Burnley Grammar School

Going back to spring 1985 time. We had a rather weird chemistry teacher at my school. He took my lessons for a couple of years. I say weird because he was a really old fashioned curmudgeon even though he was not really all that old. Bearded with national health circular specs and never seen taking our lesson in anything other than his long white lab coat he hung over his suit and tie. He always came across as permanently exasperated at everyone and everything.

He also ran the school tuck shop and had access to a lot of sweets which he would use as currency to buy pupils acquiescence to certain requests he would make from time to time.

One time I was in one of his chemistry lessons and we were all gathered around the main desk up front to view some experiment with a heap of equipment set up. The kind of stuff that always involved test tubes, bunsens, gases and liquids changing colour or making a right pong.

Before he got going he asked for a "strong volunteer with muscles" to hold some of the equipment aloft for a period during the experiment. Some hands went up and I remember a lad called Gary getting picked. He went up and then got asked by my chemistry teacher to prove he had strong enough muscles to hold part of the experiment up for a minute or two above the desk. Next thing he's actually telling him to undo his tie and take his shirt completely off while he does the experiment demonstration. You didn't tend to argue with this chemistry teacher of ours, the look on Gary's face was a picture and he quite clearly didn't want to but reluctantly got his shirt off in the chemistry lesson for the next five minutes, to much amused mocking from quite a few and wise cracks from a girl or two in the mixed class. A few moments later he wanted another volunteer "with muscles" again to hold another part of the experiment up alongside Gary still doing his part. This time no hands went up and so he resorted to using his tuck shop currency to get another lad from class up and someone was brought off with the promise of a mars bar to get their shirt off as well while doing this chemistry experiment. It was very weird to see these two from class standing there aiding an experiment in a chemistry lesson without their shirts on as we all looked on. It kind of distracted from the actual purpose of what we were doing. I remember Gary who'd volunteered first ended up with a couple of chocolate bars from the tuck shop.

A very weird teacher who used the tuck shop to bribe boys to get their shirts off like that. I think he may have just enjoyed embarrassing people and know he had no problem belittling anyone in various ways all the time. What made his request all the stranger was he made both lads he called up to aid him wear large protective clear goggles over their eyes at the same time as telling them to remove their shirts to prove their muscle strength, thus leaving their bodies completely unprotected from any chemical mishap that might occur.

Trying to get inside the heads of some teachers was an impossible task.

Trevor - and not just "men and boys of all ages". Round here, - English East Midlands- many women and girls are out and about in front of males with their tops off. "My bra is enough" seems to be this summer's fashion statement.

With this hot weather now starting up no doubt there will be many boys and men of all ages taking off their tops in public. Are we supposed to ban that, in the way some schools now want boys to cover their bodies in swimming lessons?

You didn't need to re-explain yourself to me Robert, I think anyone sensible would understand things exactly as you've gone on to explain them. Just old fashioned good old common sense which isn't as abundant as it used to be with some among us.

Luke - are you against boys in school stripping their tops off in school in front of girls? Is it really such a big deal to do that at such a young age or even a bit older. The boy with the scar may have felt different I'll give you that though.

If you had a big scar or birthmark on the upper body or other disfigurement should that have always meant in school anyone should have been allowed to remain covered in situations where they would have been expected to wear nothing on top, such as PE? Speaking as someone with an appendicitis scar I had at a young age.

I saw the comment about middle school showers and wonder if anyone can beat the age I started to. I was 8 years and 2 months old when I started middle school, born in late July and by mid September of the year I started middle school, 1975, I had my first shower after a P.E lesson at school and continued doing so most weeks thereafter.

I never knew it was going to happen until it happened, nobody had told me. I just remember one day we finished our lesson, some running and jumping outside, and the shower in the corner of the changing room was switched on and we had to go and use it with each other and we had to dry ourselves with our P.E tops or a paper sheet because we did not have a towel that time. I also remember a boy having a really big cry about being confronted with it and getting let off that once. The teacher was female that year. I didn't seem to mind very much and got used to communal class nudity from an early age which at least prevented me getting any major hang ups about such things later on. The teacher would stand at the door ajar half keeping an eye on us all.

