Burnley Grammar School

Hi Deborah,

I think it is certainly true that teachers have to prove that they can be tough and women teachers have to do it more so, especially with boys. Otherwise the consequences can be severe. There is a tacit rule, understood by all concerned, that you can start out nasty and become nice but you can't start out nice and become nasty, because the kids just won't believe you that way round.

One of my sisters' friends became a teacher and her very first morning in class she heard someone mutter "She's young . . . " She said she felt a moment of pure cold terror before she just cracked on. She ended up being a popular, well-liked teacher, but I think she could be tough when she had to be.

In our third year we got a new Biology teacher. As well as being quite cute, in a kind of Sheena Easton-type way (if you're under fifty you'll have to google her) she was quite petite, standing barely taller than us as a class of thirteen-year-olds. The first lesson started out like a gestapo interrogation and within the first half hour she had dished out several detentions. We got the message. Over the following several weeks, as she came to feel reassured that we weren't actually going to eat her alive, she eased up and actually turned out to be a personable and engaging teacher, but it was a definite case of first impressions lasting.

My second- and third-year Maths teacher was a well-intentioned and conscientious teacher who was prepared to go the extra mile to make sure her class understood her subject. Predictably, she was shown no mercy. For some reason she would never dish out detentions or send unruly pupils out of class and her usual sanction was to make people move places. Her lessons used to be like an unceasing game of musical chairs as she moved pupils - usually boys - around the classroom.

But at least she escaped the experience I heard happened to another woman Maths teacher at another school in that same era. This woman turned round from writing on the blackboard to find a twelve-year-old boy standing behind her, exposing himself to her. She was so shocked she burst into tears. She got no sympathy from the rest of the class, who started pelting her with biros and balled-up bits of paper, and she just had to get out of the room for her own safety and sanity. 'Tween'-age kids can have a killer instinct. (And, believe it or not, this school was one of the 'better' schools in my home town!)

Bullying is always irrational. Most people can probably remember from their own school days the fat kid who was bullied. Quite a lot of them might also remember the fat kid who was a bully. There was no logic to how victims were singled out. I can think of other teachers who were just as mild-mannered as my Maths teacher but who never had a problem from their class. I can also recall one male music teacher who was very tall, quite overweight and had an explosive temper. His lessons were a running battle as various boys (again, not girls) inexorably wound him up to the point where he would bellow and scream at them. Physically, he was a very threatening man, tall, bulky and with a temper that you just knew you didn't want to tinker with out of school hours and away from witnesses. None of this saved him.

The thing was, he used to turn purple in the face when he really lost it. What he was never aware of was that there was an experiment going on among several of the nastier boys to see if they could, by winding him up, induce him to have a heart attack.

This was all back in the 1980s. I really don't know how teachers cope in the era of Gen Z.

I'm reminded of a time early in 1982 when there was a teaching strike interrupting the smooth running of the school I was then working at as an English teacher. Many staff had walked out leaving the school to be run by a skeleton cut back group of non union staff members, one of which was myself. Some lessons were cancelled but most went ahead with stand in staff. The head teacher at the time was determined to keep the school open and running as close to normal as he could for all pupils there. Other schools actually shut or finished early.

Before I left for home at the end of one working school day, the night before the first of a series of strikes, I was informed I would have to stand in on a PE lesson for one of the male staff members in his lesson next day, which I was happy to do although a bit nervous.

I was 32 years old at the time but looked much younger than my age and was worried about controlling a class of energetic teenage boys effectively doing something I was unfamiliar with. In the staff room among all the chatter I asked their teacher for some lesson information and about any potential pitfalls I may encounter as a young looking female outsider teacher who didn't really know what she was doing with these boys.

His response to me was to - Get their shirts off their backs, that will show them who's boss, we call it skins in PE. This was not what I expected to hear and I think I laughed. I wondered if it was normal to do such a thing and he told me it was.

So in the morning I was assigned to the school sports hall to look after two consecutive boys PE classes, after I had been given a basic outline of what to do with them. When I appeared for the first class of the morning I could tell I might face a few issues almost immediately so put the instruction into action on the floor of the sports hall, and told them they were to be skins that day and asked them to take off their top. I remember there being a few oohs and ahhs and even wolf whistles, some showing off behaviour and 'she's strict' comments at first but they all did it and seemed to settle down fast after that. These were early teenage boys. An almost identical situation happened with the second lesson of the morning that I stood in for.

When it came to the changing room I obviously had to stay stood outside the door just listening. I'd been told to make sure they took a shower so all I could do was ask someone to put it on and listen to the sound of the water and hope they were doing as they were told. As I stood there on the second lesson another male colleague appeared and threw the door open to check for me. He told me it was safe to enter if I wanted to, like a fool I did this and it wasn't safe to do so at all. Sometimes the staff could act like big kids themselves.

