Burnley Grammar School

Garth (Nov 20). Meanwhile, here in Rishi Sunak's UK, "women" with penises {my Latin is a bit rusty, so should that be penes?} are demanding cervical smear tests.

Mr Chips what do you personally think the best way to turn out in a school gym is? Are you a fan of the shirtless appearance or the vest and t-shirt, or maybe you think it should be left to the individual to decide, or not?

Here in New Brunswick Canada where I work and live at the moment away from back home the latest diversity wheeze is to say that men can actually have a vagina and a woman a penis. We've started having issues even in schools with self identifying and genders being forced to mix because of it in changing areas. That's Trudeau's Canada for you. At this rate showering will be unisex in the country's schools.

I stuck my first comment on this forum three years ago to the very hour I have just noticed but it has been two and a half years since I last placed anything. For anyone wishing to know my backstory please go to 19th November 2020 about page 92 currently and there are a few follow up over the next six months.

A couple of weeks ago someone put a comment on here about feeling certain their teacher would have picked them up and thrown them into the school shower if they had not been keen to do so or refused to take one. Well I can vouch for that from 1981 as written on my first ever comment here. I got caught with my best friend trying to evade our first school shower and me and him were stripped naked on the spot under his angry gaze towering over us and he then physically grabbed the pair of us by the back of our necks and frogmarched the two of us either side of him across the changing room and literally threw us both into the shower. So to the guy who asked about first shower memories that is mine and even 42 years doesn't lesson the memory of that happening which can replay easily in my mind when I care to think about it. Yet I went on to have a decent relationship with that teacher but was forever wary.

I fully approve of all the new school teacher input, that's very refreshing to see things from both sides.

The writer Denton Welch absconded from his boarding school, Repton, for several days at the age of fifteen in similar tragic circumstances to those described by Mr Chips, his mother having died. Welch describes this in his book "Maiden Voyage".

On his return (Jan 1931) he was treated with comparative understanding by staff and prefects and was not punished for the absence, though the school in Welch's account was otherwise brutal and he was unhappy there. The next term, his father (a rubber merchant) took him to live in China.

Jim on 18th November 2023 at 22:45

Thank you for your kind words. I might have acquired some wisdom with age, if I have, then, if there is an interested audience, I believe it’s my duty to share it. Learning and money are very similar and of no value whatever if you keep them to yourself.

Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 18th November 2023 at 23:30

Thank you for your comment. I’m delighted to see a post from a man who was my contemporary.

I agree whole heartedly, the conduct of the headmaster regarding the bereaved boy was disgraceful, indeed, that’s not a strong enough term but I was rapidly ‘put in my place’ when I objected. I was in my probationary year and it was a case of shut up or clear out. I shut up but was never proud of it.

I think the culture of the ‘war damaged’ took time to change. Men joining the profession when I did struggled with it but some simply joined in with the culture as that was the way things were done. Some of them remained around for many more years though they became a progressively smaller percentage of the staff thank goodness. Some of their influence was quite toxic.

I remember one man, an English master who was a couple of years older than me. His ability to teach was way better than mine and to listen to him talking about his subject was inspirational. His behaviour towards the boys though was a different matter. Yes, they respected his knowledge but they lived in fear of him both for his sharp tongue and regular in public put downs and disregard for any boy who didn’t conform to his ideas of what a school boy should be. While we all caned, he caned way in excess of any other master and lads went to his classes in fear. He was promoted to be Head of English and the headmaster regarded him as the ‘strongest and most capable’ master on the staff. I detested him. He was promoted to be deputy head in another school and I know I wasn’t the only one who heaved a sigh of relief when he left. He was an extreme example but there were others failed to change with the times and so while change came, it was gradual. At least, that’s my experience, you may have, of course had a better one.

Mike on 19th November 2023 at 00:10

Very funny, I have my red pen ready for when it’s done.

