Burnley Grammar School

Dylan and James G: I wish that I had a time machine and I could take you to my school at the time I was there and spend an hour with our Mr R. You are quite right - he was a bully, and a deeply unpleasant man. Apart from being a bully, he enjoyed power - sadly a failing of so many teachers then One would hope that such a creature couldn't survive in schools today, but as I demonstrated over the local school that earned itself a front page spread in the current edition, just a few days ago, the occasional (one hopes not more than occasional), rotten apple does get left in the barrel.

I have no idea when you gentlemen were at at school, but I was there in the days of the cane. Those days were numbered, so people like R still used it while he had the opportunity. You try telling him back then about his revolting jokes. You try telling Mr R that he was wrong to make personal remarks and see where it got you. It would have been more than hanging from the wall bars, I assure you. Of course other boys joined in with the laugher R promoted. I didn't and many others didn't, but as long as he had an audience that was all that mattered.

There seems to be an element of Stockholm syndrome in some of the posters. I had no physical scars from my years with him, that the could make fun of, but there were other ways (like most boys of the time I was very skinny for example ), and nobody passed his contempt, (unless you were blonde, blue eyed and athletic, which was his type. I sometimes felt he would have loved to be in German in the 1930s) but why should boys of an era beyond the days of mass conscription into the armed services, when I suppose it was a training ground , of sorts, be treated like dirt. I doubt girls were ever treated like that, though of course our school had none.

Christ, what is it about PE teachers. I've got a triangular shaped birthmark on my left hand side under my arm. Barely visible nowadays, it was darker as a youth in the late 80s, early 90s. With my arm down beside me it was hidden quite well but when I lifted my arms up it was clear to see, and in PE you raise your arms up a lot and in those lessons when we took our tops off (about 1 in 3 lessons were shirts off completely no arguments) it would be seen, aside from within the changing room itself. I had a PE teacher ask me if my mum had been annoyed by me and stuck a hot iron against my skin, a joke in poor taste. Two other PE teachers had to make a bit of a thing about it also, one actually manhandled me and felt it without asking me. But if somebody had started calling me a freak or something along those lines, or that repugnant frankenstein comment then that would have been another level of awful. What a dreadful comment from what sounds like a dreadful man, even more so if he repeated the same slur more than once.

I also had a gym teacher who seemed to have an over sensitive sense of smell. He could smell things nobody else could. He gave half the class a B/O complex at one point and demanded we bring deoderant to school to use BEFORE we went to gym because he reckoned too many of us were whiffing. It will come as no surprise when I tell you that he made sure to watch every last move we made when he sent us heading to the shower whilst many of the others would turn away once they knew we were all in there.

Many of these men hold a special place in our thoughts don't they.

Sorry, I meant to respond to Alan, not Nathan

My question about the teacher and the boy with the scar is simple.

Did the boys in your PE class actually react to that frankly quite pathetic comment from a grown adult, such a with laughter or general mirth?

Dylan is correct, it was about a bully culture, not a shirtless one.

(Dylan I think you meant to answer Alan, not Nathan by the way)

Dylan - your answer (meant for Alan, I think) seems very sensible. I'm sure Nathan would not call pupils silly and perhaps hurtful names in the way Alan suggests. A sympathetic teacher would not dream of doing any such thing and should come down hard on any pupil who does.
There are plenty of things in school life that individuals could object too but I think that schools have more than enough to contend with without making exceptions here, there and eveywhere.

"I am certain Nathan is not the sort of disgusting old man that polluted our changing room and gym" - praise indeed from Alan of one of our contributors.

