools ever, and I remember the thought of maybe doing PE lessons at the bigger school in a bare chest seemed quite a big deal indeed at the time. It seemed quite daring and bold when I actually came to do it for real quite quickly after starting the comprehensive at the age of 11. I was far more nervous about it when it happened than I thought I would be. My comprehensive was actually mandatory bare chests in gym, although I think by the final year when boys were hitting their 16th birthdays some of us were by then wearing mixed style T- shirts of our own, but I carried on regardless much the same. The teachers seemed far harder on the younger boys, I felt they mellowed as I got older.

Going bare chested for PE was ultimately alright after a while, once everyone has got the awkward out of the way, and nothing said awkward as much as mandatory showers at comprehensive school. These made me incredibly nervous. In my new class in 1980 there was someone who cried uncontrollably because the teacher was trying to make him shower and he didn't want to do it. I still remember this poor boy crying away as he was made to remove all his clothes and get in the showers. Nobody was laughing at him, we all felt so sorry for him, except our PE teacher didn't. It all seems so cruel and unnecessary now doesn't it.

The school booklet I have from 1980 details the uniforms needed for the boys and the girls, girls even had to wear ties at my school and I never thought girls suited wearing ties like the boys. In the PE uniform for boys it says that we are required to shower and must bring a towel into school on PE days but under the girls it details no such requirement for them. I don't think the girls had to shower like the boys did at my school. Unfortunately I never had a sister either, and never thought to ask the babysitter this piece of information!

I went to school 15 years before Baz, but exactly the same experience.

We had a number of PE/games teacher over my time at the school, but none allowed anything other than shorts in the gym.

Maybe because I had an older brother at the school, but I never expected anything different - in fact with my first PE lesson, all Mum packed was a pair of shorts and a towel !

We did a cross country run weekly, and again this was always shirtless. Not only did I know what happened from my brother, but it was common to see groups of boys out running in the town, and they all were always stripped to the waist (both my eventual school and other local secondary schools).

We didn't think anything of it to be honest, it was "normal".

Just thinking back through all the PE teachers I had at secondary school back in the early nineties, I can immediately count six different men and know their names off the top of my head and I think there were also a couple of others too.

Each and every one of these teachers I had for school PE had us in the secondary sports hall twice a week bare chested, the whole lot of us. We did everything in that school sports hall in our bare chests and nobody was exempt from that. Actually I can't even remember any kind of PE top inside the school sports hall, only what we wore outdoors. When we did team games we put a ribbon across one shoulder and underneath the other arm to mark us apart. I just don't remember boys like me ever wearing tops in our sports hall at secondary, just a lot of bare chests all over the place all the time.

I don't think there was anything I know of written down in that time that said we had to be bare chests in PE there at that school, although I think I sort of knew on arrival that PE would be bare chests because that was what secondary schools seemed to do lots then. But all those teachers did the same with us all and I'm sure they were not all of suspect character in telling us we must strip to bare chests in those lessons.

If I'm honest I never really gave my own bare chested state much thought at the time, I just did it. I don't even remember anyone telling us to do this, we just showed up and took our uniforms off and nothing went on our top half and out we went.

I remember the showers very well though. We always had them and were getting told to use them. I remember one poor lad who was so shy his hand seemed to be permanently glued to his groin to cover himself when he did this, so it was obviously a bit hard for some to do these things.

I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to go bare chested in a school gym, even though I've been there done it myself without a choice in the matter. People are always looking at others in some way and making judgements. The trick is not to care.

Comment by: James on 27th December 2024 at 23:00


......" A good barechested PE education provides more positives than negatives."

James, forgive me, but you come out with a ridiculous statement like that, without even bothering to explain why you think that way.

It's 2024 - nearly 2025, not 1940. Perhaps you are one of those people who think music sounds far better if the musician wears a tuxedo. The quality of the music depends on the person playing it, not what they are wearing.

There is also the question - raised more than once on here - of those P.E. teachers who enjoy watching boys showering. Now that kids have to stay on at school till they are adults, there is something highly questionable about that practice.

CRB checks or no, there are still rotten apples falling through the system. Teachers should be set limits and made to stick to them.