It's amazing just how normal it all seemed. It was just another one of those things you did in school without giving it much thought. Everybody was doing it, both boys and also girls. I'm now 55 and there surely can't be anyone my age, or perhaps from about 30-35 who went through school, whatever school they attended, state or private, wherever it was, who didn't shower weekly as part of the P.E aftercare routine. It was literally all of us wasn't it and can anyone say they ever saw people refuse to do it?

I used to have two P.E lessons each week at middle school and then three at comprehensive, plus we were encouraged to attend regular after school sport club events which I did when older in comprehensive. Even though these were after the school day had ended and sometimes on the weekend on a Saturday, we would still be told to shower even though technically it was in what was effectively our own time. Nobody seemed to complain.

I stayed on at school and did two years in the sixth, and would often use my free periods in the sixth to do P.E or even help supervise or take part with younger years. In the sixth if we had taken part voluntary with a P.E lesson we could be asked to supervise the changing room and as a 17 year old I remember two or three times sharing the shower with third years about three years younger than me even though it was not something those in the sixth had to do anymore but I was more than used to it. Doing P.E and not ending it with a shower didn't feel normal or clean to me, it was automatic just to do so.

I saw the You Tube clip that has been spoken about a lot on here. I would have done the same as those boys did in front of the camera and not thought a great deal about it. If I now had the ability to look back at myself on film like that as a kid from my own middle school age 8/11 and see my undeveloped body with me and my friends tiny pre-pubescent willies wiggling as we walked out the shower I think I'd be having a good smile about it all, certainly not getting too upset at the sight and thinking how dreadful they made us do such things like that back in the 70s.

Let's not demonise all this kind of thing too much. Nearly all of us over a certain age did all this and nearly all of us came out of it just fine and are not feeling mentally scarred for life by it, even if lots have strong memories of doing it and how they felt.

I think it's the clammed up attitudes now that are more of a problem than those a few years ago on the 20th century methods.

Let me clarify myself as I knew some of my previous comments would cause some annoyance on here for some.

In a hypothetical situation if my class had been the one the film crew had as their subject matter like on that Good Health edition I would have had no issues with the filming exactly as it came over on that video. I would have expected everyone in that class that day to have behaved exactly the same as they normally did irrespective of the camera being present. I would not have expected to have gone around asking each boy individually if they were alright about it and gain their active consent. I would have simply told them what to do and expected it of them all with no fussing about from anyone.

I would have told them all to get on with things, ignore the camera and the crew, change and shower as normal and that's it. Some have interpreted this as me actually choosing to force boys in a class of mine to shower naked in front of the camera like in that video of Good Health schools televsion.

That is NOT the case.

If any one of my own class in that situation, or a number of them, or all of them, had expressed their concerns and desire not to be placed in such a situation in front of a camera for a programme intended for broadcast mostly for the school community, albeit on national televsion for anyone to view, then I would never have pushed them into doing so for a moment. Anyone would have been able to speak freely and tell me, or anyone else connected to it, the film maker or whoever else, that they did not wish to appear. It would have been respected.

Now that probably happened at the school in question in that video. I sense that there is a good chance that some boys might have declined to be filmed naked in the shower or in the changing room, or even the gym and so we never saw them at all and that there wishes were respected. I'd also say that was probably extended to the actual PE lesson itself, for both the boys and girls in the gymnasium.

What I'm not saying is that those who took part in Good Health were volunteers, they probably were not as such. Rather that anyone would have actively had to make a decision that they did not wish to take part and give their reason if they didn't and having done so I'm quite sure their wish would have been respected without pressure on them.

But do you know what, I would be very surprised if many, if any at all actually piped up an objection at all. I bet most of them loved the fact they were going to end up on television, yes even with their clothes off. At the ages of ten or eleven those ages don't tend to think ahead too deeply about these issues.

So I can assure anyone reading that nobody, not me, or anyone would be using compulsion against anyone in that situation. Compulsion was only used in normal lessons and there is nothing wrong with that. Showering and being made to do it against the will in school does have a long hold in many ex pupils memories I've long realised.

There are a number of these on You-Tube, all featuring the same cast of kids, some indoors and at least one outdoors. A boat in the background of the stage seems to be a common feature, as does the caption in Chinese, 2020?????????????? ? ???, which Google translates as "2020 Coconut Oil Elementary School Ethnic Experiment October Results Published - Grade 3".