All in a days school work.

We had a great PE teacher and I still see him around my hometown sometimes and he had the best way of dishing out punishment without doing it himself. During games lessons we would play a game called murder ball ( basically no rules rugby). you would know if you upset him or his fellow teachers that weeks as you would be in the team wearing skins ( bare chests) then during rucks, mauls, scrums as you would call them now, the kids would slap you as hard as possible across your back, chest, arms etc etc at every oppurtunity....payback was a bitch if you was in skins the following week. That PE teacher loved dividing up our class in to skins boys and shirts boys and not just for teams, just for the hell of it and was always doing this every week. You could see the fear on some boys faces if they didn't want to be skins and became one for that lesson and the aww do I have to be again type. He definitely thought bare chests were a good sanction against some boys.

Me and a friend who's a teaching assistant at a school in a 'run down area' were only on about a lack of discipline in schools and her's in particular these days, the other day. She told me of children as young as 7 telling her to f... off and refusing to do as they are told with one even saying "If you talk to me like that again I'll sue you". We compared this to my secondary school's PE teacher in the 1970's who let you join his 'red hand gang' if you wanted. His words were "If you want to join just simply upset me". When you joined he smacked you as hard as possible on your bare back with his flat hand or even the front of your bare chest, leaving a glowing red hand mark. Me being a bit of a teenage rebellious young male "joined" his 'red hand gang' more than once, including being smacked so hard on my stomach that he winded me quite badly as well as his red hand mark standing out on my white skin. Her was legendary in our school for this in all his PE classes, smacking shirtless boys across their body with his hand. Imagine getting away with that these days.

Does anyone here have any somewhat diffewrent or unusual thoughts on their physical education years?

For example, I had one PE teacher who used to take us for football and rugby in some right old rough weather out on the playing fields of my school who would inspect our PE (football) kit before we went out, make sure our shorts were correct, our socks were pulled up to the same length and our boots were clean. I remember Mr Whishaw as an unusual teacher of the subject because he seemed to have a thing about cleanliness. When we played football he used to get quite annoyed if he saw any deliberate diving which got us muddy. Even when we very occasionally played rugby he was a bit like that, which is funny when that's a part of rugby. Actually I don't think he even liked rugby but had to do it with us sometimes.

I remember him being a very polite man, and quietly spoken, which was not like the other PE teachers I had. His entire persona seemed very different, almost rather classy. When we used to come in from the playing fields after a really wet afternoon's play out there, he would even help some of us remove our football boots just pulling them off our feet on outstretched legs, pull off our wet socks or even pull our soaked clinging tops over our heads! He made us all take showers like all PE teachers did but he never stood guard closely looking in at us but did encourage us to clean properly and to take time and not rush.

Mr Whishaw also had no time for bullying behaviour and made this very clear one day in our changing room about the need for respecting each other. He was kind, thoughtful, clearly educated yet was far from a soft touch.

He used to keep the boys watches in a bum bag during PE, we were not allowed to wear them. He accidentally sat on his bum bag one day on a changing room bench when it was full of our watches and cracked the screen, it was a fairly basic analogie Timex of the time at the beginning of the eighties. He instantly offered to replace it for me and asked what type of watches I liked. Well I said I was hoping for one of these new fangled snazzy digital watches for my next one, and within two days I was at school and asked to pop along to his office and he handed me a lovely new boxed Casio digital watch that cost a lot more than the one he had sat on and cracked. I was absolutely thrilled and even wrote him a thankyou letter.

So let's hear it for some bloody great PE teachers out there. They m ay have forced you to play football you disliked, to go skins in basketball when you wanted to be a shirt, to do gym in bare chests all the time, or made you go into nude showers against your wishes, but some, infact many, were still thoroughly decent guys and doing a job that was harder and more skilled than many of us probably understand that needed a lot of patience with some of us.

Danny C, I remember our teachers making similar comments while having us barechested along with "making men out of you" and especially "lads don't need vests on" Even though games tops were for outdoor use both teachers preferred us out in vests but we were usually made to strip off Both my parents always fully supported the teachers decisions have me strip off both in the gym and outside saying it would benefit me. I've got to say I've never actually regretted being put through such a rigid barechested regime and also felt every lad respected each other more with us all going through the same thing. It made me feel more confident that my rather slim frame really did fit in