Kenneth on 19th November 2023 at 00:24

I thought it was about being clean and washing away dirt and sweat. As a boy at school and a man doing vigorous exercise, I needed a shower afterwards. When I was coaching rugby, I don’t remember telling the lads to get in the showers, they just did it. I only needed to stay around because they were supposed to have some degree of supervision and that was my responsibility until they were all dressed and out of the changing room.

Adam Bell on 19th November 2023 at 01:53

Do you now think what you did was funny of does it all seem a bit silly?
You of course demonstrate perfectly why suspension does not work unless your parents also reinforce it with grounding and removal of any privileges and it doesn’t sound like your parents did. Needless to say, I would have caned you. You would have been back at your desk in fifteen minutes, squirming uncomfortably on your hard wooden chair for the remainder of the day and looking rather silly in front of your classmates, you would not have missed two weeks of your education. You would probably have had tears in your red eyes when I returned you to your next lesson and I would have explained to the master taking it why you were late, what you had done and that you had been caned. Of course, in my boys school, what you did could never have happened. Returning a boy to class in those circumstances made a very loud, clear statement and was excellent pour encourager les autres. A boy who did not want to be caned only needed to behave.

You might even have repeated misbehaviour in the hope of suspension but it was a rare boy who risked the cane twice.

Before the ‘I hated everything about school and teachers’ brigade start, no, I wouldn’t have derived any satisfaction from that other than a boy was justly punished for stupid behaviour at a point in his life where he should have known better.

Tony on 19th November 2023 at 14:20

This is all part of a culture of control that now sweeps through schools and it’s supposed to be part of discipline. That awful woman who claims to be the strictest head, Birbalsingh, I think is her name would heartily approve of this because it makes identikit children. I would rather do away with school uniforms altogether and have a reasonable dress code which allows children to act responsibly and choose to present themselves well. Of course, for team sport, some sort of matching kit is necessary but other than that, school uniform which is a very British thing and about conformity, should be done away with. Other European countries managed it all very well.

Robbie on 19th November 2023 at 19:04
Very funny.

The following is a message to Alan and people such as him. It's a song lyric (Eagles - Already Gone) from 1974 and it's well worth heeding.

"So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains. And we never even know we have the key."

The following is something from a couple of years ago that I randomly saw.

"PE Kit for all Years 7—11 students — boys and girls (which can only be purchased from Barnums)

Black tracksuit trousers with School logo
Black rain jacket with School logo
Black Mid-layer with School logo
Red polo shirt with School logo
Black shorts with School logo
Black socks with red top"




When I was at school yes we had to turn out with the blazer and logo and the regulation school tie pattern but the PE kit had no need to be emblazoned with school logos, the basic requirements were laid out and you got them from wherever.

Why are school's nowadays doing this on PE kits? You don't need school badges, logos or anything else plastered all over each and every item which then constricts the options and forces parents into buying quite possibly much costlier items. It's pure pretentiousness on the part of schools that do this and completely pointless.

I actually think schools now are far worse than 25 or more years ago on the PE kit requirement which used to be a lot more sensible and as some men here have written, minimal in gym.

Comment by: Robert Coulson - Teacher 1967-2009 on 18th November 2023 at 23:30


I am glad you made the points you did, Robert - it is something I was attempting to get across myself. There was no need for teachers of boys in the 1980s onwards to treat them as if we were army recruits, as it is doubtful many of them were themselves. This was what I was getting to in my reply to Mr Chips. I know from Saturday lads I employed myself in the past decade and a half, many teachers, still had a bad attitude towards them. Sadly one poster seemed to think I was ¨getting at him¨ in my reply, which I think was measured.

How good to see somebody who was actually teaching right back in the sixties refuse to defend a beating headmaster in those very poignant circumstances outlined by Mr Chips. Well done sir for saying that. In normal circumstances it might have been okay but that wasn't normal.

The girls changing room was immediately opposite the boys in my comprehensive school and we took PE at the same time although not together, we were separated in different areas. I always had this strong desire at the time as a testosterone filled teenage boy to burst in on them changing and while I was undressed. I mentioned it to friends as a laugh.

