Burnley Grammar School

To those who saw PE minus this and that as a big anxiety inducer I just want to ask if it was because of a particular imperfection about yourselves that caused the issue, such as being told not to wear a top in a PE lesson, or is it the general principle of the whole thing?

Antony your bit about associating barechested PE with less confident boys rings true to me. When I think of the must do barechested PE that we did lots in secondary school in particular, it reminds me mainly about lack of confidence, and not confident boys.

Doesn't your own figure of 5 from 22 speak an attitude in itself. When asked who wanted to go barechested in your PE class not even a quarter of that class readily chose it - in 1983, not 2023 when maybe that might not surprise anyone perhaps.

In a normal everyday school situation with a range of regular everyday normal lads, most were quietly reluctant to do PE barechested and only a minority chose to actively do so without hesitation with the confidence to do so. Your numbers kind of prove it to any doubters.

I so agree with you John. My definite memory is that my PE teachers liked boys such as the five I mentioned in my last post who took the lead and did as asked without thinking much about it and absolutely had little time for boys who made a bit of a deal out of removing shirts for their skins "caper" or generally in PE. I rather liked that word you used Alan, it was a bit of a caper when you think back to it.

When you actually think about it, skins vs shirts is actually a very strange thing to do in order to set two teams apart from one another. My question to any PE teachers reading this is did they teach skins vs shirts as a thing at training college or something because the practice looks to have been going on in literally every school. In the schools where going skins for PE was the rule across the board presumably team games meant one side had to actually re-shirt themselves.

I didn't just do skins vs shirts, something quite odd used to happen at my school. We would sometimes get a different teacher from the one we usually had and when this happened that teacher would take us down and have all boys going shirtless in the gym doing the very same things we did the previous week with our regular teacher but wearing shirts - by shirts I mean either a basic tee-shirt or a vest. This happened with a couple of non regular teachers. I've mentioned teacher training and there was an even odder day when our normal PE teacher who only did the skins vs shirts PE now and again and never took the whole class shirtless at any point, had an unknown young male trainee join us and on that day it was the one and only time he told the whole PE class to go down to the gym shirtless, as if he was impressing this trainee PE teacher in some way.

When that lesson ended and we went back to change and freshen up our regular PE teacher actually told the trainee who had been in the lesson with him and us that he could jump in the showers with the rest of us, and he did, full naked standing among our lot of 15 year olds and chatting away like he was our mate. None of our proper staff PE teachers ever did such a thing.

Thanks Simon, yes your own ways sound quite similar to mine too don't they. There was one thing about stripping off like that in PE and spending time shirtless and I'd often suddenly become very conscious about my actual arms and where to place them, odd as it sounds. When you are deprived of anything on top it does change your body language I think. Some can pull off a confident approach but I strongly associate it with memories of not so confident boys in school.

One thing in school we always did shirtless was the trampoline. This may have been incase someone caught fabric on the springs on the edge. But trampoline lessons were a lot of standing around the thing having to watch and not a lot of doing anything until it was your turn. The gym had just the one. Sometimes we went in pairs onto it.

You were not allowed on our gym floor in dark soled footwear. Trainers were allowed but very often nothing was worn at all by the majority.

Simon,
Sorry for misunderstanding you. I agree that it was unfair to single you and other lads out when you’d done nothing wrong. The lads who volunteered to take their tops off had most likely been to a Primary School where they’d been used to doing PE shirtless.
We never wore a top for PE so when we played basketball the PE teacher gave each team different coloured armbands to wear.
For football outdoors we often played shirts vs skins and I quickly realized that you were treated better by PE teachers if you took your top off and volunteered to be on the skins team.

John, sorry if I wasn't clear... he didn't have everyone doing PE shirtless. It was still vests against skins but he'd told the boys like me who were skins it'd be same again for the next lesson. So we were already in our kit, ie: shorts and no tops, when it turned out we weren't doing basketball after all. It would have been fairer with every boy in skins, to be honest - it just didn't seem right that some of us basically had a different kit to others.

Re Simon and Anthony's posts today, it really does make you question why teachers made the decision to force boys to take part against their wills in these "shirt and skins" capers, and I suspect in the majority of cases, it was just because they could - power goes to a teachers head almost as much as it does to mediocre MPs who become ministers. You can only hope their motives would be more closely examined today.

Simon,
Replying to your post. After your PE teacher decided that you would all do PE stripped to the waist how did you differentiate between teams when you played basketball?.