I wonder if the dance action depicts some form of maritime expedition, with the scantily clad boys representing warriors or seafarers, stripped for action, while the more modestly dressed girls are the "stay at home" mums, looking after the kids while their menfolk are away.

I'm sure someone came on here some months ago and mentioned doing something like that at school on stage against their will didn't they where all the boys were stripped off like that in front of everyone else. Can anyone remember the details or who it was?

A while back, there was a comment that spoke of Taiwanese schools forcing their male students to strip to the waist in the presence of their female classmates. That comment provided photos as proof. Now, there is video evidence to corroborate, though this may not necessarily be the same school.

https://youtu.be/idcPPqXSf5c?t=103

This seems to be a dancing choir of boys and girls. While the girls are appropriately clothed as expected, the boys right next to them are all stripped to the waist and to the hip, wearing nothing but a skimpy loincloth even though the room appears to be air conditioned. One of the boys standing barely an inch away from his female classmate has a prominent scar on his abdomen, yet he is stripped to the waist all the same.

Given the fact that he spends a lot of time staring down at his exposed scar, could this indicate discomfort with the way he's dressed? Did he or the other boys agree to this?

Re: Good Health - it surprises me that none of the pupils in that have yet searched it out and written a comment underneath, especially some of those boys, now men of course. I don't think I'd forget the day that TV came to school in those circumstances.

I agree with Hugh and Jason. I think that Robert has been unfairly criticised. When I first saw the TV programme I couldn't really see much wrong with it. I do believe that the critics have applied today's standards to the past. The answer to the question Jason asked in his first paragraph is surely an increased concern with child protection plus a touch of traditional British anxiety about nudity, which would have been absent if this conversation had taken place in those northern European countries where nudity is regarded in a more matter of fact way.

I was at a boys' grammar school in the '60s. We had a decent lot of schoolmasters who expected us to do as we were told. We didn't think we had rights so we didn't worry about them being infringed. By today's standards it was tough, but having to get on with things without making a fuss made us resilient. As for communal nudity, we quickly got used to it and didn't pay much attention to each other, which helped me to be less self-conscious about my skinny body.

If I had been mistreated my parents would have been the first to complain; but if I had fussed about nude showers my kindly father would have just laughed. But then he had a wartime soldier's perspective of what did and did not matter in life. In retrospect, how right he was.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 30th June 2022 at 23:52

Thank you for your informative post, you have encapsulated perfectly what I was trying to convey and done a much better job.

I think too many here don't understand the scale of change that came about starting initially in the late 1980s - remember back then, no one believed that children really were abused in any context at all. I can remember being very sceptical when I first heard of doctors finding cases and that was the Cleveland case in 1987 where there was much wrong with the diagnosis and it was found after a judicial investigation that the case was flawed however it remained around and people became more alert to the possibilities.

To suggest that anyone really had a concept of child abuse in the 1960s, 1970s and first half of the 1980s is living in cloud cuckoo land, it just wasn't true.

When I moved from the navy to general practice, an old and very experience GP who is long dead told me that a lot of children were 'shirkers' and very few parents had anything but their child's best interests at heart and teachers the same. If he had a lad in front of him who was shirking, he wasn't averse to writing 'six of the best' on the prescription and handing it to the lad's father. I suspect on most occasions he did that it's what happened.

There would have been a few who were not well motivated, parents, teachers and strangers but they were a few. I doubt many PE teachers even noticed naked lads being naked - to try to explain, when you work in any environment you get used to it and for anyone working in healthcare, bare flesh is quite normal. You really don't notice after a while and I would imagine in the world of sport it's very much the same, you just get used to it.

So while there are those who might be uncomfortable, you are in a small minority, most would really not be that bothered and most would not have the problem you are verbalising. Try please to get used to that idea.

Harry, i like your final paragraph. Brings back memories of going to the fields during the school holidays. Taking lunch with us . A group of mixed aged boys stripping of and jumping into the nearby lake without a stitch on, and not worrying about who was around at the time.
As far as I know our parents thought that as we were all together there was "safety in numbers" and no one ever did bother us.