Len, I entirely agree. With teachers being CRB checked as far as possible now boys doing barechested PE shouldn't need to be an issue. My elder son's school has recently introduced barechested basketball for 2 sessions a month which according to my son have been popular and added something different and more of a competitive edge during games. The boys are told the week before if they're expected to remove their shirts. A good barechested PE education provides more positives than negatives.

Going back in time to my own schooldays in the 70's there's a lot of commonality with my own experience and some recent musings here, although I don't think I have ever read anything as dispiriting about old schooldays as the comments of yours here Alan and I don't think for a minute that your own school represents the normality of most schools at that time.

But I don't have to try too hard to think of one or two people who probably would have been better employed elsewhere at my own school. We had a geography teacher who dressed and looked like a tramp, grotty looking ill fitting clothing, always wore the same stuff, often brown, shirts with grubby curled up collars, and an unkempt wild beard that looked like a birds nest. This didn't stop him calling us out on the most minor infractions of our smart uniform rules however, a tie slightly undone or top button. But he got away with anything.

I had a PE teacher who always hung about shirtless in lessons and he would force anyone in his classes to remove their upper kit too and be shirtless. He even walked about school between lessons without a top on sometimes, but with a trackie jacket hung over one shoulder. He looked fat too, made the boys in his class look like prime specimens. When we went out on cross countries with him he'd actually have trouble keeping up with most of us and be out of puff. He was a heavy smoker, I saw him having a drag in his office one day with Benson & Hedges on the desk, a lighter and an ash tray. It was said he offered a sly fag to some older boys once in a while, for unspecified favours. What these favours were or how innocent no one seemed to know but his love of being around boys with bare chests in PE was well known by us kids. Other PE teachers didn't insists on shirtless PE anything like as much.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 23rd December 2024 at 20:39



Christine, you ask:

"Was anyone here administered a form of late corporal punishment in the 1980's, if so what was the reason for what was a drastic sanction by that time?"

Clearly you haven't read what I have written in the past (why should you?). I went to a very run down East London school that had long been scheduled for closure - from long before I went to it. As a result the only teaching staff it attracted were the elderly,ánd the dregs. More than one had "drink problems". No amount of Polo mints could disguise the fact. One poor old bugger gave off the permanent whiff of leaky incontinent old age. None of them displayed much awareness of personal freshness, (crumbs in hre beard, the same shirt worn all week) even the shower loving paedo P.E teacher, who by common consent was homosexual.. Not one teacher was under 50, and one or two were virtually hanging on for retirement, and resented the fact they had to drag themselves in every day. As a result the most minor matter could be greeted with a flying chalkboard eraser, a slipper or the cane - whatever came to their elderly gnarled hands first. They loathed children, especially teenage boys, which was a problem because that was all they had to teach.

You could get the cane for almost anything - even getting a smudge on your technical drawing paper - a crossing out was a very serious caning matter. Sadly the teacher concerned was a pervert, who revelled in his reputation with the cane. The sad thing was it was about the only subject I enjoyed and was good at, but you never got a word of encouragement.

I think it fair to say that our borough was not exactly noted for academic excellence, (it's what happens when a council is run by the same party decade after decade, and a load of old hangers-on stick to positions of authority like dirty glue) but remarkably our school, certainly, seemed to have no outside inspection. Our headmaster was an elderly weak man who, it was clear even to young lads was seriously ill, and so he delegated his duties to his deputy who also had a reputation for what he regarded as "toughness" but was cowardly bullying of boys. There was a famous occasion when the father of one 15 year old boy came up to the school to discuss an especially egregious example of aggression from the teacher and Mr S. hid in the playground lavatory till the boy's father was mollified by speaking to the headmaster who assured him would take action (mere words of course). The lad concerned was at pains to point out to the teacher, and anybody who would listen that his dad was a very fit triathlete, with a great interest in martial arts.

Had the school been subjected to an inspection, they would no doubt have been warned in advance, so it would have been an otiose exercise in futility. As it was, they virtually marked their own homework, and rubber stamped by a headmaster that made Joe Biden look like Tyson Fury.

I have always felt that any teacher, male or female, ought to be made to undergo vigorous psychological testing before placement at any school they worked at. At least two of ours needed psychiatric help I am sure, the others were just indifferent old hacks, hoping retirement got them before death.

