Burnley Grammar School

Ben
No the boys only swam naked in their boarding houses or weekly class lessons. They were allowed to wear their black or navy blue speedos in whole competitions or gala where they were external guests or parents.

To June and Ivor,

Doing PE in just shorts is one thing, but making them swim naked is a bit different in my opinion.
Were there any female teachers or female school staff who could watch the boys swim naked?
I read that in some schools the boys were also naked during swim galas in front of mixed spectators. Was this also the case at your school (Ivor) and your sons' school in the case of June?

Rachael
For gym we were stripped to the waist from age 11.
Ivor
If we forgot our shorts we did not have to do the lesson nude but the gym master would throw us the first pair of shorts that came to hand from lost property. These had not been washed and wearing them was not pleasant. I forgot my shorts only once.
June
I'm sorry one of your boys found the regime a bit too hard. None of us liked being frozen stiff. The attitude towards nudity at school and at home was "You're all boys, what are you fussing about" with the implication that those who fussed were cissies. A very small number of boys never got used to it. Most of us took it in our stride and were not embarrassed, unlike some young men you see at swimming pools today having a shower with shorts on. What is the point of that when the shorts are chlorine soaked? I never wore a jockstrap at school.

Rachael,at our boys grammar school in the late fifties we all had to be stripped to the waist from the first PE lesson aged 11.

William. Physical hardship and humililiation doesn't turn boys into men. Making boys run in sub zero temperatures has nothing to,do with the transition to manhood.
Tenderness, respect and love are essential parts of bring up children
I remember the arbitrary rules at school.
A pe teacher so obsessed with his precious new gym floors that everyone bar himself went barefoot. These were his power trips.
Extremely Harsh regimes such as many of us endured were unnecessary.
Many of our teachers were severely damaged by the war and should not have been allowed anywhere near children as they took out their trauma and pain on us.
Personally I would not have wanted my children anywhere near these kind of people.

Hi Ben, William, June. My two boys are 11 and 12 so I'm guessing boys wouldn't start stripping to the waist until they turn 13?

The state school I went to in the mid 1950s had a policy of nude swimming for the first three years, and all parents and boys knew that this was the case, so there was no argument about it and everyone accepted it. From the fourth year upwards trunks were optional, but most boys simply continued to swim without them as they were so used to it, and to wear costumes seemed somehow to be more embarrassing! What was more, there was a strict no pants underneath shorts for all indoor PE lessons during the other two terms, so woe betide any boy who forgot his kit because it meant PE in the nude. Again, it was school policy and there was no argument. It didn't happen all that often as we all knew what would happen, but inevitably it did happen from time to time when someone for example had accidentally forgotten their kit or else left it on the bus! To think that all of us were used to this

William

Good to hear from you. We had friends whose boys went to grammar school and seem to have shared the same conditions as you did then. My three boys were all boarders in a public school (or private independent school if you prefer) in the 60s. As said two of my boys had no problems whatsoever with the conditions as you describe. Communal showers (often only cold water), gymnastics without tops etc. Naked swimming and wearing shorts up to age of 13. They all loved their sport. Around 14 and thereafter they were allowed to wear jockstraps and quite understandably. Yes it wasn't just the harsh Spartan conditions but also doing what they were told and without questioning authority that made them great men that I am ever so proud of.

Rachael and June, I think that what turned boys into men was not just physical hardship, such as games afternoons in the winter when our hands were so cold we could not do up shirt buttons when we got changed. It was also having to do things we didn't want to do, getting on with them without making a fuss because we had no choice, and finding they weren't so bad after all.
At a boys' grammar school in the 1960s we wore nothing under shorts for gym, athletics or games. Our gym lessons were like the photograph. We had communal nude showers. I started off shy and would have avoided all these given the choice. But I became more confident about my skinny body, got used to the regime and even to like it. I didn't realise at the time but it was a good lesson for life.

Hi John, Thanks for the insight. As June said it makes men from boys and I'm all for that. Stripping off makes a lot of sense. I encourage my two boys to have their tops off in summer hols. If they had the chance I'd bet they'd love to do PE stripped off too.

Hi Rachael, it is natural and more comfortable for boys to do exercise with tops off in Summer, but not in freezing Winter, especially outside.
Do your boys still have compulsary showers after PE at school?

Rachael

How old are your two boys? What school did they attend? My three boys all went to boarding school and the regime there was pretty hard. Two of them weathered the Spartan conditions very well but one of my boys found it all a bit too hard.

Rachael,
My dad encouraged me and also my brother to play outside shirtless in summer, we’d meet up with our friends and kick a ball about in the road and all of us would be shirtless. None of us were self conscious about being seen bare chested and that is a good way to be.

Some lads at Senior School felt awkward at first having to do PE shirtless but that was because they had been allowed to wear vests or t shirts for Primary School PE lessons. They soon forgot about being shirtless and started to enjoy PE. If boys had started doing PE shirtless whilst at Infant School they would never have felt awkward.

Lads today should be allowed to do PE shirtless if they want to, it’s far more comfortable than having a hot sweaty shirt stuck to your back. I’m glad that I could enjoy PE in the 1970s, I don’t know why schools started to make lads cover up all the time.

Hi John, Thanks for the insight. As June said it makes men from boys and I'm all for that. Stripping off makes a lot of sense. I encourage my two boys to have their tops off in summer hols. If they had the chance I'd bet they'd love to do PE stripped off too.