I'll go along with everything Robert said. Knock me back if you like for saying it. I saw nothing wrong with that programme either. Nudity was always expected in schools as part of the whole P.E regime at senior level and even some primary levels as some have pointed out just recently. When did it start to become such a big deal and more importantly why did it? I'd see no reason to put up with lads getting worked up over a camera taking a few seconds of film. I don't think the mere fact of nudity in itself should preclude boys from doing what they are told in that kind of situation. It's all above board. I'd make them do it, not offer choices and start negotiating. They're in school and it would actually be a good hard life lesson to learn that you have to do things in life that you don't want to or that make you uncomfortable.

I always thought having a shower after P.E was a good physical education in itself actually. It gave me the opportunity to see others and notice that while we are all basically much the same we also have differences in our make up that are all quite normal. One thing I've noticed is that nobody ever dares admit to like using the school communal shower as an experience, so let me be the first to break that taboo, and no I'm not same sex orientated.

Any teacher of any subject, not just the physical one, who was indifferent to what his/her pupils thoughts and anxieties were should simply not be in the profession and would be a bloody fool.

I don't think Robert you are that fool. I think you are writing in more general terms of back in the day rather than a personal own view but clarification would be ideal either way.

Robert Coulson - thank you for your helpful and accurate contribution. Clearly both you and Hugh were not only around in those dim and distant days as was I but you both actually remember how things were then. It is sad that some people still want to judge times gone by by todays standards.
I, too, have often wished we could combine the best of previous eras with the best of today though I'm not sure how much would come from either.

Our teacher contributor on here said the following;

"The concept of personal privacy or private space will not have even come into the equation, neither will the individual personal thoughts of any of the boys to any great degree."

You are effectively saying the youngsters had no voice then by implication, even if asked to undertake something so significant revolving around their personal selves, their privacy and how they would be seen well beyond the school gates, in other schools and homes around the country.

In your workplace do you think your own privacy and personal space and thoughts were irrelevant too? No they were not as an adult so why should they be as a youngster. Surely that should be even more important, not less or non existent.

The same words in the same post yet people can often interpret what they read quite differently. I refer to Robert's excellent last contribution, and the belligerent tone of Christy's response to it.

First of all, who can argue with such direct honesty.

I didn't read Robert as saying he'd actively force anybody to do anything. All I read was that he would have expected the class to do so without making a fuss and follow his instruction and as he said 'just get on with it'. But that's not the same as assuming he would have forced any boys in his class to take a filmed shower for a TV show if they objected. Of course he wouldn't even in the dark ages as some think of anything before about 1990.

I may be quite wrong here but I think if he had some in class who were very unhappy he would have set them aside completely. If the whole class had the same view then the programme makers would simply have had to do something else and drop that part. No film maker was going to want under age subjects placed into such a situation they were very unhappy about and I'm sure no teacher would either, even in the days of the 70's and 80's.

I hope I'm not being naive in saying that. Perhaps Robert would like to agree with me and clarify my reading of his comments. If he comes back and says he would have compelled a class of his to provide the kind of shower footage from Good Health against their will if some or all had resisted it then I condemn that without a doubt.

Another thing worthy of a mention is that back then in school we did all seem to just get on with it a lot of the time and we did bow to authority figures and accept what they said to us unquestioningly even if many of us quietly to ourselves didn't like something. The days when we respected teachers, police, doctors. Looking at the Lodge Middle School video of them all I'm sure that's how it was with that lot, they got their heads down and got on with it and trusted their teachers. There are probably quite a few other examples out there of that kind of thing, undiscovered or forgotten about.

Very many years ago when every summer seemed to go on forever and the sun always seemed to shine brightly, or so our memories think, I would go along to a nearby weir close to home with a group of others, sometimes up to a dozen or so, some a bit older, some a bit younger, some siblings, ages around 8 to 14 and we'd kick everything off and pile it up and go bathing and splashing about in this weir with absolutely nothing on. Just local lads from our area, not even all at the same schools or anything. It was actually rather a dangerous weir but good fun. On a couple of occasions we got shouted at to all get out by whoever looked out for the area but the next day would often go back and do the same. We couldn't wait to get our stuff off and jump in. It was a public area, anyone could see us. We didn't get in trouble for being naked but for doing something in a slightly unsafe place. It was the kind of thing I always thought most boys were all about, having fun and not giving a damn.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 30th June 2022 at 23:52

Thank you for your candid appraisal of times past, it's what I remember more or less exactly.