Nathan, the problem you are describing isn’t about shirtless PE but about bullying. When your PE teacher called your friend Frankenstein’s monster, do you really thing the solution for him would have been to put a top on? Should you not have defended your friend so as to render the bullying attempt by this teacher futile? Would your friend not have benefited much more from participating in PE shirtless allowing him to feel confident about his body and to overcome his issues of self-esteem?
We once had a supply PE teacher who called a black friend of mine a zebra because he had pigmentation issues on his upper body. I have always hated bullying and I told the teacher that there was nothing wrong with my classmate but if my friend was a zebra he must be a hippo as he was rather large. He made my hang on the wall bars for the rest of the lesson but the important thing was that my friend did not feel alone, that he realised that nothing was wrong with his skin and there was no need for him to cover up and feel ashamed. Of course, I didn’t reason that profoundly at the time but I met him again later in life and he told me about this episode which I had forgotten and thanked me for having defended him. And of course, this was made much easier as it was only a supply teacher who left soon afterward.
If bullying is eradicated, a boys PE class taken shirtless is an exceptional opportunity for boys to accept others with all their differences that are all of a sudden very obvious and visible and to bond as a group,

Dylan, with respect, I have said many times to repletion that if a lad is comfortable not wearing a shirt that is fine, but equally a lad who is not comfortable should not be forced. In other words they decide -especially as they get older - imagine being told what to do when you are 17/18!.

The person who thought I was being unpleasant to Nathan. Not at all , he asks my views and I gave them to him. It is for him to decide whether I offended him, not you. If I did it was unintentional, it was merely part of an exchange of views

My reason for saying what I did, and I have no intention of going back to Nathan's messages , to save trying to extract pieces from different messages, were along the lines that the lads who had to remove their shirts had never complained to him and that he had this situation up to July this year. I think I have mentioned in the past a friend of mine at school who had a massive scar from his chest down to near his navel due to emergency surgery he had as a baby. He was always very self conscious about it, but our boneheaded PE teacher never failed to disappoint with yet another crass "joke" about Frankenstein's monster etc. I know this lad was upset by it because he told me so. When you have a teacher making remarks of that sort, it makes you consider other people's feelings more than our own who didn't have such problems. How would I have felt? - how would you, Dylan?

Showers are a vexed question - personally I always preferred to do so, but I didn't appreciate our teacher, who was "very interested" in older boys, spending so much time watching us., nor his mantra of "if you don't like the way I do things and complain it is me they [the school authorities] will believe, not you" I don't get the impression that Nathan shares those disgusting predilictions, he is just a teacher who "knows best" simply because he thinks (like nearly all teachers do) that one size fits all. I don't know if you ever watched a TV series called "The InBetweeners" which dealt with six formers in the late 2000s - I am trying to be as polite here as I can, but one of the jokes in that show was that one character got erections at the most inopportune times - you don't need a lot of imagination to understand that if you were say, 16 or 17, the time it is most likely to happen, and you were wearing only a pair of shorts, the embarrassment it would cause. . It never happened to me, but it did happen to some - but that was years ago. Teachers these days should have more empathy, especially younger ones who might well have experienced similar problems not that many years ago. I finish by saying that I am certain Nathan is not the sort of disgusting old man that polluted our changing room and gym (such as it was), but you don't forget things like that.

I would be perfectly happy for Nathan to be the PE teacher of any of my children based on the honest comments he has placed upon this forum.

What a patronising answer Alan, telling someone how to do their job when I am sure he already is well aware of the things you loftily pointed out to him.

Did he not already state quite clearly that he would not force any unwilling or unhappy pupil to strip barechest shirtless in PE if they weren't good with it. I thought he said it twice infact. That's not something that would have happened at my school rest assured, I can't imagine them listening like that and being receptive.

Nathan previously stated they take showers in his school if I recall correctly. You didn't go near that one, so I assume you are comfortable with that being asked, just not the no shirts in PE.