This BBC story on icy cold water swimming aiding the immune system rather reminds me of the PE teacher I caught up with three months ago at a reunion of my old "Class of 84" school year. We got talking about the whole barechested PE issue which my own school was notorious for, and especially the liking for my PE teachers, including him, to take our large group of boys out on cross country runs barechested in the 80's minus any tops on even on quite unbelievably cool days in autumn, and he mentioned running barechested in those conditions as being healthy, especially for the immune system. I remember at one point we spoke of cold water swimming and the wild swimming that some people now do and he maintained it was also very healthy as an option. I asked if he did any of this and he said no, so he talked a good game but didn't back it up by doing any of it himself. I remember saying to him, if you think it was so good for us why did I never see you whip your shirt off and lead by example on these barechested PE lesson cross country's. He just laughed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2m8d44v4go#:~:text=%22There%20is%20no%20evidence%20that,fewer%20colds%20or%20fewer%20infections.%22


Yes Robert I relate easily to you running where you say you did. Although our cross country runs were primarily in quiet areas and lakeside places and trails, we did have to use a public road and street many times if entering back into school through the front rather than back through the rear. I can't claim to have noticed anyone ogling us through the windows though! But I do remember running into a couple of my mums lady friends one day the other side of the road and seeing their broad grins looking right at me. I couldn't believe the timing. This was quite early in my secondary schooling and I hadn't even told her I ran cross country like that. I think I felt ashamed to admit a teacher was making me do that or something, even though it wasn't my choice. She wasn't bothered anyway, even when I did tell her, and she knew I was the rather self conscious type. Our parents in the 80's allowed our teachers to just get on with it even when they made us strip shirtless and run down the road in schooltime on fresh October days!

James you've asked about any schooldays photos, especially related to PE. It's fine to ask in my opinion, and yes is the answer, all my photos and those of my brother are from school sports days in primary and secondary, mainly the 80's. The primary ones are quite inoffensive and tame really, but both me and my brother have entire class barechested photos to camera from age 13 upwards on sports days. I have 5 such photos out there somewhere but am only in possession of the one from when I was 13 at the moment. I recently discovered my brother has a couple of his too. I'm also in the process of trying to find anyone with any other good photos of my own school days, with the emphasis on the PE sports days as some others I recently aquainted with at the reunion are also keen to find any lost gems from the 80's out there using various social media pages like school facebook memory boards and such like. My own PE photo, with 40 or so barechested boys and me has already resurfaced with an ex female classmate who had a brother in it, along with a variety of comments by now fifty something women about who they liked the look of the most at the time. It was the same three months back at the reunion when a couple of these kind of barechested PE group photos were on a memory board attracting comment - 40 years later, I can still remember the comments I got from some of them at the time!

I certainly feel it is nice to see the photographic and video archives of schooldays. I admired the secondary school boys in the British Film Institute video. I looked at them and wondered just how capable I might have been at such strict choreography and movement synchronisation within a large group like that. Although my own PE lessons were just like those boys, I have no recollection of ever having to do anything choreographed like they did. Did anyone do anything like that?

It's a disturbing feature of footage from before the 1990's, the scarcity of noticeably overweight people. It's alarming how the change in eating habits (according to a recent study the amount we eat & our level of physical activity today is about the same as it was in 1970s) has seen the situation almost reverse with 'normal' bodyweight steadily becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Has PE failed a generation or two. Possibly.

My own schools were both compulsory bare chests in the gym, both at primary and at secondary, so that was about 7 or 8 years worth of PE. We all got well used to this. Boys such as myself (in the eighties) were made to confront our bodies and those of others and it made us think about how we looked. We might not have liked our bare chested state being ordered on us by school rules (I knew some who got very agitated by it) but I do think on balance it might have been more positive than not if it made sure none of us would easily start getting a bit podgy at a young age. And if you are a little bit overweight and have to do such lessons hopefully it acts as an incentive not to make things worse or even to return to a good weight. Many tubby lads in school will lose it later anyway, as someone has already mentioned they did.

Do I think slightly overweight or even fat kids should have been given a pass on PE lessons done without tops on, well no, because all that would do is emphasise to them that they should be ashamed of their bodies and so covering them up would actually be the act of body shaming, not the expectation of them to be bare chested like the other boys in a class.

The power these teachers had over us to tell us to strip off (shirtless/naked) came with responsibility in my view and should have been used respectfully. I don't think boys should have ever been singled out as lone shirtless members of a class for instance, or sent into areas beyond the PE remit, such as being sent to get things in other parts of school in such a state like someone mentioned with the teacher's whistle. I will just about make an allowance for my own PE teachers who took boys out running without our shirts along the surrounding domestic roads surrounding our secondary school. I can actually remember seeing net curtains twitching as we went past, from bored housewives I always imagined them to be getting sight of two dozen fairly fit fourteen and fifteen year olds.