Again, I see snowflakes who want to apply today's standards have already started whining and whinging about how things used to be. Give up and save your faux outrage, you can't change the past and it wasn't as bad as you would like to portray it. We grew up, healthy, happy lads.

Quelle surprise!

It's just ex-teachers proving everything we thought about some of them. He proves the words in my last post perfectly.

It is what he's saying though. Troubling isn't it.

It's not teachers like Coulson who are on telly like that though is it, repeated ad infinitum and now online.

Let me get this right, I've read it through a couple of times, is this teacher (Robert Coulson) actually saying he'd have mandated (let's just say forced) his own class to do the same as in that schools health tv show during those years. Just hang on here a minute, you're employed to provide an education, a PE lesson or whatever else you teach, not to provide real life stripped off showering extras for tv companies and then tell the kids they have to comply (naked on tv!) to some director/producers wishes over and above the education you are there to provide. You'd be exceeding your permitted duties by a mile and have no right to make such demands. Diabolical! If you'd done that to me against my wishes I'd be up for taking some retrospective legal action believe me. I don't think any of the boys in the tv show were forced to do anything they didn't like and I'm sure they all chose to take part like they did. I just cannot get my head around the prospect they might have been forced by that teacher into the showering scenes.

Well at least you have been very frank and forthright with your opinion Robert and in so many ways nothing about what you have said really comes as any great surprise to me and probably doesn't to many others even though when you write it down in the way you have it does seem almost too brutally honest in parts. But there is no point sanitising the past to spare current snowflakey ideas, we have to confront it honestly.

It rather proves the point that was made by Tom on 26th June when he said - "The short 'Good Health' documentary showcases a very stark reality from school back then which was that boys privacy was more or less irrelevant and of no consequence whatsoever to anybody at all. It literally lays that philosophy bare for all to see."

A couple of my own PE teachers came into my mind as I read your words Robert and I feel they were very much like you with the style you wrote about things, me being a late 80's teenage schoolboy. With a couple of my own PE teachers after the age of 13 I always felt they didn't treat me as an individual but just as one of many the same, just another brick in the wall as the song goes, expecting the same outcomes from us all no matter what kind of people we were. Fodder just being processed through the system and spat out the other end.

I'm very familiar with the old ITV/ATV Good Health educational series which was a very long running schools strand over many years from the 1970's until the 1990's on dozens of different topics. I think it switched across to Channel 4 in the later years. Another one was Scene which also ran for a similar length of time and tackled many difficult issues over a similar kind of parallel time frame.

There has been a lot of discussion about the one particular series subject featuring health, fitness and body issues. I took note of you Graham and respect your own professional opinion. But I'd like to add mine which will diverge from what appears a majority consensus here.

There was nothing in the Fit & Healthy edition of Good Health that I think anyone should be concerned about. I include within that the detailed showering and brief full frontal male nudity that was shown. That would not have been a problem for anyone in authority some 40 years ago. As long as I knew what to expect and had been told beforehand I would have not have been concerned by such filming taking place with proper supervision. The school would have given permission to film probably with reference at governor level in some way. Loco parentis has been mentioned and that's a very important point. I would not have expected any direct parental consent to be presumed or even likely. Yes, really I would not. In the school I would have expected the class to take part without too many questions, or volunteers if asked for. If for example the director had wished to run some shots of boys showering like in the Good Health piece I would not have thought it unreasonable and would have expected any relevant boys asked to take part in it to do so without making a deal of it or whining over it. In essence, even involving a film crew coming into school to film the full PE standard through to the collective peers fully unclothed showering with each other I would have expected them to just get on with it and do as they were told, yes even in those circumstances. I'm sure that will be what happened in the video that so many have spoken about here. The concept of personal privacy or private space will not have even come into the equation, neither will the individual personal thoughts of any of the boys to any great degree.

Do I think the boys being broadcast showering was treating them badly, quite honestly I don't. It was a perfectly normal safe situation with nothing to be ashamed of. I don't think they should have any complaints. Would I have allowed my son to take part like that, well I would have not raised an objection. At that time, remember that bit. It's important.