Hello, I have been following this forum for a while and I would like to react to what Alan said when he is telling Nathan Hind to “Think like a young lad and have some empathy for how they might feel.” I think this is supposed to mean that young lads do want to cover up and that they might feel uncomfortable with their shirts off. Supposedly, this implies that boys, for their own good, should be made to wear shirts in PE. I cannot disagree more strongly. When I was a young lad in the 80ies, all boys at my comprehensive school did PE in just black shorts, no socks, shoes or shirts. In my last year there, the school had a change of headmaster who felt it necessary to change the PE Kit to an all-white outfit of shorts, T-shirts, socks and trainers. I don’t know why this change of kit was ordered but I suppose the idea behind it was what is expressed by Alan. However, me and my friends did not at all appreciate this change, we did not want to be protected or pampered or made to feel ‘safe’. We pleaded with our PE teacher to be allowed to continue wearing the old kit. I could tell that he himself was unhappy with the new rules and he allowed us to participate in PE shirtless and barefoot. Only a minority of lads took to wearing the new full kit, which should tell you Alan what young lads really appreciate. This continued until one day the new headmaster turned up unannounced in our PE lesson and had a go at our PE teacher for not making us wear the new kit. That was the last PE lesson I was allowed to be shirtless even though, sometimes, I used to pretend to have forgotten my kit and was told by my PE teacher to just get a spare pair of shorts from his cupboard. I supposed now that he knew what I was up to.

In answer to Nathan Hind's message 17th August, if I may say so, Nathan, your original reply came over very much like a politician's (though to give you credit you didn't say "lessons will be learned" (because they never are). You feel what you are doing is completely right and you won't change. That to me is self-satisfaction writ large. I would suggest that nobody is forced to remove their shirt, if you need to distinguish between two teams use a red or blue sash. Just don't assume what you found acceptable at 11-17 applies to everyone. In the case of older pupils, they might have individual problems which they would be reluctant to discuss with you, or any of their teachers. Think like a young lad and have some empathy for how they might feel. Also, please remember that not every boy is sports mad, or especially competent at things you find easy. Everybody has different skills

I take your point Mike but let's face it, the two aren't remotely comparable in reality.

Great point you make there Trisha.

Just think about going back in a time machine all those years and telling your PE teacher the next time the England football team win the FIFA World Cup it won't actually be the men that do it but the women.

I just saw this you wrote from 7th August Alan,

'I was disappointed that Nathan said he would not change or reconsider some of his methods, even though he admitted that he was surprised by some of the goings on many of us have described. My feeling is that if you don't change and adapt, you will be part of the problem, not the solution.'


What would you like me to change on my return to school next month? Please explain.

Some girlfriends and I wanted to play football as long ago as 1985 at school but were banned from doing so even against each other or going near anything resembling a boys football. We weren't even asking to play alongside boys or anything like that. We had to play netball and I hated that. Now look,the girls are about to possibly win the football world cup this weekend, not the boys!

Until I was 12 the only people that had ever taken me as a boy for PE were female. Not a man in sight. That all changed at 12 years old as you would expect. But like Steven, I went through a whole year - 1975/76 - when for some reason the gym for boys, sometimes mixed with some girls, got taught by a woman we had.

Unlike the female PE teacher who was previously described as attractive, all the female PE teachers at my upper school were rather plain and matter of fact types, the head of girls PE had what was actually a boys haircut, I remember that about her. But she was nice enough.

As I said, the boys at school went a year with one of the girls female teachers and concurring with Steven, it was like they had to prove themselves in a boys class and compensate with being extra demanding. There was no easier ride just because we had a female taking a bunch of boys, quite the reverse.

I always thought of trampoline as a bit of a girls thing, and we had a sharp uptake in trampoline usage while we were under female instruction in PE. Also we did what I'd describe as a lot more aerobic type keep fit style PE standing on the spot moving and bending etc. There was a lot less of the team spirit we had and not a lot of climbing about. We still did basketball but stopped doing indoors softball and football. We were used to wearing trainers in gym normally but under female PE she made us do it barefooted like the girls did in their classes with her. She was very much the equal to the men in terms of shirtless gym lessons and operating the skins team instruction for basketball for instance and many other things. She entered the boys changing room frequently as we disrobed into and out of our kit and even as we showered although the shower was easy to walk to with a towel around the waist and then vanish out of sight until emerging so she knew we'd done so without directly compromising our modesty. But as I've seen written and said before, boys aren't allowed to be modest are they.