It will be interesting to see if school students will be treated better in the future, since the Prime Minister's latest crackpot scheme is to give the vote to 16 year olds. Will this lead to the attitudes and behaviour of schools being modified, or will it still be us and them?.

I think doing school physical education bare chested is good because it helps promote body acceptance and our differences. I think the practice should be encouraged as widely as possible. My own twin sons used to come down to the breakfast table together and sit in bare chests eating as a family before I went to work and they went to school in their teenage years. I was always pleased by their inner confidence about who they were and never wished to discourage it. They attended a school that provided hard core physical education and much was done in bare chests according to them, now in their 30s.

Hi Christine and Jason,

Jason,

It turns out you were in the exact same school year that I was and I remember all the same things that you describe. I remember seeing other children being slapped and our infant school teachers in particular were always shouting at and even screaming at us. When I was five I fell into the clutches of a particularly evil teacher. The pretext was that I was not paying attention in class. Really I was having a hard time fitting in and especially found the social side of school life very, very challenging. I had little energy left to pay attention in class but she just decided I was a stubborn little troublemaker and acted accordingly.

Really she was just a sadist. I think she knew she had found a hapless victim who wasn't going to tell and took full advantage. I was in her class for a year, during which time she gave me the ruler across the knuckles for not doing my sums right, the ruler across the backs of my legs with my shorts pulled up, threatened me with the slipper, plus every non-physical punishment that she could devise. All this before my sixth birthday.

What was going on here was unofficial corporal punishment and 'unofficial' is the crucial phrase. As an adult I have learned that corporal punishment was only allowed under very stringently controlled circumstances and measures were put in place to control it. Going back at least as far as the early 1900s every school had a literal punishment book in which every instance of caning was to be recorded. And this is the point. Unofficial corporal punishment, so, smacking or clutching or whatever else that didn't involve caning, didn't have to be recorded. This is because it wasn't meant to ever happen, but in reality it was a handy back-door clause for teachers that weren't good enough to lead by example.

Hence the preference of teachers for such informal methods. When they slapped us and shouted at us they were actually breaking the law - but they were under no obligation to report it. . I often look back and reflect that our teachers never once made us aware that we had rights under the law ands the irony of that always gets me. They were always lecturing us about what we were obliged to do and be, but our own basic rights and entitlements were never touched on. We were constantly lectured from the age of four about how we were christians and how that meant that we had a duty to go out and be good samaritans in the local community, and yet, looking back now, the teachers telling us this were quite nasty and quite duplicitous. Which is not christian, is it?

So was the use of implements other than the school's official implement of justice. If your school had the cane you could only be assaulted with the cane. If your school had the 'slipper' which was really an adult sized gym plimsoll, you could only be struck with that and, well, you get the idea.

Christine,

I was at secondary school in the exact era you and Jason specify, so the mid-1980s. You are absolutely right: corporal punishment was being quietly retired during that period. I only ever knew my primary school had a cane because in fourth-year juniors our teacher threatened a boy with being sent to the headmaster to be caned, and he made an especial point of emphasising, in front of the whole class, that if he were caned, he would be the first kid to be caned at our primary in seven years. Which means that nobody had got beaten the whole time I was at primary.

I was not looking forward to my secondary school because I had heard ominous anecdotes about kids getting slippered and the headmistress, who was a nun, who used to give boys - only ever the boys - the strap in her office.

It turned out that my entry into that school coincided with a regime change. The nun retired, and presumably, took her strap with her, and we got a new headmaster who implemented a more humane, civilised approach. Which was much to my relief until I quickly learned that at my school it was the other kids you had to be wary of, not the teachers. But that is another story for another day.

I have one single tale of late stage corporal punishment and it isn't even from either of the schools I attended. My former best friend from primary lived just down the road, and so we kept in touch for several years, which meant I got to hear about the doings at his secondary school, which, by the sounds of it, was more middle class and traditional than mine. They still retained the cane for the boys and they used it too.
I remember my friend telling me about this boy in his year - this will have been in 1983 - who urinated into a Lucozade bottle. One of the old-type Lucozade bottles which were made out of glass, not plastic. He dropped it out of the open window of an empty first-floor classroom into a group pf passing girls, so it shattered and the girls got splattered with his pee. He had to pay the ultimate price.