So the highlight or lowlight depending on how you view it of my school career was getting suspended for two weeks in 1979 for going through with a dare I shook on with friends to do after PE on my 15th birthday walking across into the girls changing room directly opposite our boys one while I was undressed completely. I ran back out within 10 seconds to screams that nearly burst my eardrums. It was one of me against 20 of them, I should have made the noise more. I didn't even get to see much, they got the better deal. My PE teacher was actually smiling after it but it didn't save me as he knew he had to report me to the head who did the deed and the next day informed my parents I was suspended for two weeks immediately. For that I got an extra fortnight holiday, given no work to do at home and at the end of the school day went to the gates and met my friends as they finished. Even my parents and grandparents found the whole thing amusing while trying to seem disgraced by me.

It was one of those completely crazy schoolboy pranks I'd agreed to do as a birthday dare the night before when I was with a group of my friends having a sly smoke that seemed easy when I said it but wasn't but I knew I'd never live it down if I backed out so just went for it without thinking on the day. It didn't do me any long term harm however and puts a smile on my face when I think of it now.

Think about it - School showering was actually about discipline wasn't it?

I'd like to give Alan some homework.

Task: To give the most positive account of your schooldays you can possibly manage to grind out of your memory bank.

No excuses for not handing it in completed fully. You have until the end of the week.

;-)

I know it was another time long ago and all that, but quite how any head teacher in all conscience can summon a young man and cane him in his office just a couple of days after his mothers funeral is beyond heartless.

I've got no time for men like that and just like you Mr Chips I was in teaching for 42 years also, almost in parallel to your own time served bar five years, and sparingly dished out a share of corporal discipline in my earliest years when required. But never would I have entertained the idea of doing so against a freshly grieving pupil for his mother. Teachers do have empathy and certainly had lots of it to give even in the 1960's and 1970's as well.

I believe many of your comments regards ex-World War 2 demobbed men turning to teaching as an option possibly relate to boys at school in the 1950's and 1960's predominantly. I think by the mid 1970's this was largely irrelevant, as men who might have left the forces in 1945 at the age of say 30 would by then have been 60.

Absolutely delightful posts there by Mr Chips if I might say so, full of experience and explanation of how things once were and quite a bit of the wisdom that comes with age. Thankyou for the time and effort you put into writing those out.

Alan on 18th November 2023 at 16:58

FFS, give it a rest. We have a new poster who could contribute a great deal and has said a lot so far that makes sense. Stop whining.

Alan on 18th November 2023 at 16:58 'My problem with "Mr Chips" comment yesterday'

Oh dear, another problem. The gentleman you are having the problem with has told us he retired almost twenty years ago and yet you seem to want to apply what he's saying to the current time - of which you in any event have no experience.

I found his posts very informative and they made sense. As usual, it doesn't fit your narrative and so you have to start with a put down. How perpetually sad.

My problem with "Mr Chips" comment yesterday, is that while PTSD might be an excuse for school teachers who treated pupils abominably years ago, nobody has been forced to join the armed services for over 60 years now, there hasn't been true conflict since the 1990s, so why are some teachers still arrogant, egotistical, vindictive and treating their pupils like dirt all these years later. Fourteen years ago I was employing Saturday lads - most of them older lads still at school earning a bit of weekend money, and I still heard of really bad behaviour from teachers in regards of contempt towards pupils and verbal bullying, and these teachers can't be suffering from PTSD, and if they were, treatment is now very freely available, without embarrassment. It is a good excuse - though not mitigation , for older teachers, years ago, but not in 2023, is it?

Greg2 on 17th November 2023 at 20:51

Thank you for your interest and comments Greg.

A grammar school education back in the day was a privilege, it was one I and my brothers enjoyed and we knew how lucky we were. My parents never allowed us to 'get above ourselves' though and even as we went to university we were reminded that the privilege of a good education carried with it the huge responsibility to use the opportunity wisely. They were values I always tried to instill in boys I taught but I don't know how successful I was.