Yeah Miss Stevenson was a real looker too, and being the girls PE teacher she was also very used seeing lads in teams of all skins or vests vs skins. All the lads knew that when the order to strip off came she'd also jog down to the back of the gym and watch as we dropped our vests on the floor.

On the topic of female PE teachers, I recall Mrs Philips. She took us boys for a few weeks when our male teacher who would usually teach us was on sick leave. My memory of her is not at all a pleasant one. Somehow, she must have deemed it necessary to treat us boys extremely harshly. Our PE uniform for gym consisted of white shorts, no tops, socks or shoes. Officially, we were not supposed to wear underwear under our shorts but that was never checked upon apart from when Mrs Philips took over. She had us line up, stand to attention and pulled back not the back but the front of our shorts to check for briefs being worn.
The lessons she put us through were also physically extremely hard, consisting mainly of push-ups, sit-ups, work on the wall-bares, etc. She even made us do PE outdoors in the schoolyard without tops, something our usual teacher would never have done. She only seemed to shout at us and only addressed us as ‘boy’ in a very condescending manner. For some reason, she thought she had to be hard on us boys but the girls always described her as a very friendly and understanding teacher. She probably just hated males and took it out on us.

There was a time, notably so in large parts of the United States not so long ago, where a certain way of swimming (without trunks) was forced upon boys in the pool whether they liked it or not by the teachers of the time. Now for the same behaviour you'd be in jail, as shown by the article linked in the previous comment about the Romford teacher.

How stupid was that man though to think he would get away with that. People might not say much at the time when they are quite young but in the end things start getting talked about among people, this forum is a good example of a lot of older people who have not really said very much since their schooldays about their feelings and now feel able to do so long after the events that shaped them.

I think the whole point being made by Tanya was about feeling safer with a woman taking PE than the men considering you Alan have continued to tell of your lack of trust for male PE teachers, clearly based on your personal circumstances.

The pick up joint was a bit of an over sensitive reaction wasn't it. Wasn't that just suggesting you might feel more confident away from men maybe?

You say you went to an all boys school, so do you think you'd have been better off in a mixed gender environment, even sharing PE like that, or would you have been even worse having to do so if that meant for example having to go shirtless?

Someone else mentioned humour. There is nothing wrong with a little light humour even in a serious discussion, even if the points being made did get lost a little in this case maybe.

In answer to Tanya, 14th August. Strangely, Tanya, I never regarded going to an all boys school as a pick up joint, I hoped to learn things that would be useful to me in later life. Not an unreasonable wish, even in a dump like mine (happily demolished years ago).

I get the impression that you might be amused by some of the things myself and others have described. Unless you had personal experience, you wouldn't realize how such behaviour can stay with you years later. For example here is a story which appeared in my local newspaper only this week:

https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/23723361.royal-liberty-school-romford-faces-sexual-abuse-lawsuit/


How funny is THAT?

Those red blooded teenage old boys who took gym in loose fitting shorts without underwear really wouldn't be wanting a stand in female looker would they. Problems may arise.

Jason - just to make it clear I wasn't actually trying to come on to my PE teacher despite your description of my behaviour in front of her. I was just full of over confidence at that age and a bit of a show off at times. But the points I made yesterday did make it look a bit that way, oops. But she did pay a lot of interest in some of us, perhaps that's unsurprising as there wasn't much more than a dozen years between us I'd imagine and none of us had a top on, and I did rather love doing PE that way for gym.

How would you have fancied peacocking your skinny torso in gym for Simon's Miss Crampton at 14 in PE then Alan, :-) Maybe you would have trusted the young ladies more than the men to teach you.

It sounds like you were "peacocking" in front of the PE teacher there Simon.

Meaning - Peacocking is when a male uses ostentatious behavior to attract a female and to stand out from other competing males, with the intention to become more memorable and interesting.

At the secondary school that I attended between 1979 - 1983 there was a really fit and attractive youngish girls PE teacher who caught my eye as a teenage boy with his hormones going wild. I used to wish she was our teacher in the boys class instead of the typical looking and acting men we had to put up with.