Comment by: James on 9th February 2025 at 20:41



"....... such things should not be seen or used presumably extends to the very black and white photograph that is used to accompany this discussion too doesn't it?..........

I think the use of a still photograph for illustrative purposes is OK as it does conjure up those awful times for those who were not around, but it is like seeing a photograph of a bomb site as compared to seeing a film of the carnage which caused it.


",,,,,If I had any record of my time in school doing PE like that I would be quite pleased to see it and proud of myself if I looked and did what the boys of 1936 did.....".

I don't know how to break this to you, James, but if you had been one of those boys from 1936, I don't think you would be feeling anything, as you would be dead. 89 years ago, - say the youngest boy there is 11 - he would now be 100, and though it is not a pleasant thing to think about, a five year war three years later might well have terminated some of those young lives.

".......Out of interest while on this line of thought, does anyone actually have any photographic or film record of their own schooldays, especially physical education related?"

One word, one question - WHY?

(This site is text based and has no capacity for including photographic or filmed material)


Comment by: Terry on 9th February 2025 at 21:25




".......That seems unusual, did your school not have its own sports field, meaning you had to walk the streets like that? I'm surprised your teacher didn't just factor in a cross country run to get down to that place if you were in kit! ......"

To be fair to my school, we were in a run down part of East London, Terry, not leafy Kent or Surrey so no we didn't. It was a Victorian building. When it was knocked down to make way for a bomb site not long after I left, it was rebuilt as a Tesco store.

You have to bear in mind, that not only was our teacher a sadistic old sod, he was also quite lazy. If we had run - he would have been forced to as well, and he much preferred to swagger about in his tracksuit and bark orders. He didn't feel the need to do any actual exercises, except "supervise" the changing area and showers for the older boys.

As regards East London then, as compared to now, where old factories on the Thames have been remodelled as "Loft apartments" ("luxury" of course), this piece of film might give some idea for those who don't know it. This was filmed in Brixton, which is in South London, but it is very similar to East London of the times, and is contemporary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMBcnbFAzc

Comment by: Alan on 9th February 2025 at 17:17
'all Wednesday afternoon was "sport" often in in the park, quite often involving a degrading walk down the high street, being drilled by our loudmouthed teacher, usually kicking footballs about when we got there.'



That seems unusual, did your school not have its own sports field, meaning you had to walk the streets like that? I'm surprised your teacher didn't just factor in a cross country run to get down to that place if you were in kit! Why was it degrading Alan, did he sometimes make the PE class do the walk while shirtless or something?

I agree with Mike Swift here. There is nothing wrong with archived school days imagery or films of PE lessons. The argument being raised here that such things should not be seen or used presumably extends to the very black and white photograph that is used to accompany this discussion too doesn't it?

If I had any record of my time in school doing PE like that I would be quite pleased to see it and proud of myself if I looked and did what the boys of 1936 did.

Out of interest while on this line of thought, does anyone actually have any photographic or film record of their own schooldays, especially physical education related?

Comment by: Mark on 9th February 2025 at 15:58

I didn't have any problem with the various capers we had to get up to. Mark, but I never really saw the point of it. For example, all Wednesday afternoon was "sport" often in in the park", quite often, , involving a degrading walk down the high street, being drilled by our loudmouthed teacher, usually kicking footballs about when we got there.. I would rather have been doing something practical that might be useful to me after I had left school (technical drawing for example, with a teacher other than our old perv), or English. I frequently played truant on Wednesday afternoons, you would be amazed at the number of "dental appointments" I had!. I was never a Muscle Mary.

Alan, they say that boys who are gay can't throw balls, is that true in your case? I've heard this said a few times over the years and always wondered if there is any truth in it, or why there would be. After all, gay men and boys can be every bit as fit as anyone else and many like to take even better care of their bodies and appearance than us straight guys!

Even staright boys have issue at times with PE lessons, being forced into showering or going shirtless, so I should imagine being gay and knowing it as a schoolboy piles on even more added pressures for some of you for very clearly obvious reasons with all the nudity, shirtlessness and general changing room hanging about.

I don't have any problem with films showing old PE lessons being archived though. I think they are useful to see. We can learn much from the past.

Comment by: Matthew S on 9th February 2025 at 10:46


Thank you for that Matthew - it is much appreciated. I think one of the reasons I disliked what I knew myself to be very young is that you fear you will grow up to be like the two men I have mentioned. I didn't, as it happened, so I was lucky in that respect.

Paul, Mike Swift,

Please do not think that of Alan. Please see his comment from 1st February, if you haven't already, which surely makes the reason for Alan's very strong views clear.

Perhaps we all have a tendency to judge by our own childhood experiences. His must have been the worst.