Well done on getting to university, I think the determination it needs a bit later in life demostrates a good character, moreso than in an eighteen year old who is just making normal progress through the education system, you should be very proud of what you achieved.

On your primary experience, corporal punishment be it a smacked leg, a caning or anything between was the norm back then as it had been during my own school days and I was certainly on the receiving end of the same regime as other lads at the time. Those days are now gone though and I think with some reservations that overall everything is better. I do still subscribe to the idea of the short, sharp shock for some behaviour though but the law says something different these days and so that's what must happen.

On the relationship with anything German, when I went to university, I was interested in German as a second language alongside French. I had learned a little at school and only for a year when we had a teacher who offered that alongside Spanish as his second language. I was discouraged first by my parents who couldn't think why anyone would want to learn German, my father had an absolute hatred of anything to do with Germany and my mother was no better and then by the university who said the course would be undersubscribed and not run and that's how it turned out. I did learn it in later years and am reasonably fluent.

Your headmaster's behaviour was appalling, that said, it typified the behaviour and attitude of many to all things German in the years after WW2. Men of your headmaster's age had almost certainly, like my father been brought up by fathers who had been in WW1 and so the hatred was there, both my grandfathers had been in the trenches and one invalided out of the army and while my memories of them are vague, believe me, there just couldn't be anything good about a German. That set of beliefs followed by WW2 and Germans and Germany were never to be trusted.

Your father, at the time was a brave man to have married a German girl but that would have made him look suspect to many people and your mother probably suffered badly too. You should never have been treated the way you were but it wasn't so abnormal at the time. Men I taught with regularly expressed very derogatory views about 'krauts' and that was the most polite term used to describe them. There are several I can remember who would have regarded you as the 'kraut child' to be treated harshly at every turn. It was wrong, it should never have happened but believe me, as a junior master, challenging upwards in those days got you less than no where. If I thought a boy was being treated unfairly, the very best I could do for him was put in a bit more effort and reinforce his achievements both in my classes and more broadly when I had the opportunity.

Yes, many men were damaged by their WW2 experience and I include my own father alongside many of my former colleagues. I look back now with that great tool, the wisdom of retrospect and much of the behaviour I witnessed was consistent with PTSD and burn out. These men were teaching, often without the right qualifications, it was all they could do and they needed to make a living. I was one of the first grammar school masters who was required to be a graduate in a relevant subject. Up until then some masters had no more than their own education as the basis of their teaching and of course any more learning they had done along the way and what is now dubbed continuous professional development was as good as unknown, now it is mandatory.

I think perhaps any emotional resource that was left for these men was saved for their families and there was none for school. I've read a lot about WW2 including the Russian advance on Berlin and the aftermath, it was dreadful and compared to many, your mother was relatively lucky. It sounds to me like your parents were very good people who were able to build something together that a lot of couples didn't have back then. My own parents rather co-existed and after thirty years of that divorced and to be honest, that was a relief. Circumstances impact on people differently, your parents were able to make a go of it, mine were not.

Teachers are indeed not perfect - nor are many others. Since the focus of a lot of comments here is about PE teachers, I would say it wasn't until we got to the second half of the 1980s and the development of what is now broadly dubbed sports science at Loughborough that there was any real resource for PE teachers to draw on. Even then it was regarded as a non-degree for the 'thickies' but it was easy to see the huge difference these men brought to the whole subject and it changed hugely and for the better as learning improved.

It might amuse some of your to know that when I first started teaching we had what was known as staff PE one lunch time and one evening each week. The headmaster expected all masters under the age of forty to attend though of course there was no sanction if you didn't. Most men did and in the main it focussed on running and circuit training and it was taken of course by the two PE masters. They drove hard and of course joined in so quite different to a PE class for the lads. They knew how to get and keep you fit but they were not the brightest buttons in the box and both were former army PTIs which was all the learning they had. I was by then a county level rugby player (as was one of the PE masters) who also went to training one night a week and so to a point I was grateful for the extra fitness sessions each week.