I remember my friend telling me about all this in great detail. It all sounded very ritualised. He was informed he was to be caned but nothing was done that day. I think this is to make him marinade in his own fear, which is sadistic. He had a whole day to visualise what was going to happen.

The next day a male teacher took him out of class and, according to my friend, the classroom door was left open and he reckoned the gym doors were left open too. The class heard everything, the sound of the cane in operation, and the anguished howls of this poor sod. In five minutes or so he was back in class, the tears streaming down his face and not able to walk properly because he couldn't put his legs together

My friend, who, looking back, seems to have a sadistic side, found the whole thing thoroughly amusing. To me it sounded traumatic and degrading and utterly, utterly, humiliating, and it still does. .

That's a lovely thoughful post you've written Jason, and many happy returns for the big day on Wednesday.

How nice to hear your positive commentary on your primary education and especially to have such good things to say about the men who taught you, something that I've seen lacking on these pages over the time I have looked at. It's a great shame that you felt all the good work that your primary achieved with you was halted by your secondary education.

I was also interested to see you write how your favourite school was where you began doing things normally associated with secondary schools, the shower. You mentioned how your primary prepared you in that regard for the next stage of your education at secondary level. I think that is an interesting comment. Primary schools that took showers were in the minority, I believe only about a quarter of them actively did so at some point, but you saw this as a net benefit for further along later. Very interesting.

Perhaps the most disappointing was your recollection of the infants school as I call a first school and how they were more commonly known at the time. The things you say would be very much of the time. This was a time of course when parents were probably smacking their own children that age almost every day for some reason or another, and the teachers would follow suit, acting as defacto parents and expected to discipline as such when in school. Your comment about feeling it was harsh at that school is something I have heard before, but mainly at secondary level schooling actually.

I'm not sure why, and it wasn't obvious at the time, only in hindsight somewhat, that a different type of attitude crept into education in the early 1970's and prevailed throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's before a change began to happen just as I began with Ofsted in 1996. I've seen a number of documentaries following schools in those days and often come away shocked and surprised at what I saw and what was openly shown, and I should be the last person to feel surprised at what goes on in schools as I've been around them much of my life both as child and adult.

Last year I watched a fly on the wall documentary following a school for a term back in 1982 and saw how a group of teenage boys were given corporal punishment and my immediate reaction was surprise as it was 1982 and we tend to think of that being a 1950's and 1960's thing at most recent. Because although corporal punishment was finally abolished in the UK in the latter half of the 1980's, someone said 1987, I think it was 1986 actually, although I may be wrong, I ought to know, for quite a number of years beforehand many schools effectively abolished it anyway and refused to do so and corporal punishment in the 1980's was comparitively rare as reported by schools. Except there was one notorious example of a school in this period which went against the prevailing winds of change and was known to make common use even in the 1980's which helped speed up the ultimate ban that came into place. Was anyone here administered a form of late corporal punishment in the 1980's, if so what was the reason for what was a drastic sanction by that time?

Again, many happy returns Jason, and a merry Christmas to all.

There are some really familiar comments on here that ring true to me in so many different ways.

I was born Christmas Day in December 1970, started school in 1975. There is something about what you've said John that doesn't just apply to the older school years but even the youngest. I so wish I could say I had lovely memories of when I started school when I was only a 5 year old but although there are plenty, there are also strong memories of things that used to happen to us as 5 and 6 year olds like regular smackings from teachers (women) for very small things. For example, in a music lesson I was unable to play the recorder properly and was pulled up off the floor where we were sitting, as we always did in music, and shaken like a rag doll by a teacher and slapped repeatedly over the legs. Instead of patience and encouragement that was the result instead, and she was not alone. Lots of teachers seemed to do that top young children in those days, and they were women.

The same teacher who took us for music at that tender age in first school also took music and movement, and boys had to stand at our desks and take everything off down to our underpants and file into the hall just like that. Even the girls did, so there was no double standard going on, something I saw being written about recently a few pages back. Even 6 and 7 year olds can feel acute discomfort in that situation and did so. I remember it feeling very harsh.