Please excuse my posting this, Alan.

Comment by: Paul on 8th February 2025 at 21:25

....and Mike Swift


"I was right" boasts our amateur psychiatrist Paul. - more than once in one shortish post. I am getting a bit sick and tired of your amateur pronouncements. You are also being a bit disingenuous. You say I referred to myself as a paedophile - on the contrary in your original post you floated the theory that "if I were a P.E. teacher". If what you said was true that would mean I would be teaching minors, so you were then - as now (the "over 18" bit is a very clever get out) , repeating your squalid and untrue theory, so YOU were the one who, without having the courage to say it in so many words, was the one who made the suggestion. You are at it again in the above mentioned post ("He realises if he was a PE teacher he could not trust himself"). I suggest if you really want to study psychiatry or psychology you take a proper course and not rely on those "made simple" books you can get on Amazon. I am NOT sexually interested in children. Clear enough - even for you?

I based what I said on my personal experience of having had to put up with such a teacher, for five years and even though he and our discipline festishist science/Technical Drawing teacher are now in all probably under the sod, it doesn't stop or excuse what they did and what they stood for, and the effect it had on me and others. The evil that men do, as the Bard so truly pointed out lives after them. Ask anybody who might have encountered such individuals. By the way, though you take great qudos in my admission, having read many posts on here, I think I can with confidence say I am not the only one. I am surprised that you, being such an expert, have not picked up on them as well.

Now, Mr Swift: That film is nearly ninety years old - what does seem strange to me, is the number of posters who trawl through the internet looking for ancient material of this sort. It is not something I do. I don't have the inclination. You say it was a "pathetic response" and describe the material in that old film as innocent. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't as far as the teachers were concerned - I can only suggest the look on that old man's face looked extremely unpleasant to me,

Would anyone, except the oldest of old fogies use a 1936 recording of a lesson to teach in 2025?. Life has moved on and one hopes that attitudes of the teaching profession have moved on also. The world was a very different place before the second world war. Perhaps that upsets you, but I bet it doesn't upset the pupils attending school today.

Matthew that boy you noticed could have been me. I was the chubby lad in my own class of slim lads who all did shirtless PE with each other and although I was by no means fat, just having what they used to call puppy fat and looking bigger than others was enough in a shirtless lesson at school to fuel the self image problems. Yet when I was 30 I was a trim and athletic frame. It's just horrible that I wasn't when it mattered most to me, in school doing PE with my shirt off.

When you're in school being forced into shirtless PE situations any slight difference anyone has gets magnified ten fold in my experience. Boys were not allowed to cover up for PE at my comprehensive, which is all very well but what about those who have self image problems or are a bit chubby at school age. I'm talking 1993 here when I began comprehensive school at twelve. I would never have chosen to do any PE lesson with no shirt on by choice, ever at that age, but all of my own PE teachers decided that we boys should not be wearing anything on our bodies in PE during the gym lessons.

But by the same token I rather doubt I would have wanted to be the only boy in my class who was wearing a shirt for PE just because I was a bit bigger and trying to hide myself from view. So either way I just couldn't win really. I remember when I was shirtless in PE I did my best to blend in and not be noticed but this wasn't an effective strategy. One day I got sent to fetch a whistle from the PE teacher office which was a walk through the school, some bright spark put the office nowehere close to the gym. I had to walk to his office and back shirtless across school. On the way I got stopped by a teacher and asked what I was doing and had to explain.

We did two mixed PE lessons each school year. Lads were barechested just like in any PE/Games lesson and the girls were very used to seeing us stripped to the waist indoors and frequently outside too it made little difference. There was lightheaded banter but never did that turn sexual even if you started going out with each other. It's only natural that girls like to see lads exercise barechested. People overthink things too much.

Mike it just goes to prove that what I said on 30th January was correct. He's admitted what was blindingly obvious, he's a gay man, and he is sexualising these gym situations in ways others do not. There are other clues within what he's written that suggest what he likes. He realises if he was a PE teacher he could not trust himself but is projecting it to others. I did not call you a paedophile Alan but you actually used that word against yourself, a very strange thing to do. I was right in noticing you were obviously a gay man and I am right in thinking you do like much younger males (over 18) and probably hate yourself for it or your sexuality. You definitely seem like you are a gay hater, despite your own admission. You've given much more away about yourself than you probably realise. Your comment today about a 1930s secondary school historical physical education video is quite crazy.

I agree with everything you have said Mike Swift. You've been getting away with so much acute self absorbed commentary.