Was wrong done in the past? Yes of course it was but I'm not sure anyone had the learning or understanding to do things differently. Schools were run on the lines of discipline, control, learning and punishment. None of those things included empathy. I remember in my second term having a lad burst into tears in one of my classes. He had been away the day before and I asked if he was alright and he'd been at his mother's funeral. I set some work and took him out, made him a drink, left him sitting quietly, went back to class and after the lesson went back to see him, talked with him for a while and then went to ask the headmaster if we should send him home for a few days. I was told not to get involved, that I had already overstepped the mark on that and that the lad needed to knuckle down and get on with it. Nothing was going to bring his mother back. That was the culture, it was the culture of war, your mate was killed, you took a deep breath and carried on and the damage was left to fester.

Two days later, I passed the headmaster's study to find the same lad outside, I stopped to ask how he was but as I did, he was summoned inside. I waited, I heard eight cracks of the cane and a tearful lad emerged. His offence, he had truanted the day before because he couldn't face school. The headmaster reminded me that I was accountable to him, not the other way around.

Yes, I could have resigned, protested and all sorts of things but I would have had no audience. I think it was better that I continued to teach to the best of my ability.

Anthony you've asked a good two staged question there on the school shower, pre-perception against reality. It's often said in many things that the thinking is worse than the doing.

Most of this appears to relate to school after the age of eleven it seems to me, so what would be the three biggest fears about entry to secondary school level education in the past, is it fair to say that school showers would be in that top three and possibly number one?

My first school shower was not at the same time as others even though we were in the same PE class. I'll explain how. When I started at secondary school which was in 1975 we did not have to take them straight away, it was purely optional for something like a month to six weeks. I'm not really sure why that was the case. Perhaps we had some really soft and liberal minded PE teachers at my school. They seemed a mostly good bunch when all is considered by the values of those days. I recall that after PE some of us showered and others didn't for many weeks. I think we got told we would all have to do so eventually so were under no illusions that we could permanently skip them, quite possibly given a deadline or something like that. So I decided to use them from the beginning even though something like half the PE class didn't bother. There seemed little point in delaying the inevitable and more to be gained from just getting on with it and at least showing willing.

The first time I showered at school was with a couple of very close mates and we smiled at each other and looked each other up and down in our birthday suits in a sort of approval. It all seemed quite civilised actually. I think I found it quite amusing to see my mates naked like that. But the moment passed quite fast and we got on with things. I was never scared to shower at school and felt quite comfortable doing so.

(I was never bothered about taking my shirt off in PE either, which was a very common thing for all to do in a PE gym class)

There then came the point when those who had held out against showering also had to start doing so as well. I think that kind of changed things a bit. Firstly the showers were now more crowded and things didn't seem quite as easy going as before, possibly because those of us who had been fine with showers had done so for a short period and were okay with it and those that didn't fancy it were happy not doing so. When those boys then got made to shower you sort of knew exactly who those boys were who were a bit reluctant to do so and some of them couldn't hide how uncomfortable they felt I think. I remember that many of those type of boys kept on not bringing towels to school and the PE teachers got fed up with telling them to. I know some of us were getting asked to share our wet towel with others.

The one downer with school showers for me was having to carry that damp towel around school in your bag all day.

Showering at school with your mates was an accepted part of the school day, once, twice or three times a week. Everybody in the entire school had to do it, girls as well as boys, because everybody had to do PE. It was just another thing we did at school, like going into the school for assembly in the mornings.

Funnily enough I don't recall my first school shower (1985), or even any of them over the 4-6 years we had them. This surprises me a little as I'm sure I wouldn't have been that comfortable with them. That said, I don't think I would have questioned the necessity or whatever and would have just got on with it. I've already said that I was self conscious of my sticky out belly button (still am a bit) and I would probably have put any awkwardness down to that - ie it was my problem, not the fact we had to have showers.

