Burnley Grammar School

Nathan Hind & Original Andy - I agree completely. The vast, vast majority of teachers were and are genuine and well-meaning. To be obsessed with the few that make the headines for the wrong reasons is indeed unhealthy and unhelpful.

Nathan Hind on 11th November 2023 at 14:19

I totally agree with you however there is a long, long history of the sort of posts you refer to and all are utterly unhealthy however both the subject of your post and Dando continue unabated to the point where I wonder whether they are one and the same.

A good experience of school and in particular of PE is simply not allowed.

Privacy issues surrounding school showering are being mentioned here. I'd like to use the word dignity instead, and suggest that personal dignity and a respect for anyone's personal dignity is a more appropriate way to look at it and that everyone should have personal dignity respected and if someone feels that their personal dignity is not being upheld by a mandatory requirement to shower at school then they should have an undeniable right to decline under the same principle as conscientious objection.

I was a slightly bigger guy at school than others and found that showering opened me up to comments I would not have received if I had not been told I had to do so after doing PE at school.

I'm not sure there is a lot more to be gained by placing too many of those type of newspaper items on these pages Alan do you. I don't think you'd want to become like Mr Dando who was regularly posting the PE arrangements of various named schools he disagreed with, including my own school.

99% and more of teachers are not like those articles. Do you really think we are? By all means be fully aware and alert but don't taint everyone in the process, that helps nobody at all.

Privacy can work differently depending on who you are with I think.

I was at secondary school from 1969 and into most of the early seventies. It was drilled into us from day one the expectation that we all must use the changing room shower following PE classes. There were no exceptions to the rule, never mind what you might have felt about it, looked like or anything else, at the end of PE it was everyone in, and no hanging around about it. I was able to deal with this in school quite well as PE was one of my favourite subjects anyway, which always helps I suppose. I never felt too self conscious doing it, it was part of school life for us more than once a week and as we were all being treated exactly the same there was little to really complain about.

Then in 1972 my family went off to a fixed plot caravan park on the Essex coast near Frinton for a week over summer holidays using a caravan my uncle had owned at the site for many years. It was our first time and we spent a couple of weeks there. Although the fixed ploot caravan was quite spacious for our needs for the holiday it did not have anything other than a small kitchen sink and there wasn't even a toilet in it, but the site provided public toilets in a building nearby, along with a washing area and shower facilities. It was a communal open plan very un-private shower that anyone on the site could make use of at certain times of the day, something like 6am to 11am and again 6pm to 11pm I think it was. Everything was separated into male/female use apart from the other.

You can't go anywhere for two weeks and not bath or shower, and a bath was not an option like back home, so we had to shower in this communal area and a couple of days in my dad took me and my much younger brother who was only 7 along to shower. I was 14. My mum and sister went to the female area. Now I had not bargained on having to shower at the same time as my own dad and didn't want to do that but he was adamant he was not letting me and my brother go along to the public communal shower on site to do so by ourselves without him. Understandable in many ways but I kicked up a real thing about doing it by myself but he wasn't relenting. Just like teachers, you didn't argue with dad, he said you're doing something and you did it. At 14 I felt I was big enough and careful enough to be trusted to take me and my young brother to use the site's communal shower area by ourselves.

Showering with my class in school was okay but having to shower with my dad at the caravan site communal facility at the age I was did make me feel he was violating the privacy I expected for myself at that age from my own parents, but dad didn't see it that way at all back then. I can still recall the sights and smells of that particular building.

Keith on 8th November 2023 at 21:44

I totally agree, I never felt there was anything wrong, inappropriate or indeed anything else negative. It's what lads did. Communal showers still exist albeit in smaller numbers than they used to but just a few weeks back I was camping and the onsite washrooms for men at least had communal showers and they were in use by me and many more. Nothing to worry about and nothing to fear and so much better than cubicles and towel dancers.

Christopher W: The teacher concerned should have been sacked. far too many get away with their voyeurism, and it still goes on:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12725735/Eton-College-teacher-charged-sex-offences-boy-private-school.html


Clearly the man - even if he didn't touch the lads - was getting gratification from what he did.

At one time, being an estate agent or used car salesman was regarded as shaming. The more that comes out about the teaching profession, the more that interpretation can be put on that profession as well. Not all of course, but there are far too many rotten apples in the barrel, and it seems far too often a blind eye is drawn over very dubious behaviour

On this whole privacy point that has been made, I never considered having to share my own naked body with other naked bodies when we had to go for showers after PE to be any sort of invasion of my privacy and still can't really think of it like that.

