Burnley Grammar School

I had a teenage experience of communal showers against my will, at first, away from school in a family orientated situation with my own father who took me then aged 14 and my then aged 10 year old brother on a camping and trail walking week with a number of other fathers and sons in the mid seventies.

It was one of those boys things we did with dads and left the sisters and mums back home to give them a break from us all, and lasted a whole week away. Generally it was great fun, it took place during school holiday time in August 1974 in the Brecon Beacons.

We all went off on the same coach with each other from Bootle, I think there were about 15 dads and sons on the trip we undertook, some of us knew each other, others did not very well but we were all from the same area and a couple of boys were from my own school too but most were unfamiliar and it was a week I made a few friendships.

I remember when we arrived where we were staying being surprised at how rudimentary everything was.

The tents were not ours and were rented and very large and we had to share, something like eight persons per tent, boys wanted tents to themselves without adults but every tent had a couple of dads in it keeping eye on us overnight.

I remember our days beginning right on 7am on this trip, and everyone from that coach piling into a communal shower block on site at the same time and dads and sons all sharing openly together at the same time with each other, including teenage lads like me who got dragged there by my own dad first morning very reluctant to do that at my age I was then in dads company like that. Very embarrassed I was at first. I remember everyone on that coach every morning for the week we were there in that communal shower, fully on naked, all the boys (sons) and men (dads) side by side. The boys were aged anything from about 6 to 16 on that trip. None of the dads of 1974 seemed bothered by stripping off and darting straight into a communal shower with other men and their children sons and mixing it up like that, and my dad was like this too. My dad had come with his two sons, me and my brother, some had come with one son, others with two. I don't remember anyone sitting the communal showers out and not doing it on that trip. The kids were all told to by our dads and the dads all seemed fine with the arrangement. By the close of the week I think we had all become remarkably alright and normal with it after four of five goes at it. All the boys there over eleven were probably well versed with communal showers from our respective schools anyway, maybe some even shared with a teacher from time to time.

I remember in the warm light evenings after our day doing things in the locality and a lot of walking there was a lot of shirtlessness as we relaxed and many boys and quite a few of the dads discarded and kept tops off voluntarily, and because we'd been walking a lot we kicked our shoes and socks off and went about for an hour or two dressed down quite a bit, often in just shorts, kicking a ball about or splashing at a nearby water feature pond and stream, infact I think one or two boys even went the whole skinny dip a couple of times.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there was a remarkably normalised and accepting attitude to a large group of men and boys on a trip of this nature, many who didn't know each other, to just mucking in and thinking nothing of communal showering and all round general naked situations with each other, and none of us were naturists as far as I knew, just normal sons and dads on a week away during the summer out of sight of the female members of our own families. It certainly gave me a confidence boost in many ways.

In many ways this was the far more healthy attitude than the more paranoid mindset some people have today.

Comment by: David G on 31st May 2025 at 23:13


"Allan quote: "a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be."
I wonder why you always use words not in general use, such as "jejune" that most people have to look up in order to fully understand what you mean!
That says a lot about you!!"

Leaving aside your critique of my vocabulary, David (and without wishing to be pedantic I have only one "l" in my name), I find it hard to believe you are as naive as you come across here.


Are you seriously suggesting that every teacher - or priest, doctor or politician is as pure as the driven snow?. In that case perhaps you could tell us all why so many teachers, especially P.E., teachers get found guilty after a trial by jury, no matter how fervently they plead innocence to acts of indecency against pupils?. Why there are cases where such men, yet to be taken before a court, flee the country and resist attempts at deportation?. There are two eighty something old buggers at this very moment hiding in South Africa, hoping death gets them before the police ( the Nicky Campbell school case). They seem to proving their own guilt. There is a case in my own county (Essex) where a P.E. teacher got sent to prison once for 22 months for truly disgusting behaviour with whole classes of pupils (forced naked swimming , behind locked doors and sexual acts etc) then went on to commit similar crimes in another school who were daft enough to take him on. Those events took place in the last 25 years. Go back before then, and many more were hiding in plain sight.