One thing I've noticed in my attempts to retrace my childhood over the past year are how much easier it has been for me to rediscover quite a lot of my old school chums but not so easy to discover my former teachers from school at any age in any school. I wonder why this is?

It's good to see some teachers joining this discussion to balance up the pupil to teacher ratio.

Mr Chips,

An interesting contribution. Thank you.

It wasn’t until many years later that I realised how unfortunate I was to just miss out on a grammar school education. I certainly didn’t acknowledge it this way at the time. But despite becoming a bit of a rebel for the last 18 months or so at secondary school, due entirely to a few teaching War heroes, and a particularly difficult headmaster, I did, perhaps seven or eight years after leaving school, manage to catch up with all thought lost with expected qualifications, and so get to university in the end. It does seem that the boys who attended your school, mostly, would have come out with decent educations too, even if they did have to stay in line for fear of the swishing cane as part of their school experiences.

You started your teaching career when I was just into infant school. I never received the cane during any of my time at school, but certainly did received corporal punishment from my time at infants to secondary school. Early days would have been slaps on the inside of the thighs, just where it stings, and easily accessible when so young and wearing shorts. This would be dished out by women, who it seems always predominately taught in infant/junior schools, and probably still do today. These young women in the early 1960s would never have been soldiers, though some husbands or fathers might have been.

I’ve mentioned in past posts that my secondary school headmaster (we’re into the 70s now) took an instant dislike to me and my previously attending brother, just because our mother was German. Now obviously, I think I can find some understanding of this for the times, and I expect you and others, will certainly do so. But, to punish an innocent 12 year old for the ’Sins of his father’ is irrational, unhelpful and unprofessional, to the point of failing in a profession. Are you really saying that men who experiencing War, as truly awful as that must have been, would forever have scrambled and damaged brains, to the point where they would never be healed during subsequent years spent within peace and normality? That’s nonsense, and an excuse for bullying behaviour routinely dished out to boys down the years. My father was a soldier of WWII. He had all sorts of awful experiences. He mentioned nothing of these when we were children, but did so just a little more when we were all adults. He was always a kind, caring and loving man, and a wonderful father to us all. My mother the same, who also must have experienced terrible things escaping Berlin in fear of the Russians as they drew closer, as she'd heared of their many atrocities. During all the hell of those terrible times surrounding mum’s family for many years, she must have thought she’d been rescued by my father as a young soldier, from what my mother witnessed as her destroyed country. My father never beat me, nor ‘caned’ me, despite witnessing War atrocities from the young age of 18. Nor did my mother for that matter, though of course both were firm when needing to be, and with myself being the middle boy of five brothers, we certainly needed it at times. I don’t think most parents back then ever thought they had to harden sons up for fear of WWIII. Why did school masters, and in particular gym teachers, think this so necessary, and to be their sole responsibility?

Please don’t think I just have it in for all teachers, that would just be illogical. Indeed, particularly brilliant and gifted teachers, doing the job for the right reasons, could inspire and awaken a learning that would be retained for life, and many did. It’s a wonderful profession to those with such natural gifts, but, every chosen career is chosen for differing reasons. Many former PE teachers, as with some teachers of other subjects, though not all, are probably the sort who really just enjoyed being in charge. Similar types might join the police, become sports referees etc. Corporal punishment was certainly something prevalent during past years when children were thought needing to be chastised into deference for learning. This happened for many centuries, but it doesn’t mean it produced better adults, themselves capable of rearing more rounded and capable children.

Do you really think there was no error in any of your contemporaries ways of the past? Those damaged by War? Did none of them really have any understanding of sensitivity or regard for empathy, or was all submerged beneath brute force. Could none of them grasp or regard the requirements for art? Remember, some of the greatest poetry was written by those having experienced the horrors of WWI.