Yours Truly observes a child may have been visibly embarrassed out of line of the cameras. Doubtless many of the children will not have minded in the way I did, or he or others did, but there is an unpleasant moment in the documentary A Yorkshiredad linked to (1991 is the date at the end), in a segment filmed in another school. An overweight boy does look uncomfortable, unsurprisingly, as he files out of the classroom in just shorts, past the camera, with the other children to their PE lesson.

Comment by: Alan on 8th February 2025 at 05:29
Gentlemen, whilst you wax lyrical about that film, can I just remind you that was 89 YEARS ago. The past, as Yours Truly so rightly pointed out, is another country. They did things differently then. That seedy mustachioed old teacher lying on his back fully clothed seemed to be enjoying himself with lads clambering over him., but would we want things like that filmed for posterity now?. I don't think so. Let's remember that we are supposed to be living in more enlightened times, aren't we?. Virtually every boy in that film will now be dead and it seems grotesque to me that material like that is still freely available for people to gawp at. In my view it should never have been filmed at all.




I disagree most strongly. What a pathetic response. It's your reaction to an innocent situation that I find quite disturbing and the words you use like "grotesque" and "seedy". What is the matter with you? Are you totally incapable of seeing something for what it is without drawing darker conclusions? You appear to be sexualising a simple PE class situation just because the boys happen to all be bare-chested. It's a perfectly appropriate style of dress and historical archive and there is nothing wrong with it at all. But there is something wrong with your interpretation of such situations and the record of them.

Comment by: Frank on 7th February 2025 at 15:37
Comment by: David on 4th February 2025 at 06:43

Gentlemen, whilst you wax lyrical about that film, can I just remind you that was 89 YEARS ago. The past, as Yours Truly so rightly pointed out, is another country. They did things differently then. That seedy mustachioed old teacher lying on his back fully clothed seemed to be enjoying himself with lads clambering over him., but would we want things like that filmed for posterity now?. I don't think so. Let's remember that we are supposed to be living in more enlightened times, aren't we?. Virtually every boy in that film will now be dead and it seems grotesque to me that material like that is still freely available for people to gawp at. In my view it should never have been filmed at all.


Comment by: Carol on 7th February 2025 at 21:25



Carol, I totally agree with you. It is disgusting, and rather dubious that a child of either sex should feel degraded, and you have to wonder at the motives and the mental capacity of any teacher for making children, regardless of age to have to parade around like that. If I had been a parent there would have been questions and complaints raised. People are far too trusting of "authority" even when the behaviour of that authority seems questionable,

Hi Carol,

I think you'll find that that film featured two separate PE classes, one from infant school and the other from juniors, although the narrative does not clearly specify this. The boys in shorts are from the junior age class while in the infant class all of the children are in underwear, not just the girls.

Surely it is the boys that are hard done by, if, as you say, they are often expected to do the class topless without complaint? The fact that it was the custom in that school does not make it easier for the boys themselves to bear. While the boys featured in the film seem to be enjoying themselves it was of course edited and it cannot be guaranteed that just out of shot there wasn't at least one boy crouched over, cringing, with his arms clasped around himself, who was unhappy to be filmed for national TV half-naked. I certainly would have been at that age.

No concern from you about the double standard in the junior class? Where the boys wear just shorts while the girls not only wear tops but their arms and legs are covered up too? To me that is just outrageous discrimination. There can be no subject-related or health-and-safety justification for such a glaring gender disparity. I would have been severely pissed off if I had been made to do my primary PE lessons that way. Thank God I didn't go to that school. Boys always seem to be on the receiving end of this kind of casual gender discrimination, and your silence on it here says a lot.

The real question is why the children of both sexes are made to do PE without a proper kit. You say they did it that way at your infants school. They did it that way at mine as well. I can only make educated guesses about my own infant school. I remember that the teachers were not at all considerate of the dignity of the children in their care. Either they believed that children at such young ages had not yet developed any sense of personal dignity - wrong, as you say, in your case, and in mine too - or they knew it was there but they viewed it as a 'privilege' that was incompatible with school discipline and something to be taken away from the young pupils during school hours. (My primary school was catholic and inevitably seemed almost to regard the inculcation of 'discipline', ie. making children do as they were told when they were told, as more essential than actually teaching us anything.) The staff held very rigid ideas about how children were to behave and I know through my own traumatic experience that they would not deviate from these even when it was obvious that a child was in distress.

I have written in a previous post about how there seemed to be a lot of times when we were required to take off our clothes. Why did I have to strip to my pants to play the donkey's arse in the school Christmas play? Given that nobody was going to be able to see me inside the costume anyway? Why could I not just remove my shoes and socks? LP Hartley famously stated that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently. The older I get the more the 1970s seem like some wretched third-world country from the dark ages.