School PE in the gym for boys in all years was bare chests and shorts, that was the default expected of us all, fine to me but was aware it didn't suit quite a few others.

Anyway I got my wish eventually as the usual male teacher who took us for PE most Mondays had to leave school not long after arriving because of some issue and we got the stunning Miss Crampton, no older than her late 20's at worst who knew how to wear a PE kit and turn heads and I think she knew it. She was easy going but also fairly strict with it. We didn't get any kind of easier ride with her than with the men whom took us. But I absolutely loved and got a big kick out of being able to do PE with my bare chest in her presence and remember trying to catch her eye a lot and make her look at me and she didn't disappoint, coming over as a bit flirty with one or two of us and quite hands on.

We ended up having the stunning Miss Crampton five or six more times after that and all I can say is that they were some of the best PE lessons I had in secondary school.

Comment by: Michael on 13th August 2023 at 20:29

That is a very generous way of looking at it, Michael, but the fact is that this harsh treatment went on right to the end of the 80s, where physical punishent was concerned, and even now it seems that games masters have the "right" to make boys obey their whims, some of them highly questionable.

I can remember just a few years ago, one whining leader of the N.U.T, whose name escapes me, was forever on radio and TV talking about being "at the chalkface" a comment which was insulting as it was crass, because clearly it is meant to remind us of "at the coalface". Were teachers so deluded that they dare to compare themselves to the brave men who went down coalmines, in flithy and hazardous conditions, to virtually keep the country going with power for homes and industry?. It is true a lot of people entered teaching, a job they were entirely unsuited for. I suppose the long holidays and the feeling of importance and omnicience that came with the job, overrode the knowledge tht they didn;t have the patience to do their job.

It might well be the case that teachers in the 1950s were suffering with PTSD, which is one of the reasons I firmly believe that every would-be teacher should be subject to a very stringent psychiatric assessment, prior to employment , even today, because even now far too many poor or bad teachers get through the net, and some are still appearing in courts, charged with disgusting offences.

I'm not one of the more critical voices on here when it comes to PE teachers themselves or PE in general but having read what Kris wrote it did make me stop and think and rather agree.

Loved the orange shorts story by the way. What a shame you weren't wearing bright orange underpants to school that day too, I'm sure I had some that colour as a kid. The comedy value that would have created would have been a beauty. What would he have done then!

It is well known that in the mid-late 1940s, and throughout the 1950s. there was a national shortage of teachers. To address this shortfall, accelerated training courses were offered, particularly to ex-services personnel.

Sadly, some of these people, through no fault of their own, were nevertheless unsuited to the demands of this kind of work. The effects of what we now refer to as PTSD, were little recognised in those days, and therefore not taken into consideration.

So, I don't think most 1960s/70s ex-services PE/Games teachers deliberately intended to be boorish or impatient.

Instead, I reckon some were so indoctrinated by their national service and (possibly) the effects of WW2 or Korean war experience, that they had difficulty in re-adapting themselves to the gentler ways of civilian life.

Greg2 wrote: "There does seem to be something about the position held by boys’ Gym teachers that gives them a feeling of immense power, so much so that they become comfortably drunk on it, believing they can do almost whatever they want. It’s something that doesn’t exist for teachers of other subjects. I wonder what this is? "

I agree with you,Greg - they take liberties no other sort of teacher would take. I suspect in many cases they are over-compensating - you do not have to be so "clever" academically (or at any rate that used to be the case) - you just had to be "sporty"., so they were making up for their preceived lack of intellectualism. I also think - in the case of the teacher we were saddled with - was the extreme macho behaviour was a screen to hide his homosexuality. I doubt very much he was the only example in the teaching profession, especially in all boys schools like mine. I know that remark might upset some people, so I would just say I don't think there is a problem with geography, English teachers - or any other subject, but I think allowing them to be gym teachers, when they have the possible temptation of older lads being seen by that teacher naked or nearly naked , and dictating what they can wear, or not, is totally wrong - it's like letting an alcoholic run a pub.