"There is nothing sexual in naked children" - perhaps not, but those "children" are often turning into adults by the time these teachers think it is perfectly acceptable to watch them at close quarters while they shower, and getting changed. I had one just like that, and it seems many others on here did, too.

David, not all sex pests are nasty working class men in blue collar jobs, or no job at all, who get drunk and go to strip clubs and wear dirty macs - many are people in "honourable" professions who like people to think they are models of probity. I really think you need to get out more, and read local newspapers, often national newspapers, if the case is egregious enough. I cannot stand people who defend the indefensible. Naivety is something people should grow out of.

I think that is correct David G.

I am not the same Chris who placed the Dando 'Zzzzz' comment, that was someone else. I think it was interesting to note that website bang up to date from that catholic school was making it quite clear they expected PE showers to be taken in that school. Only recently I read another comment from someone else saying his own son's school website appeared to be hiding such things off the website but doing them in practice, including shirtless PE to some unknown extent. I have no issue about either.

Alan I am aware that there are 'wrong 'uns' in schools in this particular job, but that's like saying all men are rapists and all that kind of tainting everyone in a certain group with the same brush when we are only ever talking about small minorities.

The angst that many felt over being made to do their gym lessons or any other PE without their shirts on or being faced with compulsory communal showers with absolutely nothing on at all is all legitimate for debate and empathy over, without a doubt it is and I won't argue with that.

I was thinking about that comment upthread recently where someone equated being in school getting told to shower and how a workplace adult reaction might be to the same demand among colleagues. If my boss was to tell me I must communally shower with those I work with as a compulsory demand in the workplace I had to follow I think I would be quite utterly pissed off with him or the company for such a demand, but if I thought my job may be impacted by a refusal and a loss of salary I hate to admit I would probably agree to do so while remaining miffed. I was not I might add a shy schoolboy showerer or shirtless pupil in my time, I just regarded myself as middle ground feelings on it, neither enthusiastic but not concerned too much either. Would most not be in my category would others say?

Hi Chris,

'There are 2 completely different issues being discussed here.

1) Humiliation/embarrassment that a child feels having to shower with their classmates. This is a valid debate.'

Well said. You have made an extremely important point here.

'There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem.'

That's just not true, is it? In fact, that is a very naive thing to state given recent history.

We have all been hearing for decades now about all the CSA in the catholic church across numerous countries. There is also the English public school system where abuse of all sorts was traditionally spun as 'character-building'.

Alan's problem is he was once a victim. It's the same problem I have myself and presumably the reason we get accused of being the same person (although in my case it was the typical callousness of 70s school teachers, nothing that happened to me was ever sexual). You are confusing the issue to suggest that Alan etc are the only ones with a problem.

'There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting'

Ha ha! How I wish I could hold you to that! My teachers right the way through seemed to think it was essential. We were made to strip naked for intrusive medical exams that were held to be 'essential' - only to discover at secondary school that other children from other local primary schools had never suffered them. I have already said everything I want to about the illogic of communal showers for pre-teen children. Even the Christmas play seemed to necessitate removing most of your clothes. Teachers should never have the right to order a child out of their clothes unless for health reasons and they are literally dying at that moment.

'but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual.'

I agree with you but it doesn't mean that teacher isn't indulging in a little power trip, like the woman teacher Greg2 referred to who habitually passed through the boys' changing room while the boys were undressed.

I meant to say Allan can't disassociate himself from his experiences

Allan quote: "a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be."
I wonder why you always use words not in general use, such as "jejune" that most people have to look up in order to fully understand what you mean!
That says a lot about you!!

Comment by: Chris on 30th May 2025 at 22:51

....."There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual........"

I think Chris is correct with his views .I don't Allan can't disassociate himself from his own experiences.

Comment by: Chris on 30th May 2025 at 22:51

....."There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual........"