Ben,

How boys were treated in the past sounds harsh to most people now. We were allowed to wear running shiorts with inner briefs but not underwear and always wore socks and trainers. Running shirtless was no big deal actually, believe it or not we stayed warmer bare chested in the rain than we would have done with a rain soaked shirt stuck to our chests. The showers were always warm too.

Howard,

The tawse ( always referred to as 'the belt') was the implement of choice of most teachers. The PE dept also used the gym shoe across the (thin) cotton shorts for minor offences though it still stung!

There were various weights of tawse , M -medium, H - heavy and XH -extra heavy. Most teachers used the H at my secondary school though there were a few XHs around . Most had 2 tails though 3 tails were available.

I understand that the tawse was used in north east of England in preference to the cane.

James

A similar custom to toughen boys up in some institutions and boarding schools was to make them take cold showers even in freezing weather.
Same for making them swim in unheated pools all year round, including in winter, often naked.
As for what some others describe making boys run outside bare chested in just thin shorts in winter, I don't know how one coulld get used to that or even 'enjoy it'.
I can't imagine this happening today without a public outcry.

Rachael

Guess it made men out of boys!

Rachael,

It was daunting the first time that we realized that we’d be running stripped to the waist in winter. Part of the cross country run was on pavements outside residential properties and another stretch on pavement along a busy main road; I felt potentially embarrassed at the prospect of being seen
by adults that knew me.

We did warm up and stretching exercises before setting off on the run, running on the spot and star jumps, we quickly got warm. After a few weeks I started to enjoy shirtless cross country runs and would have hated it if the PE kit rule had changed and we’d been made to wear shirts. Whilst running we forgot that we were barechested.

Thank you to those who replied.It must have been daunting being outside in the winter stripped to a thin pair of shorts.

I went to a Catholic primary to middle school in London in the sixties. The strap or wooden ruler was on every teacher's desk and was used freely by most teachers. Normally 2 to 4 strokes on the hands.
I only remember one teacher who used the ruler on our buttocks over shorts. He was the joke between us boys when boys were in his class.
Although we dreaded him more than the other teachers who punished on the hands, thinking back it was probably less painful than being hit on the hands. Maybe because it was not the norm and unusual.

Hi to Howard and James B, The strap was certainly on the agenda at the Catholic College I attended circa late sixties to early seventies in Greater Manchester.Nasty little beast utilised on either the hand or the behind.The plimsoll for PE..

jamesB, were there any other instruments used in Scottish schools, like the cane, slipper or ruler?
Or was it just the tawse?

Was the tawse also used in Scottish homes, or just in schools?

The strap on the hands seems to have been popular in Catholic schools, notably in Ireland. I presume the tawse, being a two tongued strap, was more painful.

I saw a BBC short documentary once in which was stated that the tawse was the casue of corporal punishment being banned in all of Britain.
A Scottish mother took the case to the European Court after her son was tawsed at school. The European Court forced the British Parliament to vote against all corporal punishment in schools.
I think Britain was the last European country to ban CP in schools, but I am not sure of this.

Howard

The tawse was always given on the hands- never on the bottom.

I doubt if there was any maximum officially written down . Depending on the severity of the offence the number of strokes given was 2,4 or 6. In my experience , 4 seemed a popular choice amongst teachers but not all teachers would give the same. I have seen boys get more than 6 but this was because they had been adjudged as having moved their hand. If a teacher decided a boy had moved his hand and even if the tawse had hit him, he was given that stroke again and an extra one for moving.

JamesB

Rachael, I never had shirtless pe lessons but we did have swimming lessons which were obviously done shirtless. I personally didn’t see many people with chest hair, I think people tend to either trim it or not have much of it. I personally don’t have much hair on my chest and never really cared about it.

I never really felt embarrassed about anything during lessons. It was just galas that were a bit awkward but even then i just got over it

I agree with David G's comments re Josh. If that really happened it would be a classic case of child abuse.

In the late 50's when all boys wore vests under their school shirts we had to strip off for PE from the age of 11 until we left at 18 and wear just shorts and plimsolls, indoors, and outside for athletics and cross country through the local woodland and open countryside. No-one was concerned about whether you had a hairy chest or not and we always had to shower after every lesson and there was no privacy at all there! we all had to get used to it and become men together.

Rachael,  this was something that really worried me when I began to develop hair on my chest at age 15. We still had compulsory PE for another year and usual practice for boys' classes at my school was vests vs skins, with the teacher deciding which of us had to strip down. So I knew at some point I would have to be in skins and I felt nervous about being the only lad in the class with chest hair.
To my relief, when our first PE lesson of the term came around, I could see another boy had a patch of hair visibly poking out above his vest (more than I did, in fact) and that gave me encouragement, to know I wouldn't be the only one whose body looked a bit different. As it happened I kept my vest on for that first lesson while the other lad was a skin and didn't seem bothered about it at all. That definitely helped to ease my concerns. For the next few lessons I was picked to do it in skins and soon felt more confident about showing my chest hair, which thickened up more during the course of that year!

Rachael,
The PE teachers didn’t care whether lads had hairy chests or not, the school PE kit rule for boys was white shorts and pumps only for indoor PE. Outdoor team games were often shirts vs skins, if a PE teacher selected you for the skins team you stripped off your shirt immediately without question.

JamesB,

I assume the tawse was used mainly on the hands.
Was it ever used on the bottom?

Also, was there a limit to how many strokes could be given on the hands?