Burnley Grammar School

To an extent, I do think my generation is a bit of a 'snowflake' generation as others have said. I'm one of few people that plays sports and was on a school team. A lot of guys would rather just study and browse Facebook/snapchat than actually get out and do exercise which builds a team spirit and competitive nature. Plus, you won't believe the number of times people pretend to be sick in order to miss swimming and PE lessons. In the winter, you could expect a quarter of the class to be too 'sick' to come to PE. Whildt I don't agree with the punishments listed below, I think we've become too soft in a sense

Ambrose,
I never said that my classmates felt inhibited about being naked together. We were never naked in any sort of situation. I think you confused me for a different user perhaps?

Brendan on 10th April

I revert to my earlier point that it is foolish to judge what is correct at one time by the values of another time.

When I was a boy it was definitely considered wrong to send boys up chimneys to sweep them but years earlier it was a norm.

Remember nearly all the school masters who taught us had either been in the military during WW2 or had done National Service. WW3 was on the horizon at times. Personal privacy was not valued at all among groups of men or boys at that time.

Communal showers were the norm be it in the military or in a boy's school changing room and did no one any harm. They are still not uncommon particularly if as an adult you play team sports like rugby. To repeat, I never minded them and never felt they were in any way inappropriate.

The same with the cane, it was the normal punishment in a boy's school at the time, we knew if we misbehaved or failed to turn in our best work we would be caned. It was the normal sanction of the times. It was not criminal or anything else associated with that, it was normal.

I do know think that things have gone too far towards producing generation snowflake.

I wonder what Brendan and others of his age would make of the trends that prevailed in my childhood in the 50's and 60's,and early teaching life.
After PE and games lessons we showered naked together in a small communal area often brushing against each other due to the number of boys and lack of space. We were supervised by the staff while we changed in order to maintain good discipline and ensure we changed properly. We expected this to be the case, and took full advantage if the master was out of the room. It was neither improper nor illegal for boys to be seen naked by the staff at that time in state secondary schools.
When I went to teacher training college in the mid to late 60's it was the trend to encourage staff to let pupils address them by their Christian names. In my first school PE followed the traditional clothing rules, backed by guidance from county advisors, but we newly trained teachers had been encouraged at college not only to supervise the pupils changing but also to shower with them where appropriate. This was to break down inhibitions of body image and help them to see how they may develop as they got older. There was never any accusation of inappropriate behaviour towards pupils and the system continued in state secondary schools until the late 70's when the general advice changed.
During the 70's and 80's there was a large influx of foreign pupils to my city from all over the world. They were assimilated into the ethos of their schools in their new country. There was no question then of religious or cultural differences dictating how they changed or dressed for PE - everyone was treated the same.
Schools and staff that followed the official guidelines in past decades were not guilty of abusing pupils, even if trends today dictate a more neurotic approach to nakedness. In a previous post Brendan said his classmates felt inhibited being naked around each other, they should have been developing confidence in their bodies.
Only in more recent years have trends come to the fore where parents and pupils can dictate policy to schools and politicians on what they like and dislike for whatever reason. Whether you find this a good thing or not is a matter of conjecture!

Since this is an informative site, I thought I'd add my experience of doing PE at secondary school (2008-2015):
PE lessons took place once a week from Year 7 to Year 11 and were optional in Year 12 and 13 (sixth form). PE consisted of gymnastics, circuit training, spin cycling, rowing machines and five a side football/ basketball/ hockey. We wore a house t shirt, shorts and trainers, all of which we had to buy from the school.
Games lessons took place once a week and consisted of football matches, cross country in the winter, cricket and rugby throughout the five years. In the sixth form. games lessons were optional. We also had football and rugby practice for those of us on the school team, which was after school. We wore a school jersey for those.
Swimming lessons took place once a fortnight and we were taught all the main strokes. I was also part of the swim team which trained once a week after school. We wore swimwear that we bought from the school. For the swim team, we wore different competitive swimwear.

Feel free to ask more questions! I'll try and answer as soon as possible

Actually it is indeed against the law

Brendan,
Communal showers are not against the law and therefore not abuse. However, forcing a child to be naked for them is a grey area in terms of the law.

Paul, so do you believe that a teacher caning a student's bare bottom, or telling them to be naked for a swimming lesson or having to shower naked in front of others is not abuse? Forcing a student to wear less than they wish to and physically attacking a student is abuse, whether the student thinks it's abuse or not. What I'm essentially saying is how surprised I am by how badly students were abused in the past, as I've read from this site and how surprised I am that it wasn't considered wrong at the time when it so obviously is wrong today.

Paul, I agree 100% with everything you say. There is a similar debate going on in the Royal Clitheroe forum. A few months ago I made the same point about feeling sorry for youngsters who are so inhibited that they wear chlorine soaked trunks in the men's showers after swimming at the local pool. What's the point of that?