Chris you are being truly ingenuous. What about paedophile teachers, and if you don't believe there are any, I can point you to several court cases where this is the motive, and the culprit has been found guilty as charged. In other cases, though it was known at the time by pupils and other teachers alike, they were brushed under the carpet to save getting the school a bad name. It has only been in more recent years where teachers have been prosecuted, probably because parents were apparently as jejune as you seem to be.

Oh dear - someone has woken Dando up. Zzzzzzzz!

I found it embarrassing when we had an audience when we were participating at PE,especially as I didn't consider that we had appropriate kit.Of course we were topless and just wore our shorts to which we had become accustomed as even older boys were dressed accordingly.As we were all dressed the same for our usual activities and weren't seen by anyone except the teachers who took us I didn't find it embarrassing.
Same as at home ,as I was expected to strip off in front of my parents.

There are 2 completely different issues being discussed here.

1) Humiliation/embarrassment that a child feels having to shower with their classmates. This is a valid debate.

and

2) There is something terribly wrong with a teacher seeing a child naked.

There is nothing sexual about naked children and anybody who sees this interaction in a sexual light like Alan can't stop doing is the one with the problem. There is no need for the teacher to see a child naked in the school setting but if a teacher is present when children are getting dressed/changed/showering for PE some nudity is inevitable. This doesn't make it in any way, shape or form sexual.

So every kid has a get out clause.. if they're asked to do something they don't feel comfortable with they can be excluded? Would a child ever learn anything in life with that approach?

I know I'm making a bit of a jump here but sometimes it's the uncomfortable things we're made to do as children that teach us sometimes things aren't as bad as they seem in our heads.

I preferred doing a lot of PE without a top on and being bare chested. I was always quite keen to take a shower afterwards too. I was completely comfortable with the whole arrangement which all seemed sensible.

I don't see the problem with the audience participation events either. If you were someone who already did gym at school without a top on all year long wouldn't it seem odd that the teacher might change tack and suddenly require shirts or vests on boys upper bodies just because of an audience which is only their family anyway. You have an audience in PE anyway, the others in class and the teachers. Nobody was bothered to strip off in front of their own family were they, removing their top, surely? In most cases they are probably admiring how good you all look.

I always thought myself and the boys in PE looked great doing it all shirtless baring our upper bodies and getting them some fresh air, both in or out. I often chose to run cross country without my top on and either carried it in my hand or tucked it in my shorts. Some boys copied me, although nobody was forced to do so but our teachers didn't mind one bit.

Hi Deborah,

'the method in the PE kit for the boys at our primary school was that it was what most boys liked and it was also unfussy and easy to deal with, and so we took the boys into PE indoors without tops on almost always'

It amazes me how many former teachers on here have decided that the correct method for determining PE kit was to decide based on their own personal presumption or that the boys all looked nice and smart with their tops off or whatever, instead of actually, y'know . . . asking the kids themselves what they preferred?

As you say that rule was established before your time and as a school employee it was your duty to observe the rules and not to question them. But how did you know the boys preferred PE that way? Did any member of the teaching staff actually ask them? It is important not to mistake lack of dissent as assent. Children learn as they go through the school system that certain things are inescapable (just look back at some of the recent anecdotes on here concerning boys who found the idea of communal showering abhorrent and the fates that befell them). I was badly bullied at secondary school but rarely told any of it to my parents. This emphatically did not mean I was happy. It concerns me how many times here I have now read the argument, "Oh well, the boys never complained so they must have been okay with it." advanced by present or former teachers, who of all people, should know better than that.

There is also the fact that people, even primary school age children, are different. It is a mistake to generalise. Most boys, then as now, seemed deliriously happy chasing a ball up and down the field at breaktimes. I hated it, finding it mind-numbing at best and at worst, when I was made to play it, nothing short of tyranny. I refused to join in with the breaktime kickabouts and at home would leave the room if football came on the TV. People are different. You can't extrapolate from a few happy individuals that everyone else is fine with it too.