Anthony 17th November at 00:03

I still remember vividly how I felt the first time I joined my classmates for my first shower. I suppose I’ve retained this memory because it was a bit different for me due to joining the class late, all of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I attended gym and games but couldn’t join the class proper for months, so witnessed all that was to come. When that day did come and I joined the gym lesson, including joining them for my first shower instead of just sitting there waiting for them to all finish, gave me a strange feeling of now being alone, in this known crowd. They were all so used to it by then, but I wasn’t. I was still the new kid who didn’t join in with it all, but then all of a sudden did. After junior school we’d mentioned to one another about all having to shower at secondary school. But, as it worked out for me, I never experienced it as a new thing to do with everyone at the same time.

Steve on 15th November 2023 at 17:37

I just felt resigned to it, as something I had to do; something that was expected of all of us when now at ‘big’ school. But really, it just seemed to be just another part of the many new experiences of joining a new school at that young age. It seemed as though we were bombarded with all types of newness, and strangeness, at that age of 11-12. Different environment, different subjects, teachers, uniform, expectations, everything associated with that big change…maybe even a part of thinking we were all on our way to growing up. Whatever we encountered seemed to include something of being daunted and of the unknown, so much so that we didn’t have time to acknowledge it, of understand our situation, before we found ourselves actually doing it. All part of being that age I think, and I’m sure much the same for that age group today. I'm sure just verbalising these memories benefits us all by helping us acknowledge what this age group deals with.

Your second point, ‘Teachers sure loved us taking them, I know that’ comment? I think there’s certainly truth in that. Now, unpicking all reasons for them ‘loving us’ taking them, would uncover many reasons…

Like Chris A says, I also had a PE teacher at school who behaved as if he thought everything I did was substandard or plain wrong in the actual gym or playing fields but when it came to what he wrote down about me he was fairly positive. Work that out.

I qualified as a teacher in 1962, I started at a boys grammar school and there I remained for forty two years until I retired in 2004. I taught French and some supplementary Latin but that was less than 10% of my time. I arrived as the most junior master in the department and retired as head of modern languages.

The school remained a grammar school until 1975 when it was supposed to become a comprehensive. The headmaster and governors certainly didn't like that idea and nor did many of the masters. As many of our boys were from well to do back grounds a decision was made for the school to become independent and so it did. The places of grammar school boys were maintained by the education authority until the left but from September 1975, new boys were fee paying.

It is still a fee paying boys school today and achieves highly with a very high Oxbridge entry rate, better than some much more well know schools including public ones.

It's sad to read accounts of some of you, I don't like the idea that you didn't get a good education or you felt you were not treated well. Let me explain something that you probably know but may never have been obvious to you that may help you to understand your time there.

I was really among the first of a new generation of masters who had not had involvement in WW2. My more senior colleagues had all been in the military in one form or another either in the fighting or in the aftermath or at the very least doing national service.

These days there is concern about those leaving the forces and their reintegration into society. Only yesterday I gave money to a charity to help homeless veterans. Do you think anything like that existed back then? The reality was men left the forces and just had to 'get on with it' making the best out of life that they could. It was not easy and some gravitated towards teaching because there were reduced entry requirements for those leaving the forces, remember that they were almost all men.

PE teachers in particular were often former military PTIs. Do you think anyone ever suggested that they treat adolescent boys aged 11+ differently to how they had treated adolescent boys aged 15+ who were joining the army back then? The answer is no. I coached rugby for many years and worked alongside the PE department to do that. They saw it as their job to 'toughed lads up' because at the time WW3 was still on the horizon and you couldn't have 'soft' lads heading for the military who couldn't play competitively and who would be scared of being naked in front of their fellow soldiers or scared of a cold shower. It's how it was.

When I started, many of the senior masters did have signs of what now would be called PTSD or burn out. Was it recognised? Of course not. Many of them just didn't have the emotional resource to deal with lads of differing needs so discipline and control were the order of the day. When I started, there was a selection of canes in every classroom and they were used, frequently and yes, I did.