At that school most of us simply left our plimsoll bags in the cloak room on a hook all week. It was plimsolls and shorts for the boys in a PE lesson. We never did any PE outside over the autumn and winter at all. When spring and summer came we went out sometimes or stayed in, but either way, boys wore their plimsolls and shorts and not a lot else. The girls in PE had a leotard mostly from memory, maybe a few had shorts and a top. The music teacher didn't take any actual proper PE so girls wore tops with the other teacher. It's rather amusing to think that the music teacher made the girls wear less than the lady who took our PE.

But even at first school I can easily think of teachers always shouting, shaking and slapping us and boys drilled into the whole no shirts rules from the very beginning, all overseen by women, not a man in sight.

My fondest time in school was at my primary school. In primary scchool which I started in 1978 I started to realsie what types of physical activity I really liked and was half decent at, which was field sports athletics type things, such as high jumping and long jumping. I always enjoyed the sand of the long jump. We even played in it during lunchtimes and were allowed to as long as we didn't spread the sand everywhere. The teachers were much more likeable and I encountered a number of male teachers for the first time and that was definitely a positive. It was nice to have men about school I thought, and they were great when with us for PE. At primary the boys never went shirtless for PE, we always wore a vest, much the same inside and out. If it was a bit cold out in winter we were actually allowed to bring a long sleeved sweater or sweatshirt of our choice to keep a bit warmer, or of course still just go with the vest only. My own introduction to communal school showers came before secondary level, while still at primary in I think it would have been 1980 just as I hit ten years old. This proved to be quite a handy preparation for the rigours of secondary school. I don't remember being nervous about it, I think I was rather more curious about what it would actually be like. What I do remember is that nobody wanted to be the first to drop their underwear and 'show their willy' to the others, and when the first boy did this someone said 'well done' and suddenly everyone else was comfortable to do the same and did, and in we all went to have a shower with each other, something like 12 of us. Our male teacher actually stood outside the door and didn't even watch us once he knew we were in. We stayed in so long enjoying the experience that he had to p[op his head in the door and tell us to get back out! Ten year olds and water mix really well, and once the nerves had been overcome the novelty of us all being naked became amusing too I suppose. But we were a small class group and mostly friendly to each other so this may have made a big difference, and the teachers treated us very well and respectfully, so that helped too.

Then you leave a place like that and it';s up to secondary school, which I began in 1982. Suddenly we were all being treated as if we were being trained for the Olympics or something. It all became so much more serious, and a whole lot less enjoyable for long periods of time. Secondary school saw an instant return back to doing PE shirtless in their gym. It wasn't entirely clear this would be the case until I started. But from the very first gym lesson it was shirtless. I remember the whole situation being so rigid, do this, do that. Everyone was expected to be great at the same things, which meant everything from ropes to rugby, which is completely unrealistic isn't it. The teachers were the masters of some quite brutal put downs, didn't like boys who didn't excel easily and didn't hide the fact. Although nobody was forced to run the cross country at secondary school without a top on, I did run with some who discarded it along the way at times. Boys were often told we couldn't wear tops outside in summer, which was when I did the things I liked most, although cricket bored me senseless. We played cricket shirtless on a hot day once and I spent the entire time on the fringes of the school field just standing aimlessly about fielding and probably getting sunburnt shoulders. Showers were compulsory up to fifth form and unlike my primary school, the secondary school teachers watched over us quite a lot and took great delight in policing of the school showers and making sure we all did this to their exacting standards.

So to sum up, my primary school lit the enthusiasm I had for physical activity and gave me enjoyment while my secondary school that followed did it's very best to remove that enthusiasm again, and that is a sorry situation that so very many adults tell, how PE put them off exercise for life. Not quite in my case though.

The only swimming I ever did was at primary school too, why don't secondary schools do swimming as much, mine never did any.

Well I was a boy (in the UK) in the 1970s. I was 3 when the decade began and 13 when it ended. It had pros and cons compared with today’s childhood, but for me the pros outweighed the cons.

I’d say a positive part of it was that we were allowed more freedom (outside of school) than today’s children are. After the age of about 7, me and my friends would be outdoors and away from adult supervision for hours on end. Sometimes we would wander quite far (often several miles after the age of 11). Our parents would sometimes get worried if we came home a bit later than expected, but a lot of today’s parents seem far more paranoid about letting their children wander, even when the kids are in their teens.