As for being unfussy and easy to deal with, well, up to the age of puberty the same rule would have been just as appropriate for the girls, would it not, especially if as you say younger children are less likely to suffer inhibitions? Let me guess, though . . .

My primary school had no changing rooms, we changed in our classrooms. There were two classes in each school year and the girls went off into the other classroom while we boys stayed in ours. I honestly can't remember whether our class teachers stayed to supervise us changing or not, so it can't have been a big deal even to me. I think they used to exit and leave us to it (health and safety violation?) but honestly I can't now remember, which suggests I didn't find it too unpleasant.

It was no big deal, you stripped down to underwear then put on your t-shirt and shorts. Generally we were allowed to wear plimsolls too, even indoors.

Our primary school had swimming classes in third-year juniors, which I was dreading. On the last day of term in second year before we broke up for the summer it was announced that the swimming lessons had been scrapped due to funding cuts - this was the early 80s after all. There was a chorus of groans from other disappointed boys but I was quietly relieved. Until reading your post it never occurred to me in my life to speculate whether we would have been supervised changing by a woman teacher.

Mark,going shirtless for PE and games was not optional,but mandatory.It always amazed me how it could be achieved and to make hundreds of boys that attended our school from the ages 11 to 16 go shirtless for their games.When I mentioned it to my parents they told me not to be silly and said that I looked good just wearing my shorts.

Appreciated reading your honest post Deborah. You are the second primary school female teacher in recent months on here to say something along these lines.

Alex and James, I'm pleased I was never placed in that situation, especially yours Alex. It was bad enough running briefly down a suburban street in cross country with my shirt off and that was only for a few moments until we reached 'safety' of the course area our school used to do such things, although it was still fully public but with not many people around. What gives with these kind of expectations, I mean would you expect to go on holiday to Great Yarmouth and be told by the council there that you had to go shirtless on the beach whether you wanted to or not, and have council enforcement officers coming at you for non compliance!

Alright so PE teachers wanted shirtless in their gyms, but doing things for an audience should surely have given a bit more leeway about sensitivities. Many boys like you say would have been anxious about just doing gym with people watching them without the added shirtless angle thrown in too. This isn't a new point though, it's been made before.

I've been one of those teachers back in time who made these kind of asks of children Alex in primary school I taught at in the 1980s and 90s. I'm not a dedicated PE teacher as primary teachers take all subjects but the method in the PE kit for the boys at our primary school was that it was what most boys liked and it was also unfussy and easy to deal with, and so we took the boys into PE indoors without tops on almost always. Sometimes the children did little performances for their parents and the boys did not have tops on. I have mixed feeling about that now. These were laid down primary school rules in place long before my arrival and still in place when I left.

Would I be right in asserting that younger children, those in primary school are less self conscious about themselves than the older children of secondary age? I do not remember many boys responding badly to being top free in PE class, but I do remember a couple of children who responded unfavourably to being in bare feet, which was obviously a common choice for primary school PE lessons and how we generally took it in those days.


Our primary school wasn't large, we had 200 pupils in eight classes,but had proper PE changing rooms for boys and girls and there was a notice beside both doors that I remember saying: private - no unauthorised admittance. I remember having a chat about this and was told it didn't relate to any of the adult teaching staff at school who had automatic admittance when necessary at all times and was instead aimed at the children keeping out when they shouldn't be in them, like at lunchtime.

Our primary school did not use showering but female staff such as me did supervise the boys changing room properly while changing was taking place, and when they were taken for swimming I had to supervise boys changing for that too, simply because there were not many male staff around who did these jobs, in our school the most we had at one point was four and much of the time just two, one of which was a deputy head teacher who didn't have his own permanent class to take anyway. We often wondered what he spent much of the day doing.

I think younger boys are much more accepting of these things though. I always enjoyed teaching this age group up to the age of twelve.