But there's a wider point. Recently concern has been expressed that some children leaving school lack resilience - not surprising if they're excused things they feel uncomfortable with, like getting cold or communal showers. But having to do something you would rather avoid is not abuse and to make out that it is trivialises something that is really serious.

Brendan on 9th April

You clearly don't understand how different things were in those days. No one ever thought of the word 'abuse'. I don't now consider that I was in any way abused by anyone. The friends I still have from those days are of the same mind. In fact we all think of boys of your generation as rather soft and mollycoddled.

None of what happened did us any harm, I was very happy at school and would not have changed any of it for anything different. When I see a lad in the changing room at the gym dancing around behind a towel in case anyone sees his bottom I actually feel sorry for him that he is so uncomfortable with his body. After all, he's not going to be molested in that environment but you'd never know it.

To Paul

The point I was trying to make was to support what you had said about how standards of one age cannot be equated with those of another. From what I have learned about National Service, the treatment of recruits would certainly qualify as "abuse" in terms of how we define abuse nowadays but that's the way it was then.

Pete on 8th April.


I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

I started 7th grade (age 12) in a public Junior High School in 1968 in Blaine, Minnesota, U.S.A. (a northern suburb of Minneapolis).
Any infraction (chewing gum, horse-play, etc.) of the Gym Class Physical Education rules meant a bare-ass swat (I can't remember gym teacher using his bare hand, or a paddle). Very few boys goofed-around in Phy Ed class. We knew the consequences.
After entering the locker room, we were required to remove our street clothes, and put on our Gym Suits: jockstraps, short-shorts, socks, tennis shoes, and the t-shirt's.
After the 1-hour Gym Class was over, we were required to shower naked in the no-dividers open-area showers.
Failure to shower naked meant a swat!
Our school had no swimming pool.
To this day, I still respect the rules of the Gym Class. It made us better citizens in society. Many kids today are babies, spoiled, scared of their own bodies, commit more sexual assaults, incur more relationship problems, have more perverted people, and the United States prison population percentage is much larger than it was in the 1960's and 1970's.

To Bradley,

In addition to the examples mentioned by Paul, the ordeals meted out to National Service recruits seem pretty horrific and certainly would not be tolerated nowadays but, however the recruits felt about their treatment, they just had to endure it.

Paul, I understand your point but what I'm saying is, surely people should have known that this is abuse, plain and simple. It just seems ridiculous to me that people would be fine with having to swim naked, with having to drop their underwear to be caned, when these are such obvious incidents of abuse.

Brendan on 8th April

It's always very foolish to judge the actions of one time against the values of another.

Presumably you will also be arranging for judges, prison officers and executioners to be tried for murder when in fact at the time hanging was a lawful punishment?

I have no sense I was ever abused. Just dealt with justly and fairly in accord with the norms of the times.

To Paul
The official policy of your school was "corporal punishment is the most effective means of correcting wrong doing and deterring repeat or even initial breaking of the rules"

Note - correcting and deterring

Your experience doesn't bear witness to any correcting or deterring.

"Twelve (strokes) was pretty unusual and while I had plenty of 8s over the years, I only had three 12s".

I find it absolutely ridiculous that nude swimming was ever a thing. I feel like many of the posters on here should really be calling the police and telling them about the historical child abuse they suffered. Honestly, some of the stories on here are child abuse examples and should be reported to the authorities.

It may be that I'm too young to understand but as far as I know this is abuse, plain and simple. I was at school roughly two years ago and, believe me, if we ever had to engage in some of these activities there would be lawsuits.

We didn't even do swimming in the winter to avoid the cold. Can't imagine what that must have been like!

At my bording school in the early 60's, boys were caned both bare in private and shorts in the gym - thus naked as we only wore shorts.

Head of Years and PE teachers caned. No age limit, and age up to 18.

Mostly in private but detention canings were in front of the boys in the detention, we had to strip completely for these csnings

Willy on 7th April.

I don't know that there was an actual ban on bare bottom caning in the state sector, it was maybe more that it just didn't happen. AFAIK each LEA set the rules and what was approved was likely to have been in line with the experiences of the members. I know that in the London Borough of Richmond where my parents lived the rules stated that corporal punishment was not to be used on girls, it was not to be administered to the hands and the cane was to be used. That was as much as was stated and anything else was at the discretion of the headmaster. A headmaster who administered a bare bottom caning was not then breaking the rules but of course I have no idea whether it happened or not.

At my boarding school caning was always in private in the master's study. Occasionally there was the threat of a caning in front of the whole school but I never witnessed one and never heard from anyone that it had ever happened. There was a master of discipline who was also a championship squash player and he generally caned when a boy had been referred to the headmaster, having had it from him a couple of times it was definitely quite a lot worse than the norm and then norm was pretty bad.