A downside of being a 1970s boy was that it was sort of “tougher” than today, and there was a stronger expectation that you should conform to “masculine” stereotypes. There was less sympathy if you got bullied than there is today, and adults (including teachers) would often say things like “Fight your own battles” or “Stand up for yourself” if you complained about being bullied. And teachers themselves got away with a lot more than they would now. Corporal punishment in British state schools was legal until 1987, and many of the teachers at the comprehensive school (UK equivalent of high school) I went to had no inhibitions about using it!

Going in the showers was applied to all and very firmly enforced. They didn't worry about anyone not fancying being naked to do it, you had to and that was that. I did compulsory skins (shirtless) PE at my comprehensive ALL the time inside. We even had to walk to gym like it across school. Even though some of this might still exist, the culture shift has been dramatic.

But I'd still take being a kid back then, rather than a kid addicted to a small screen and sitting indoors and with paranoid parents scared to let them out of sight.

My flight or fight mechanism kicked in with me the first time I was confronted with a very unexpected and to me at the time hideously unwelcome requirement that I was unable to refuse to go shirtless at school for PE. I strongly wanted to take flight out of the situation. But like anyone else I went quiet and did as I was told and removed my top, feeling really quite strangely vulnerable about it and in desperate need to get something over my body as quick again as I could, without luck. I thought I would never change that attitude and for a couple of lessons I felt exactly the same, until something miraculous happened and for no obvious reason about three or four PE lessons later I realised I wasn't worrying anymore and was actually beginning to like it, which came as a great surprise to me I can tell you. I started to feel really rather confident being shirtless at school but couldn't think why I'd changed. Being forced into doing PE lessons mandatory shirtless with the rest of class made me confront my own fears and overcome them quite quickly. I think this was because I discovered that nobody was laughing at me without a top on or even staring at me much, and I wasn't laughing at them or thinking bad things about them and how they looked either. It all ended up feeling and being very normal and even enjoyable to some extent. I really do think that when you got a group of shirtless boys together in such situations then we bonded together in some strange way that we would not have done if we were all wearing our own choice of tops and brand names emblazoned over us. It's not hard to understand why things like running groups with fully grown adults seem to be the same.

I don't think I ever missed a PE lesson at school ever but I do remember the handing over of various notes to exasperated teachers who had to decide whether to accept them or not. Running away from your fears is never the answer. I'd have run away from mine at school if I'd been given the slightest chance to, and that would have been a mistake. Being forced to do something actually did me good.

Good to hear the latest update on the shirtless running Craig, you're far braver than me. I'm impressed you have so many takers at this time of year, I'd accept in the summer but not much would persuade me right now!

I still go out with our 'bareskin runners' whatsapp group and earlier in 2024 I mentioned my aim to get up to 50 members by the end of the year. I think we had about 33 at the time early in the summer months. We gained 7 new members in November alone, which was remarkable bearing in mind the time of year doesn't lend itself to naturally wanting to go running shirtless and isn't something people are likely to be thinking of at this time of year. We gained another 2 so far this month and that took us to 51 on our group and so we have reached the target I set. Now I'm hoping we can maybe get to 100 with another 50 over the next year.

During the summer we ran a couple of times a week, a couple of times managing a group of 20 and 23 runners. This month we've done 3 runs so far, a bit shorter than in the summer for obvious reasons although it has not been a cold month by any means. Our biggest bareskin run this month has been ten days ago when we got together 8 runners, including our 2 latest members. Both these guys were friends and one encouraged the other to join and come along even though he admitted he had never been shirtless in public as an adult and he's 36 years old. He was incredibly nervous I could tell and I thought he was going to back out at one point as he looked like he regretted coming along but seeing the rest of us made him brave it out and by the end he was incredibly pumped up. He was telling me as we ran how he disliked PE at school and disliked removing his shirt, and so I said 'but here you are choosing to run and without a top on, and outdoors two weeks before Christmas, how's that make you feel?'. He was empowered he told me.

So with 51 members of our bareskin runners and growing, nobody has yet left the group and nobody has backed out, everyone has come back and done it again and I'm sure our latest member will do so as well.

I came back from a pairs run tonight with a very close friend and colleague my own age and we ran three miles over about 20 minutes and the air temperature was a crisp three degrees celsius, loved it.