I had one child, a son, who grew up and went to school in those years too, and am happy with all the arrangement that were made for him at his own primary and secondary school where he would have often been top free for PE and told to shower when older, and although we spoke of many things school related and I took a keen interest because of my own job, he rarely complained about his lot in PE lessons and we did speak about showering in his secondary school I remember that.

Johnny,I wore shorts for school,so my mother thought it was appropriate to wear shorts at home.

@ James, did you mean to say that your mother kept you in shorts only and shirtless at home?

Following on, with this long running debate,

I have just been listening to a programme on Radio 4 called Gap Finders (tx 1204-1230 29 May 2025), in which they were talking to a dermatologist about skin cancer and sun creams, and he was saying that people should not go out of doors between 11 and 2 in the afternoon without a shirt on. P.E teachers who still insist on doing that should take a listen:

https:bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cqql

Comment by: James on 29th May 2025 at 08:23

I sometimes think parents, especially mothers, forget just how much bullying and unpleasantness goes on in schools. I can't find any excuse for it. I think where women are concerned it is sometimes due to vanity. To allow their little boys to group up into adults is to admit they are getting older themselves.


Comment by: Alex on 29th May 2025 at 02:20



....."I know what this feels like James. I had to perform to an audience in comprehensive school doing gym once when I was twelve and did so shirtless just like many of our PE lessons were in the school gym. Our PE teacher at the time thought all the boys would look better and more presentable if we all did it in our bare chests and flat out refused to let anyone perform in front of our school family audience and teachers any other way......."


You honestly have to question the motives of teachers like that. If I had been a parent I would have questioned it.

No male should ever be forced to take a pe lesson shirtless or with barefeet. Even today there are still schools who force pupils to submit to a mandatory school shower. It is time for Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to end this barbaric practice or risk the ire of voters in the 2029 general election. Here is an offending institution. https://www.castlehill.stockport.sch.uk/Information/Uniforms/ Students are required to shower after PE and should bring a towel. On Wednesdays, at certain times of the year, Year 7 students will need to bring a swimming kit for swimming lessons.

Alex,thank you for your reply,yes,it was rather daunting to take our PE lessons when shirtless and bare foot especially in front of a large audience when my parents attended.
At the secondary school that I attended being bare without tops was part of the uniform requirement and was compulsory for boys from 11 to 16. Of course we had to comply with this statutory requirement and my parents thought it was quite sensible and that I looked quite attractive being bare chested.This prompted my mother to to keep me dressed entirely in shorts at home,which I strongly objected to,but to no avail.

Comment by: James on 27th May 2025 at 13:33
We often had open days at the secondary school that I attended and I was shy and found it particularly daunting to perform our activities with a large audience.
My mother approved of me just wearing shorts and took the opportunity to keep me in shorts at home.





I know what this feels like James. I had to perform to an audience in comprehensive school doing gym once when I was twelve and did so shirtless just like many of our PE lessons were in the school gym. Our PE teacher at the time thought all the boys would look better and more presentable if we all did it in our bare chests and flat out refused to let anyone perform in front of our school family audience and teachers any other way. I was a big deal already to show off a gym routine in school with people watching without the insistence we went skins for it too. I was a bag of nerves about it. I was also very shy about such things but it never made much difference to anyone. They treated us like this right under the noses of our own parents looking on and none of them seemed to make a thing of it.

The youngest boys at school always had to do PE in the gymnasium in bare chests and feet. It was only when you reached the fourth and fifth years that they relaxed this a lot and allowed tops to be worn. I don't know why they made it a rule that the lower school boys had to be shirtless in PE and the upper school boys did not past the age of 15.

The school rules were everyone must shower every time and this even applied after we did that performance to an audience. I remember a couple of the parents coming into our changing room afterwards and someone's father I knew actually said hello to me as I walked from the shower to my bench to change. Mortifying stuff.