It looks like the school featured in the film had a similarly cavalier approach. I agree with you about that girl. On the beach or in the paddling pool in the back garden, with your parents there, is one thing.
But in school, surrounded by strangers, well, if you ask me, that is stretching that pompous 'in loco parentis' principle too far for comfort.

Why should boys have to expect to do PE in their bare chests? You and your double standard. There is no practical purpose that is served by imposing this on boys. It won't make them work any harder or get any fitter.

There was a post, either on this thread or one of the other PE-related ones, quite some time back now, from a woman who had attended a mixed grammar school in, I think the early 1980s. She related how during the first year all the girls were made to take their indoor PE classes in nothing but their knickers, and how the female PE teacher was very stern and forceful about making them strip to that level. From second year they were allowed to wear leotards. I wouldn't have believed that any school anywhere ever made girls do that but it seemed to be a genuine post.

As I say, we had to do infant school PE in our underwear. It seemed and seems unnecessary. Why couldn't we bring a pair of shorts at least?

I hope I haven't been too critical. It is not my intention to snipe at anybody that comes on here with views that differ from mine.

One final detail that has only now struck me for its incongruity: we were allowed, if we wanted, to bring plimsolls and wear them to PE. Yup. We weren't allowed any kind of PE kit, not even a pair of shorts. But we could, if we wanted, wear shoes and socks with our pants and vests. Figure that one out.

A Yorkshiredad - That first video you placed on here within your post, I think it said it was from 1990, even in the 90's they were making children mix topless with each other in school, the girls as well as the boys with each other. I think the girls were particularly hard done by in that film because while boys are often expected to be shirtless in such lessons without complaint when told they must do so, girls as a rule don't have an expectation to be shirtless/topless like boys, but here they are mixed together all the same.

Actually that's not even the main issue for me. What I don't understand is why the girls are having to do the class in their underwear rather than a proper PE kit of some sort. I don't think it matters that they are very young, why are the girls at a school like that not in possession of a proper PE kit to put on?

It reminded me of my school in the early days at their ages, right down to the old teacher just standing about in her regular day clothes just giving instructions without really taking part or doing very much. A previous teacher here has said they had no training for PE, that's obvious. I had a teacher just like that who made girls like me run around in nothing but our knickers around the school hall/gym, among the shirtless boys. My own memories were about 20 years earlier than your film.

These little kids do also care too, I did. So have two people on here recently mentioned being five and six year olds who were terribly concerned by having to take off their top and be shirtless in one case and shoes and socks and be barefoot in another example.

As I say, why no decent PE kit for the girls? It's a PE lesson, not a medical. Why only underwear, the boys got shorts in your film. I remember my school at that age and all girls wore their knickers and all boys were in pants, there was not an actual PE kit to even bring to school at all, we all just changed at our tables by taking everything we had come to school in right off down to our one remaining piece of underwear among each other and following teacher out to to do PE.

Boys should at least expect to do PE in their bare chests at any age, but girls should not have to do that, and neither boys nor girls should have to do PE in their underwear when they could bring a pair of shorts to wear and look much better.

What is your opinion on this A Yorkshiredad, as a school teacher?

Comment by: David on 4th February 2025 at 06:43
Turned out perfectly for the ideal gym lesson at secondary school, just as it should be. Healthy, in shape, disciplined, fit and getting fitter.
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-secondary-school-gymnastics-leyton-county-high-school-for-boys-1936-online



How could anybody object to this? All of them appear great and look nice doing their gym in this way. It was obviously mandatory for them but why is that a problem, it's gym. I think most of them will have finished the class here feeling very good about themselves because they were all in nice shape, look immaculate and focussed on what they are doing, not on what they are not wearing.

I was struck by the similarity with the Burnley Grammar boys above photo and this secondary school film from BFI. My own grammar school twenty years later in 1956 did gym under instruction exactly the same as these boys when I was 12 and we looked the same. It was hard work but enjoyable except if you felt the slipper across the back of your legs, backside, back or even the head on the gym floor for being silly or inattentive.

Comment by: Chris F on 6th February 2025 at 22:17

I think that you are right - fear of being "found out" would [preclude any kind of physical outward signs, and I think it very much depends on where you go to school as to whether a 16 year old today would want to label himself. Certainly the rough area I was a pupil in Im would not say it was advisable even today.

What angers me so much about school authorities in general, and P.E teachers in particular is that they must know that there are lads who have these issues - one in twenty, according to what I have read, so each school must, perforce, have at least a couple, and yet they force them into this situation - the fact that a lad is reluctant to shower should be an indicator. Yet for all their "caring and compassionate" shtick they still force the issue in some places. They might like to pretend that their school is "inclusive and accepting" and perhaps the pretence can be kept up at school, but there is pre and after school - the trips on the bus, the chance to catch up with fellow pupils on the street - and on-line of course.