How dreadful I can here a few saying. But remember I'm saying this as it would have been in 1973 or 1983. It would not have been the same come 2003. The millennium really did fire up changes along with the Blair Government of the time so that the school (and national) landcape of Thatcher's Britain in 1987 was transformed by the time Blair was out just two short decades later in 2007 not long before I left.

Much of the old school's television should now be well regarded as a significant historical reference point to the times they were made, show strands like Scene and Good Health plus so many others that could be considered a cultural reference point.

I often find myself strongly conflicted about which school eras were the better ones. Each has their own positives and negatives. Speaking honestly I have no problem with the ways I described from earlier years and just wish we could take the best of back then with the best of now.

Bernard quote - 'There are those who find it difficult to understand just how different things were 40 or 50 years ago.'

I agree, I'm only 40 myself, things feel very different from just 25 in school, 20 or even only 10 years back to me and I bet you all agree on that too, but just a minute, what about people like Graham, a self confessed teacher starting from about 50 years ago then, does he not know too or has he just forgotten. To me it seems like those who agree with you are the sensible ones whilst anyone with a differing experience or perspective is implied as being not so sensible.

Two rather good comments by Graham and Hugh back to back I thought. I also liked Rick's long one about his middle school and Greg2's about filming.

Thankyou Hugh for responding, just caught it and am happy to answer with a resounding no to my own question. Yourself? The "extra" scenes for want of a better way of putting it were not required in any educational way to serve the points the documentary was making. Wholly innocent yes, but it still looked a bit gratuitous to me.

Answering the other direct question of Ed's, not a chance would I have consented to such a thing as a parent back in 1980 or so, a year I myself had not long left school myself and not too far from becoming a father. Hand on heart would anyone on here seriously admit as a parent they'd be willing to knowingly consent to full PE showering and changing room nudity being filmed and broadcast in that scenario, even at the fresh end of the 80's, irrespective of the perceived educational value and narrow school tv remit.

We have actors paid fortunes who refuse to do certain things in front of the cameras, yet you see films like this and it feels like the boys were just thrown into it without a great deal of thought and possibly choice, and all for nothing monetary and no repeat fees that's for sure. I noticed that the other clip that was posted from another one of those shows mentioned that those kids were from a thetare group or something, so young child actors but the notes at the end of the PE edition made it clear those ones were the real boys and girls at that school.

I'm the guy who a few weeks ago had a discussion with Alan about the school doctor and circumcision where I asked him if he was a zealot. My school doctor suggested I needed to have it, persuaded my parents who then did it to me at ten years old when I didn't want to but they went with the doctor over my wish. My parents consented to that and I moaned like hell about them a few weeks ago on here. They are still alive. What about in this case if the parent had consented to their child being part of filming but the child did not wish to take part, especially on discovering the nature of some of it, what then?

I'm only bringing this up as a debating point because it is one worth having, not to come across as some kind of prissy prude who doesn't realise that times used to be different and all that, I know, I'm 61, I was there and know first hand how things seemed to be with kids in school sometimes struggling to find a voice against authority and all that.

Hugh - many thanks for your sensible and well thought out comment. There are those who find it difficult to understand just how different things were 40 or 50 years ago. I never saw a p.e. teacher shower with the boys but I can well imagine that it was normal practice in some schools and that it was not a problem. Boys generally just accepted what was required of them and got on with things without a fuss - indeed, they would not have been aware that there was anything to make a fuss about.
I was, like most boys, somewhat apprehensive about showering together but soon found out that there really wasn't a problem. As for practices which I did not experience - I would not dismiss them just because I did not experience them or because they wouldn't happen now. People may have been a little too accepting in the past but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way now.

Regards the ATV Good Health thing.

It's all so easy talking about other peoples sons dispassionatley like this when talking consent and all it entails. So let's get personal here.

Another straight question from me too.

Would anyone here be relaxed enough to consent to their own son being filmed naked in the school showers like the Good Health video showed if you knew that was the likely outcome on screen. Anyone, even in that foreign country known as 1970's/1980's Britain?

James M on 29th June 2022 at 17:35

Perhaps you should answer your own question first before asking others.

I merely talked about best interests and implied vs. informed consent. I didn't say anything was right or wrong.