Hi Alan,
We often had open days at the secondary school that I attended and I was shy and found it particularly daunting to perform our activities with a large audience.
My mother approved of me just wearing shorts and took the opportunity to keep me in shorts at home.

"Hi Alan,

Religion is for the weekend in my opinion. And it should be funded solely by the community in question, no state subsidies, not even for anglican. School should be for education not indoctrination......."


I couldn't agree with you more, YT. Organised religion, in my view, has caused far more problems than it has ever solved, and in my opinion would be better not being bought into education. This is yet another subject, not unlike P.E. where it is being forced on to everyone, when comparatively few will have any interest in the subject.

I honestly think schools should only exist to teach subjects that are relevant universally. Much as I enjoyed art, it was a subject that didn't interest a mass audience. Reading, writing, English grammar, Maths, some history, and geography should be the core subjects, and the rest available to those who want the subjects, not forced on unwilling pupils. A couple of the cleverest people I knew had been educated during the war years when there had been a very circumscribed range of subjects. Those who wanted to learn more did so through night schools and the like, taking the subjects that interested in them, and progressed their careers, and in those days they left school at FOURTEEN!.


Comment by: Jonathan on 27th May 2025 at 02:00


"Yes we had the same tortuous communal showers at my school. We all loathed it. The teacher would count us in in two groups of 10 boys. We were literally only in for 2 minutes. The second group waiting their turn would just stand there trying to cover ourselves by hand, no towels while waiting, till the 2 minutes was up. Soap didn't feature in the process. It wasn't really wasn't worth the effort much of the time so I can only assume it was our school's method of ritual humiliation just like it was everywhere else.

You can't tell me that fifty years ago, indeed a lot more recently even, that this wasn't appealing to men who had paedo tendancies, when this was a job that could give them a ready made constant supply of naked children all week in large numbers very close to them. It just must have attracted a nit insignificant number of people into the job because they could safely order children to do this on the pretext that their bodies must be so sweaty and stinky or filthy from outside that they absolutely had no choice but to get showered......"


How nice it is to be in full agreement with so many recent posts. I entirely agree with you Jonathan. Our P.E. teacher was a dirty old man of many years standing (and leaning against the wall, inspecting the lads showering with his hands in his track suit) - too cold for him but not for us. I am sure that many teachers then - and perhaps now - got their jollies from watching us. Of course, very few 11 year old boys perspire to any degree at all, but it is a way of controlling the boys to their will from the day they start senior school. It is too easy to intimidate young boys from day one. There are some very strange individuals teaching this subject. Which leads me to:


Comment by: James on 27th May 2025 at 04:46


"...James C,

I agree,I don't think it should be age related not wearing a vest for PE.
To allow boys to wear vests at a certain age would make younger boys feel self conscious...."

Again, full agreement, except that I would not make it compulsory at any age. Though teachers in the early years like to dominate from day one, what a boy or girl feels comfortable in (and it will vary from child to child) should be a matter for them. All that rubbish about "performing better" in minimal kit is just so much hokum - it will not turn everyone in to an Olympic athlete, and not that many kids want to be.

Hi Jonathan,

Ritual humiliation is right. Here is a group of eleven-year-old boys. Most of them don't know each other, they're all struggling to process a new and potentially hostile environment, they're having to process a great deal of new rules. teaching methods and customs, they've probably never been around hulking sixteen-year-old sixth-formers before. It's all a lot to take in.

How could we possibly make this time worse?

Strip them naked, that's how!

I had two full medical exams in primary school and they are still bitter memories. It turned out that at secondary school I was to undergo a similarly invasive experience every week in term-time. We could just have gone and bathed/ showered at home, Games was the last lesson on Monday afternoons and you might have thought that a typically cash-strapped, underfunded state school in maggie's Britain might have been glad of the chance to shave a few crucial pennies off their energy bills by waiving the showering thing, but no way Jose. We were getting in them showers or else. When you are eleven years old and faced with a fifty-something man with a barely concealed anger problem you don't feel like arguing.