I liked to be clean, but I dreaded the showers - not least because of our leering PE teacher - and other members of staff were, I was sure, aware of his proclivities and did nothing about it. Some years after I left (I was then about 22) I met one of my old teachers who admitted the fact. Why the hell did he do nothing about him?

Come out at school? I just don;t understand it.

Thank you, Terry and Mark, for your kind comments about my and others' posts. Thank you for the information about your dap bag, Mickey; it's interesting how plimsolls go by different names - I think they're also called sandshoes.

I read an obituary in The Times (20 Jan online edition, behind a paywall) about an Italian gentleman, Mauro Morandi, who spent 32 years as the sole inhabitant of the Mediterranean island of Budelli, two-thirds of a square mile in area between Sardinia and Corsica. He saw himself as the island's custodian. Here is a Guardian article anyone can read: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/07/hermit-guardian-budelli-island-off-sardinia-dies

I mention him here because the Times obituary states Morandi worked in the 1970s as a PE teacher at a secondary school in Modena. He was rebuked for using "unapproved techniques": he would set his lessons to music. Morandi described himself as "a bit of a rebel".

(Contrary to the Guardian article, the Times obituary says that, despite threats of eviction, Morandi left the island voluntarily in 2021, aged 82, because of declining health).

We used to have to line up and wait at school (age 11 to 15 in 1971-75) along the public corridor in our shorts, barefooted and shirtless before we could enter the school gym. Others would often walk past us all smirking away as we looked awkward about it, and we very much were not allowed to wear shirts in the PE lesson which was mandatory shirtless for all male pupils across the entire school. We also ran cross country shirtless, except during December - February.

I remember having a strong crush on a boy in my class when I was just nine years old. He moved away and I was very upset but another boy came along when I was ten and joined the class and I thought he was everything I wished I was and developed a secret crush on him too. These were the first signs I was gay, but I didn't even know what gay meant at that age anyway in the 1970s, but by the age of eleven I was beginning to think I liked boys more than girls, although I spent a lot more of my time around girls.

I remember still being in primary school and getting the odd comment, someone called me a 'gaylord' one day and the word 'poof' was used too, among eleven year olds. I have no idea how children can sniff out these things about you at that age because I gave off no clues or acted differently to anyone else, other than disliking some of the things 'normal' boys were meant to like.

When I got up to secondary school when I was twelve, 1978, things got more serious. I think by twelve I knew what I was, but although I spent a lot of my time at school not being allowed a top for the PE lessons I did not look around me and feel any kind of 'turn on' by the situation. Quite the reverse actually, I hated being made to strip to the waist for the school gym and become a skin for PE lessons.

I had an instinctive aversion to showers and wished to avoid them if I could, but as others will know, you didn't avoid showers at school in those days, you were made to do them. I saw a boy pulled by his earlobe into them one day because he was not going to go in the showers. I was not effeminate in any way but there was a boy in my class who was and when we showered he received homophobic comments to keep away from him and not to bend over near him in the showers. I avoided this. I had absolutely no interest in anyone I used to share the school showers with at the age of fourteen, many in that class at that age were quite unlikeable actually, and I only had a tight circle of friends. When I was fifteen the boy I'd had a crush on in primary joined our PE group again and I saw him with his shirt off for the first time and knew for sure what I was, and was attracted. This gave me worries because he also went in the showers naked with me after PE and for the first time I feared something might stir when I didn't want it to. One afternoon after PE I did get a slight movement down below, what is called a 'semi' but luckily nobody noticed. In my last six to nine months showering at school after PE I became quite fearful of the situation but was not allowed to go off without a full shower with others.

I'm sure my own story could be written by tens of thousands of other schoolboys too who were placed into the same situations. School in 1981 for a fifteen year old was quite a hostile place to anyone who gave a hint of being anything other than 'normal'. If I'd had an unwanted rise in the showers at school on account of my emerging feelings, being forced into surroundings with many other naked boys and been seen doing so I might easily have found myself being beaten up on the way home for that, or even in the showers themselves or the school toilets. I'm convinced about that.

I think the fear about such things happening made sure to put a dampner on any feelings or body reactions I might have had. For an increasingly hormonal fifteen year old boy discovering his same sex sexuality through school years I can only think that being gay in this situation is like putting a straight horny girl on her own into the boys showers.

I don't know what the situation would be now with an openly gay schoolboy and school showering in places where this still occurs. Many fifteen year olds now are almost keen to come out and tell the world.

Alan, I was sorry to read about your distressing experiences. Thank you for being prepared to discuss them, and kind enough to mention other private matters, to respond to someone's question.