Any master was allowed to cane, records were kept and you had to initial the book. The entry ran something like:

Jameson, Paul. Form 4A. Insolence. 8 Bare buttocks.

For whatever reason the school had a long tradition of working in multiples of four so four, eight or twelve were the norm eight being the most common. Twelve was pretty unusual and while I had plenty of 8s over the years I only had three 12s.

There was no secret about it, the subject of punishment was dealt with in the school handbook which every parent had and had signed an acknowledgement of having read.

The section went something like 'the school governors have determined that corporal punishment is the most effective means of correcting wrong doing and detering repeat or even initial breaking of the rules. It will also be used to spur on the attitude of an underperforming or lazy boy who is not doing his best in his studies or general participation in the life of the school. The instrument of correction is the cane and up to twelve strokes will be administered to the bare buttocks of an errant boy'. Says it all!

There was no age limit on caning - I got my last one in the Easter term of my last year at the age of eighteen after I absented myself from classes one afternoon. There was a general belief that an older boy benefited even more from a bare bottom caning as having to lower his trousers was an added humiliation.

I don't think I agreed with the latter, it was a boarding school, we slept in open dormitories, we showered in communal showers, we swam naked in the pool, there was nothing unusual about lowering your trousers and underpants in front of another man so it may have bothered some, it certainly didn't bother me - the sting of the cane did!

Reading the posts re bare bottom caning at my school back in late 50's early 60's we were caned on our bare bottom in private in the heads study, I was caned once at 13 because I was heard swearing by the teacher and sent to the head, as my dad was his gardener he gave me two options :- 3 strokes on the bare bottom and he told my dad or 6 on the bare bottom and that was it, I chose the latter as my dad would have trebled what I had been given and a grounding as well.

In the showers after I was told that the stripes were very visible, I did get some relief from freezing cold water over my bottom, but the pain still came back, and I couldn't hide it at home when sitting down, dad had me drop my shorts and pants and he examined me and said I had been punished enough but docked my pocket money anyway for that weekend.

Looking back to end of the humiliations that largely ended in Easter 1987, I think most PE teachers were closet paedophiles 30 years. The communal showers where you were forced to be naked in front of other males. If gym class was cancelled at the last moment you could be made to do swimming in see through white shorts. Other punishments by the coach included having to bend over and being whacked on the backside or being forced to 10 press ups with the PE teacher pushing your groin into the ground. At least with the development of a professional middle class and the moves towards a multi-cultural pro-feminist society these abuses have largely been consigned to living memory in the UK.

I recall my Brother, who Fifteen years Older than myself speaking of being offered the option of Six with Slipper Shorts Up or Four Shorts Down! Ring any bells with anyone?
This was a Boarding School in Scotland in the Mid Sixties!

I can recall lads getting the slipper Naked in the Locker Room when they were messing. But you must remember nudity really meant nothing to us. We seen each other in the Buff Everyday

Archie - Thanks for the info. They are more revealing than I expected but I suppose in those days (1)there was only one fat boy per class and (2) boys had not been taught by feminists to be ashamed of their bodies.

You are right Paul no on accepts the consequences of their bad behaviour any more. People expect to be able to misbehave & get away with it.

As the previous posters have said bare bottom caning and slippering could have been carried out in some private and boading schools, but not in public(government)schools.
What I would like to ask Paul and others who received it is if this was carried out in private or in front of other students.
Also if all teachers at their school had this authority to cane boys bare, or if only certain staff or teachers could do this.
And was there an age limit where boys could be caned bare?

Richie - 5th April.

Boarding school in northern England in the 60s & 70s, the cane on bare bottom was the norm. No one thought anything of it as it was just what happened.

I have no resentment, every time I got it I deserved it and knew the consequences of my behaviour.

Turner, just looked up the pic you refer to. Those are far more covering than the slips we are talking about. The ones my Dad and teachers wore were triangles of cloth at the front and straps around the sides and up,the arse. This is the closest I've been able to find online.

http://www.internationaljock.com/gregg-homme-affair-sheer-knit-string-khaki,36815.html

My Dad''s was blue with white straps and my teachers all had black ones. My Dad's one was really faded with age - presumably from the chlorine.

Richie

I think in the 1950's/60's some schools (nearly all private) may have caned shorts/pj's down. It's also just about possible that one or two still made lads report to the gym for a caning, and that this was carried out totally naked.

Beyond that I think canings were on at least PE shorts/underpants.

Stuart

Just going back to the side-fastening swimming slips, there is a famous photo by Nino Migliori called Il Tuffatore (The Diver) from 1951 showing the fastening. Possibly they had been modernised by the time our correspondents wore theirs.