I still fail to see why it was necessary. As an adult I have never had to get balls-naked in front of other men. Communal showering was not an essential life skill. And the onset of adolescence is entirely the wrong time to inflict this ritual on young people.

None of those patronising cliches that our parents' generation were so fond of trotting out turned out to be true. It didn't make a man of me. It didn't toughen me up, I just carried on being the same shy, introverted kid I was anyway. It didn't teach me discipline - if by discipline you mean getting children to do as they're told - I had already learned that in primary school.

What it did was make me unnecessarily unhappy. Games was the last lesson on Monday afternoons and the knowledge of what was coming would hang over my head all day. A lifetime later I am still utterly unsporty and still struggle to see what's so captivating about chasing a ball up and down a field and going apeshit when your team wins, so it was all a grand waste of time that made me unhappy for no reason.

I was never aware that any deviant stuff was going on. Our teachers made a point of turning on the showers and immediately disappearing which seems to have been very much the exception to the rule.

James C,

I agree,I don't think it should be age related not wearing a vest for PE.
To allow boys to wear vests at a certain age would make younger boys feel self conscious.
Boys at both my primary school and secondary school boys were promoted to wearing long trousers at a certain age and I continued to wear short trousers through secondary school as my parents considered it unnecessary and inappropriate to be promoted to wearing long trousers at a certain age.

Yes we had the same tortuous communal showers at my school. We all loathed it. The teacher would count us in in two groups of 10 boys. We were literally only in for 2 minutes. The second group waiting their turn would just stand there trying to cover ourselves by hand, no towels while waiting, till the 2 minutes was up. Soap didn't feature in the process. It wasn't really wasn't worth the effort much of the time so I can only assume it was our school's method of ritual humiliation just like it was everywhere else.

You can't tell me that fifty years ago, indeed a lot more recently even, that this wasn't appealing to men who had paedo tendancies, when this was a job that could give them a ready made constant supply of naked children all week in large numbers very close to them. It just must have attracted a nit insignificant number of people into the job because they could safely order children to do this on the pretext that their bodies must be so sweaty and stinky or filthy from outside that they absolutely had no choice but to get showered.

It was a ritual, and a rite of passage. It was also a right old con job on most of us, but the teachers loved inflicting it on us over and over.

Getting older I started thinking about this and it suddenly all hit me as wrong to force.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

'Most school sixth forms are perfectly happy if their students wish to continue on with PE in some form, but it's a very different kind of PE and sometimes the sixth former will help out.'

Just so long as it is through their own free choice! My old school forced sixth-formers to carry on doing PE, which is an indignity and overstepping the mark in my opinion. Over-sixteen-year-olds are young adults and should be granted a certain measure of dignity. (At least at my school they were allowed to wear clothes, unlike at Danny C's).I have said in a previous post how my late sister, who was otherwise completely straitlaced and conformist, consistently dodged the PE requirement in sixth form because she considered it an indignity,. I have also told of two sixth-form girls getting wolf-whistled in their PE kit, which as young adults they should never have been exposed to. Schools and their power trips.

As regards sixth-formers helping out? I still remember my first ever games lesson, which was taken not by any teacher but by two sixteen-year-old boys. I was getting mocked and shouted at by the other boys in my year for lack of performance. These two boys just found it funny. You seem quite oblivious.


Hi Alan,

My school used the local catholic communities to buoy up its intake numbers, from groups who were more concerned with the religious element and less critical of the school's track record than they should have been.

Religion is for the weekend in my opinion. And it should be funded solely by the community in question, no state subsidies, not even for anglican. School should be for education not indoctrination.

There was one kid who got into the local grammar school. He was far and away the cleverest child in my year at primary school. Apparently the school had to wage a campaign to get this boy into the grammar, as if they were prejudiced against my primary school. When he was accepted at the local grammar school the whole class was told, as if we should all have been m ore concerned with Brains from Thunderbirds' education than our own, as if he was more important than the rest of us or something.