Part of what that teacher in the press article did actually happened at my school in the late 70's when a teacher of mine took a number of illicit swimming lessons in the school pool with a group of boys on Saturday mornings under the guise of extra tuition and allowed them to go full skins top to tail if they wanted. He got a slap on the wrist and Saturday morning extra tuition came to an end abruptly. There was never any suggestion he made anyone do anything they didn't want to do or did so himself and it was put down to losing control or something like that, very conveniently.

Kevin: He had TWO criminal convictions. A jury decided, based on the evidence they heard that he was guilty both occasions. He was bloody lucky he didn't have to serve his sentence for the second one, as clearly the first one hadn't taught him to mend his ways. In my view he should have been imprisoned. The naked swimming behind locked doors as late as the 1990s also tends to suggest a certain tendency.

As regards ogling boys in the shower - I am sure a lot of teachers did- and do - get pleasure from it, which is why I think there should be more privacy especially for older lads.

That Romford Recorder item that's been left on here about the teacher says something about ogling in it. But how do you define someone who is just looking at someone and ogling them in a changing room then? Is it just staring at someone, I felt that lots. Because when I had to shower in school the teachers were always paying close attention to all of us and if that counts as ogling then it was probably going on in every school in the country at one point a few years ago.

Malcolm your comment today will be very familiar to all of us who are your age. In those days you didn't have to be a bad boy in school to feel the wrath of teachers and false accusations or agenda driven teachers could set out to make examples of us. If you were genuinely innocent of something it could actually be much worse if you then denied it until you were blue in the face, so being innocent and facing a punishment could mean you got a much harder punishment than if you had been guilty of something. Innocent boys did admit to things they didn't do in school just to prevent worse if they made a big deal of it.

My example is this. It was during the winter freeze up of early 1963. We all went to school. Now they'd get three months off. One of our teachers had a small car that snow had been piled up around in the school car park which was down the side of the school out of direct view of anything. Snow and ice had also been pushed into the rear exhaust. As it was freezing it remained solid. I'd been seen near this car and was accused of doing it. I think it was mistaken identity. The teacher came back to it and couldn't drive it away immediately and had to burrow snow away from it. When he started the car it backfired and exploded in some minor way because the exhaust was blocked.

I was known for one or two minor little fun pranks and got hauled in and told to own up and they told me what for. I had not done it and been anywhere near that teachers car. I would have been 14 in early '63. I was completely disbelieved and ended up with six strokes of a cane across my bottom in the heads office in the presence of my class tutor. My parents were then told and at home I got another thrashing from my fathers belt in the same place. The school didn't believe me and neither did my parents, they took the school side. There was nothing I could do or say to change things. Because I kept denying it I fared worse for not manning up.

When that happens to you and you know you did nothing it really does alter your view of people and things going forward. I stopped pulling pranks and became a lot more subdued. I can't even beginning to imagine what it must have felt like to face a hangman's noose knowing you'd done nothing wrong, but in that case you'd not have long to remember it like I have for 60 years.

I could have taken the school punishment inflicted on me for doing nothing but the real killer for me was my parents not believing me, that was the worst part, but was largely symptomatic of the times then.

Alex - I take your point - all those blasted cookies on websites, CCTV everywhere you go, but you are not being asked to take your clothes off, so you retain personal privacy. That said I suspect people who gawp at CCTV cameras these days are voyeuristic by nature, from the supermarket security guard to the jobsworth civil servant.

Speaking of which - from today´s local newspaper website, is the latest instalment of the story of one of our local schools, involved in the most loathsome invasion of privacy by a convicted (PE Teacher) pervert. The latest excuse for his disgusting behaviour is that he is ¨a very hygienic man¨. Surely the weakest excuse they could have come up with, and an insult to the intelligence: I have to remind readers that these disgusting events took place in the 21st century with all the alleged CRB and ¨safeguarding¨ checks:


https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/23906823.parents-helping-royal-liberty-school-romford-abuse-lawsuit/

Alex your reasoning there and conclusion is total brilliance. Not contrary at all. I hope others can see it the same way I can.

That's certainly going to set the cat among the pigeons now.