Antony, thank you for your post - it rang so many bells with me. I was that same age in 1989 and like you, I'd never even heard the term 'skins' until we did basketball in PE! Although our teacher didn't even ask for volunteers, he just went ahead and split the class into teams and announced one team would be skins. What did that even mean, I wondered naively? The penny dropped when some of the boys on that team - which didn't include me that first time - started pulling their PE vests over their heads. Some were standing around with that shifty look you described, clearly self conscious about having to play with their tops off.
I remember feeling relieved at not being among them, but that feeling gave way to dread the next time we assembled in the gym for basketball and once again the teacher started picking out boys to be skins. My luck didn't hold this time though and I felt a sinking sensation as he tapped me on the head and said 'skin'. With my vest off I felt really exposed and struggled to focus on the game. Initially, relief when the lesson was over, but that quickly changed as the teacher announced 'we'll have the same teams next time!' Which really emphasised the sense of haves and have-nots when we got changed for our next PE lesson. It felt strange when I took off my school shirt and had no vest to put on in its place. To me it seemed unfair that half the class were putting on full kit while others, like me, had to do the lesson in skins. Then as it turned out, the teacher decided to make it general PE in the gym instead of basketball! Maybe he did that on purpose, I don't know, but like Antony I felt a sense of injustice at having to do the lesson without my vest for no apparent reason.

This thread takes me back to a time when I was first confronted with a basketball lesson in PE when for the first time I heard our teacher use the term 'skins' against shirts after I joined senior school in 1983. There were 22 boys in our class and he wanted 11 volunteers to be skins. I recall him doing the head count in order to determine how many shirtless skins he needed. I remember maybe 5 boys in that class just taking their shirts off without giving it much thought, thus volunteering by doing it, but just 5 out of 22, the other remaining ones all looking around shiftily trying to avoid committing themselves to being a skin and having to do PE in a shirtless exposed state.

I can remember this reluctance really annoying our teacher and him volunteering another half dozen among the remainder himself tapping us on the head to choose. It was an awkward few moments for a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds. I was chosen and my heart somewhat sank at the prospect that lay ahead. I didn't really understand the need for the anger over it, were these teachers that stupid to not think from the viewpoint of those they taught. Because the six he had chosen to volunteer to be skins himself had not volunteered ourselves he outrageously made an example of the fact and dictated that the six of us, I think it was definitely six, would be the skins for the entire term going forward in future lessons, so I saw it as being punished for something I hadn't even done and the other 11 boys who had also not volunteered but didn't get chosen by our PE teacher got off scott free. If nothing else it served to teach me about the total unfairness of life sometimes.

Well I thought he was meaning we'd be skins only during the basketball games in gym but for some reason the six of us ended up shirtless in general gym PE for the few weeks until term ended while the other remaining ones in class, some 16 of them still did PE with tops much of the time.

It comes as no surprise that shirtless PE fires up a lot of debate. I bet most men have a similar story if they're old enough.

Mr Dando returns. Maybe you will actually answer a question yourself for once. What happened to you personally in school on the issue you campaign about here? There's a guy here who admits he simply refused to take school showers, took a quick plimsoll smacking for it and then got away with it. So what did you do then as you're so opposed? What's your own story, tell us for once.

The problem with a so called fast fitness PE lesson going for a quick 15 minutes is that by the time you've changed out of and back into your clothes, plus of course showered, well that's probably close to 10 minutes or more in itself if my own school is anything to go by. But the general idea is not a bad one in itself. If we all get fitter at school and keep fitter and healthier then maybe a knock on effect is the NHS might also feel a benefit from fewer chronic conditions.

Regarding the black and white Pathe film Robbie left here, agreed all those boys looked incredibly well conditioned but I don't suppose they started off like that. It was a propaganda piece remember, so what didn't we get to see at that school. What about the naturally slightly built 7 stone weaklings out there in a school like that, there will be some. What that film showed was not as easy as it looked and would have taken a lot of effort to reach those levels, never mind maintain them.

But when you've got a school looking that well physically you'd want them parading around showing themselves off barechested like that wouldn't you, not hiding behind some cloth. It was a good advert for that school's ethic even if it wasn't widespread elsewhere, and of course an absolute nightmare if you were not a PE lover and knew you'd be going there and facing that.

Actually the Castlehill School that Mr Dando appears to name and shame looks to me to have a very relaxed attitude to the PE kit itself, not over stipulating exact items according to their website, so just judging them for the laid back attitude to PE kits kind of makes it interesting that they are one of the schools currently that goes for requiring PE showers. But there are very many of them, indeed my own former school website (I'm not sharing links here though like Dando has with schools he was never even at) mentions showering currently too. Requiring is just the polite and softer way of saying compulsory. My own school years ago used the word required, and they were compulsory for everyone, and of any religion too I might add. Had a muslim boy and a sikh in my class who both had to shower just like all the christian or atheist un-religious boys, religion played no part in such a requirement or what you wore in PE or the taking off of shirts in gym or any of those sensibilities. They didn't get out of anything based on citing their religion or ethnicity, and to be fair didn't ask to be either.

I liked the idea that Paul mentioned of a "fast fitness session" lasting just quarter of an hour in the style of the boys from the sixties. I'd have quite liked that at school. I know a lot of people hated PE and everything it brought with it but there is nobody who actually wishes to be unfit and out of shape is there, surely.