I doubt any master disliked the boys he taught or set out to harm them in any way but they didn't have it in them to be interested or kind either for all the reasons I've tried to outline. The best thing I can say to you boys now men, is try to let it go, you can't change the past and it's dreadful to let it consume you into the future. My own father was a WW2 veteran who saw some dreadful things and I've no doubt that at times he took out his unresolved anger on me with his slipper at times. Yes, at the time, I hated him for it, did it last, no. Did I understand why he did what he did? At the time, no. In later life absolutely. Was it his fault? No. Who was to blame? Cirucmstances that were not understood and way beyond the control of anyone.

To a point that anger only reduced with time, many who started with me were inculturated into that world of education and so it took a long time and much change for things to get to where they are today in terms of education. Change was not always easy. Although I used it rarely after the first week of a new term, I was very reluctant to give up the cane. It was swift, effective and a boy rarely wanted a second dose. Punishments and sanctions that followed wasted a lot of time of both the boy and the master and rarely achieved rapid results.

I hope I've tried to put a bit of a different perspective on some of the anger and upset I see here. I don't have any great wisdom, just years of experience. If anyone has any questions they would like me to try and answer, I'll give it a go.

Comment by: Sean on 16th November 2023 at 20:46


I can totally empathise. It sounds just like our old wreck. It really seems looking back, that PE teachers were un-housetrained Rottweilers who were never bought to heel. I suspect our elderly headmaster was scared of ours. Like yours, all but one of our teachers were deadbeats (hello, Mr Laine, if you are still out there) who were more keen to inflict their distain than any knowledge they might have accrued. It would be interesting to bring them into todays slightly more gentle era (I hope!) and see how long they lasted. I remember somebody once saying that teaching was the profession of the unambitious and untalented, and I suspect in so many cases, that is right. Many seemed to have had a problem with self-confidence, needing 11 year olds to call you sir", seems to me a mark of great insecurity. If school days had been the happiest days of ones life, then most people would be suicidally depressed. The late teens and twenties are so much better for nearly everyone.

Do many people reading these pages actually have a clear memory of the first time they had to take a group shower at school and what they felt about it while they were actually doing it that first time and how did the reality of doing so match up with the expectation of what taking showers at school after PE classes would actually be like?

I had a strict PE teacher who a lot of people hated but I went against the grain and rather liked him. I blew back at him once over something and thought I'd really set myself up for some long term trouble but that didn't happen and he followed up giving me a glowing report and when I left school a fantastic reference.

I'm 52 and my main school years are the 1980's.

I wish I could come on here and say that I had at least one outstanding teacher who truly inspired me, but I can't think of one. Most just seemed very average but quite a lot of them also seemed to be in a state of semi-permanent short temperedness. Even the office staff could be like it to us. I was once walking down a corridor in school time by myself on an errand for a teacher perfectly normally when I passed by a teacher who laid into me for being out of class without asking the reason why first. Quite extraordinary stuff and I can name another ten examples in my case of similar shoot from the hip teaching.

To the guy upthread who suggested if he refused to go in the showers at his school in the past then he thinks his teacher would have picked him up and chucked him in and taken no excuses, I can concur with that because I saw it happen at school on at least three or four occasions, including one day when my PE teacher pushed a fully clothed boy in and soaked him and his clothes through to teach him a lesson, and he then had to come back out, remove his clothing and place it over a radiator to dry off. Other boys used to get seriously hassled into stripping right off and going into showers at school if they tried not to. It was like the gestapo at times in our school changing room on the shower issue after PE if you showed any hint of resistence to them.

I was always being told by my parents that schooldays were the best days of your life. It might be for some but not for many. Leaving school was the best day of my life and saying goodbye to most of these people.

In my entire working life I have still not come across anyone as deeply unpleasant as one man who took me for PE in school whose modus operandi was clearly to inflict as much pain and humiliation on as many boys as he could manage to fulfil his own sense of being somebody.