Ian Garvey 18th December 2024 0258

I always think teachers who insisted on that no pants rule, then compounded their fetish by "inspecting" the boys were invariably paedophiles, and were hiding behind "rules" to indulge their perversion with a cloak of officialdom were the lowest of the low.

As I always say it would be nice to think the dirty old men teachers were a thing of the past, but they are still around - bullies and misfits. Who teaches the teachers?

https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/24781470.engayne-primary-school-upminster-teacher-sent-vile-messages/?dicbo=v2-XsJjfkv

Correction:
I meant to say 'Gross indecency', not 'misconduct'.

I'm a grammar schoolboy out of the swinging sixties, leaving school in 1968.

I enjoyed PE, but it was very dependant on who took you and for what. In the gym I remember three particular male teachers, two of them were marvellous, great fun, interested, sensible, caring, and all that. They were full of positive encouragement and always wrote good things up about many of us, even if we were not the greatest at something, they'd always find a way of saying something positive either verbally or in writing.

But that was two out of three. The other one was nothing like those two. It was one of those school gyms like many speak of and like the photograph illustrates, where boys turned out for PE in white shorts and no more, shirtless and without shoes or socks on, and the ever so strange no underpants rule. Only the shorts on. Which in practice didn't amount to a great big deal anyway with two of our gym teachers who made no big issue of the school rule on that and never much drew attention to it other than the occasional gentle reminder to one or two. But the third teacher went far further. Every time we had the third man for gym PE from the age of 11 plus we would line up obediently for him along the gym wall and he would start by ticking a register, which none of the others did, and then walk along and stretch open quite widely the elastic on our shorts and peer down into them to check we had not kept our pants on, in the process 'checking us all out' very closely and personally, at times almost touching us with the back of his fingers. He would then allow the elastic to snap back at the waist quickly. I think our PE gym had about 20 to 25 boys and he did the same to all of us. I remember he seemed to linger for that extra second too long while he did it. A quite humiliating situation. We knew he was going to do this every time we had him, even if he had seen clearly some of us not put our pants on under our shorts. Nobody ever did anyway, we knew the rule on that, so the checking was a complete waste of time.

I think there was a certain naivety about this when we were younger but as we got older it continued and by fourteen I remember rumours about him beginning to circulate privately among us, and if they did in our class then I'm sure they must have done in other classes around school too if he was doing the same with them, which is a good bet he was.

Then in the early 70's about five years after I'd left school I heard that a teacher from my grammar school had been caught and convicted of an act of gross misconduct in a public lavatory and fined £10. Everything began to make sense then and it made my skin crawl to think he was abusing a school rule to gain some sort of personal satisfaction over every single one of us in the PE gym class. But at the time that conviction did not result in his immediate dismissal from his job, that only came some time later so I was to hear, possibly another year or two. Where he went or what he did after that I have no idea, he wasn't an old teacher.

Since the internet became a thing and finding people became easier I've tried to find out if I can get any further information but without success, he had a rather common name, but although I left school in the late 60's I think he could still only be in his mid to late 80's right now if alive, certainly 90 tops.

When we showered, as we had to, he was the only PE teacher who watched us and sometimes joined us too, the others all let us get on with it and barely took any notice of us as long as they knew we'd gone in. He was even known to rub the backs of certain boys in the shower and massage their legs if they complained of muscle strain. Nobody else did this, if there was a problem you were given a time to go and see the school doctor, either immediately if urgent or later if not. That was the rulebook.

What I'm saying here is probably not even that unusual is it. Grammar school, boarding school, secondary school, many of us had great teachers with a more problematic character stuck in the mix among them.

My children have all been educated privately at the same school. One is currently a pupil aged fifteen. Under the physical education section of both the printed literature and the school online site the full provision is explained clearly and very directly, from this written verbatim - Male pupils do physical education (P.E) in bare chests in school gymnasium unless directed otherwise.
Further along, and placed in bold type - Showering is mandatory after ALL physical education (P.E) classes on the timetable.

I have no concerns whatsoever about such requirements, none.

Many things are now required on the P.E buy list, including shin pads and gum shields for instance, not just clothing items or types of boots and trainers.

It's a traditional school that has been in existence for a very long time and has an outstanding inspection report that could not be bettered. I know my children's confidence increased there and the attention to personal self discipline they give them is welcome.