Quoting a short section of a previous Alan post here;

"if enough kids said no, there is very little the school, the teacher or the education authority could do about it, I am not anti-showering, but I am pro choice in how it is conducted. Privacy is a human right."





I find little to argue with in the above comment. But the last five words are worth picking up here. Alan have you not realised that we have all actually lost our privacy over the past 20 years, many of us handed it over willingly in all areas of our lives and it's quite shocking how few people seem to actually care about that fact. Privacy has all but gone. The school showers, for those who still have them, are the least of anybody's worries in this day and age on the privacy issue. Actually I'd go even further and suggest that a group of pupils in school sharing a shower with each other are probably in one of the most private places they could expect to be in this day and age, as contrary as it might sound.

Calisthenics is such a strange and rarely used word. I actually had to look the definitive meaning up even though I had heard it used before.

I'd be very surprised to hear that any in school are being made to do PE after the age of 16 nowadays, although that was the case years ago I think those who stayed on at my school were required to do at least something to fill up gaps in their week.

Malcolm on 7th November 2023 at 01:12

I would agree, if a teacher said you did something you might as well own up. I was sent to the headmaster once accused of 'brawling' in the school yard. I hadn't been but of course the teacher was believed. I protested once in the headmaster's study.

The result, the cane of course, four for brawling and two more for insolence. It was always better to keep quiet and take it.

Comment by: Derek on 6th November 2023 at 20:40


I genuinely hope that is the case, Derek . Perhaps Nathan, who is currently a PE teacher would be good enough to let us know?

The first time I was caned in school was in 1959 and I couldn't believe how much it stung my backside. I was 12. My shorts were dropped a little bit and it was direct on the skin. Just one strike and it left a mark that was still visible more than a fortnight later and the sting lasted very many hours and just when I thought it was gone if I rubbed my buttocks in a certain way sitting I felt it again. The only reason I got given it was because I looked out of a window and wasn't paying attention for a few seconds in a gym hall during the p.e class doing calisthenics. That teacher didn't like me and sent me to the headmasters study and basically fabricated a tale that I was regularly daydreaming in class which wasn't true. The headmaster believed the teacher and not me, wasn't it always the way. You would rarely win against a teacher.

Warren on 6th November 2023 at 13:03

You make very valid points, I recollected a few posts back that when I was at school and corporal punishment was very much the order of the day, capital punishment was still on the statute books and indeed I remember the morning of the last hangings - one in Liverpool and one in Manchester on the same morning. In that context you can see why corporal punishment was not questioned.

Those now being made to stay at school until they are 18 are not being made to keep doing regular normal PE lessons from 16 to 18 are they?

Doesn't what I'd describe as normal PE end at 16 and anything after that is a choice?

Warren - it went on in state schools well into the 1980s - though it tended to be what might be called the hard-core teachers who still employed it, a couple of ours did. But here is a question for both Graham and Nathan if they don't mind answering it: It is 2023, I am 17(in some ways I wish I was!) I have been forced to stay on at school thanks to the economy, though I have tried to get a job. You tell me to take my top off, or take a shower and I say no. A simple question: how would you deal with it?. Unlike the 1980s you couldn't use threats of canes, slippers or touch me. What would you give me? - detention?, lines?.

I'd genuinely like to know how teachers would cope with such a situation today.

There could be much younger people and those at school right now who might read a comment like Barry and think that's unlikely but it's definitely not. If you were at school in the 70's getting on for the best part of fifty years ago now and more (horrifying isn't it) then teachers of all kinds were more than useful with their hands on you when they felt like it, not just the PE teachers but name any other subject and a certain type of person, mostly men it has to be said, would sometimes get physical quite directly against the person.

Nowadays there is a fear of so much putting a fingertip on anybody, even probably for friendly contact. I remember a boy in my class getting pulled up out of his chair by his hair from a teacher and when he finally sat down it had obviously hurt because his face was red, his eyes were watering and he was clearly trying hard not to cry about it. For me that is physical abuse and I remember the guy this happened to because he was one of the quietest in the whole class, no trouble ever, but it didn't stop this kind of teacher acting like that.

So when Barry says what he says I know he's talking reality for many of us here. Nobody ever had to encourage me to jump in a shower after PE, I just got on with it as quick as I could but I'm sure the whole thing could have felt very intimidating to those who disliked PE and the compulsory showers that went with it because some of those PE teachers were, even by my own admission, quite intimidating characters that you would not wish to openly confront or even wish to show any signs of weakness in front of.

Another beautiful morning when I really enjoyed my gym session. After two weeks of half term here when there have been a glut of teenagers in the gym in the mornings when they are usually at school, it was back to just us old gits this morning and so much nicer! You can just get on with your workout without youngsters staring at their phones, taking long pauses between sets and taking an age to complete something, we older guys just work.

Then walking home, I paused to watch the lads at my old school out on the field, it was rugby training this morning complete with scrum machine and their performance was impressive. When I was at school, I was a prop given my size but now when I look at the lads, they are all huge compared to how I was back then. I doubt now, I would even make the team.

Of course sports nutrition is a science these days, something I don't think I had ever even heard of and even if it did exist, my parents would never have been able to afford a specific diet.

On that front, things are definitely an improvement.

Barry on 5th November 2023 at 20:06

I totally agree, there seems to be a belief these days that because children have rights and opinions it was ever thus. It certainly was not. I remember once telling my father that I had a right to be heard and his response was that I only had a right to do as I was told as he took off his belt.

Things have changed dramatically over the last 50+ years, mostly, but not all for the better. Sometimes it's beneficial to be forced to do something you would choose to avoid because when you start, you find you enjoy it. I'm not sure how often that happens these days.

I wonder if any sports master would dare play pirates for instance, a game I was frightened of when I first saw it but I got to love it very quickly, particularly climbing ropes but I would imagine that rope climbing has been risk assessed away.

I've seen a couple of sports masters comment here, can they throw any light on pirates today please?

Barry - mine would have been the same, and he would have especially enjoyed it. He liked a bit of physical contact!. But the question is especially interesting now that boys and girls are forced to stay at school till 18 by government edict, if they can't find jobs (and is thanks to the inefficiency of both the current and the possible future government which has caused this, since you couldn't get a bus ticket between the buttocks of either party on most things).

By the age of 16 you are considered an adult - they might even be voting by the time of next but one election. At 18 they can get married without permission, join the army, sign an HP agreement etc, without parental guidance. Is it proper that some bullying teacher can force them to do anything against their will?. I know if I had been one of the current crop "Rebel" would have been my middle name. Also, of course, they can no longer use corporal punishment so - if this situation does pertain in schools today - if enough kids said no, there is very little the school, the teacher or the education authority could do about it, I am not anti-showering, but I am pro choice in how it is conducted. Privacy is a human right.

I was always told that when you try and tell people what to do as a mandate they tend to do the opposite.

Not always the case though is it.

James is right. The use of our school's PE showers up for discussing, never in a million years was that going to happen. We had a PE teacher who would physically manhandle you and I've no doubt this large man would have picked up my scrawny body at the time and launched me through the air into them if I'd said I didn't fancy showering after PE, and if you think I'm overdoing it saying that, think again.

Whether he had the right in law who knows about that but I'm sure plenty of rules were stretched or bent to breaking point in schools and this might be one of them. Good question to pose though, it got me thinking.

Comment by: Jono on 4th November 2023 at 21:46
Craig, thanks for the interesting post. Though I don't live anywhere near I hope this is a success. Have you been out lately? I didn't mind doing cross country without a vest and was out in all weathers. Did you experience bare chested exercise at school?


Thanks Jono. Yes, we've been out at 9am this morning with 4 of us for about 45 minutes on a nice little rural route we drove a short distance to and did, which we could do because there were just the four so we car shared. We choose different places if we can, although I know what some might think about using a car to go running. A lot of time we don't do that. We won't be expecting to get the numbers over the next few months like we have done over summer. We try to arrange it so we normally get about 6 or 7 but today's 4 was fine, and I have been out in a pair before now myself. I would strongly advise anyone thinking about it to at least give it a go once as you might be surprised at the outcome, it does wonders for your overall wellbeing and the more you do it the more benefits. Obviously running generally will deliver those benefits bit going bareskin running adds another dimension that many of us feel so it can't be imaginary. It is never quite a cold as you think it will be on a morning like today which started off quite damp and misty before the sun came along by the time we finished.

I absolutely did experience bare chested exercise at school many times in PE when we were told to do it that way.

Neil on 5th November 2023 at 15:19

On communal showers, it was never up for discussion with a PE teacher who had a size twelve plimsoll at the ready.

In those days you 'did as you were told' and it certainly did me no harm. I loved sport and would change nothing about my time at school in the 1960s.