This discussion is always top heavy with boys PE, but where are the women in this because look around now and just see how unfit and quite frankly fat and obese rather too many young women seem to be nowadays in their 20s and 30s, many born since the mid 1980s. Why are they like this, it was less common to see women this age overweight or obese just 20 or 30 years back and in the 60s and 70s almost none seemed to be. Being significantly overweight is nothing to embrace at any age, and most certainly not when young but we're not supposed to say that out loud nowadays are we. Well I am.

Yes, I was in the services for a short period in my teens and twenties when I left school for a period during the 80's, and did a stint on the Falklands in 1987-88 just five or six years after the war there as a regular army private still not even 20 at the time. The physical training we did mainly involved wearing vests, not so much bare chests, and I came from a school which constantly insisted on bare chests for boys gym PE, so looking back it's definitely one to wonder why the schools went big on the bare chest style of doing gym for so many boys of school age when the services like I joined didn't go with that way of doing it very much at all in actual training, although you get no privacy generally and are seeing everyone's full glory and tackle day in day out in the army and there's a lot of personal banter you take on the chin and a lot of other general hanging around bodies out testosterone flowing.

In the video of the American boys in 1962 was that not the year the Vietnam war got going, a lot of those boys might have been trying to dodge getting shunted over there not long afterwards. It does make you wonder why the need for such intense fitness in school, it was definitely very services in content, yet they were just regular schoolboys. The average age of the combat soldier in that conflict was only 19. Shocking, and I say that as someone who served at that age and from 16, but never in anger, only in peace and of course most importantly as a volunteer. I firmly believe it should always be that way.

Paul, earlier today - that looks far too militaristic - frankly it looks like something Leni Riefenstahl might have directed for the Hitler Youth Movement. I think like a lot of politicians, John Kennedy hid a rather dubious, grubby private life behind this sort of "good clean fun" persona. I doubt he was much interest in that sort of physical exercise in the 1960s, from what I read about him.

If SOME lads wanted to do this sort of extreme PE then by all means let them, in after schools clubs, but don't force it on everybody. Not everyone wants to join the USMC. or the Royal Marines - and why would it be necessary to use such minimal kit?. A film on TV I saw recently made in the late 50s or early 60s showed Army PT - and the emn were wearing singlets as well as shorts -and not wilting from the extreme heat!

Robbie, that's a good clip. There must now be rather a lot of very fit and active 75 year old men in that part of the world, although some of them looked much older than school age and more like 30 going through their paces there. I see that was commented on underneath by somebody else too.

My thoughts on that, instead of having a mid morning or mid afternoon 15 minute break time like they do in school every day, how about in one of those break times every day of the week it's used as a fast fitness session just like that video. So between Maths and History you quickly strip down, yes to your shorts and trainers, absolutely no shirts allowed, and get outside for a furious burst of intense activity like that five day a week say from the age of 14 to 18.

I mean just look at the condition of those boys. Doing the peg wall thing takes a lot of effort and fitness in itself. That PE would have done none of them any harm at all and given them huge benefits in physical health, general wellbeing and I would think outlook and attitude as well. That was a real physical education I suggest where it made a difference to them all. None of them looked unconfident or shy did they.

The answer to Owen C is that most schools today do not require a shower and this is a good thing. Other schools recommend a shower but do not enforce it or just make it optional. However, there are still schools who violate the rights of the individual by either mandating it for outside games or making it compulsory for all PE activities.

Due to concerns about the intentions of PE Teachers most schools have introduced school cubicles rather than communal walk through showers and muslim pupils will shower with their swimsuits on rather than submit to full frontal nudity which was inflicted on pupils during the 1980´s.
There is also a small but dwindling number of schools which require showers for boys but not for girls.

Thankfully, due to the Covid crisis there are more schools which allow the Australian practice of pupils allowed to attend work in their PE Kits and tracksuits during games days and then change when they get home.
Due to more pupils having camera phones we should be committed to ending all compuslory showers in state and Private schools.

We must take into consideration the concerns of all Transgender, Non-binary and muslim pupils by ending all communal changing rooms and all forced showers. If pupils wish to wash they can do so at home.


If Keir Starmer is elected Prime Minister this must be the first priority of a Labour Government if it is to take human rights seriously. The Children Act 1989, Human Rights Act 1999 and Equalities Act 2010 drive us towards a new era of inclusion and diversity. This vision was also laid out in The Education (School Premises) Regulations 1999 under Tony Blair.

There are some schools which still contradict this process such as https://www.castlehill.stockport.sch.uk/Information/Uniforms/

The following are required for PE:

T-shirt, shorts & trainers (any colour)

PE classes take place both indoors and outdoors and therefore students should bring clothing as appropriate for weather conditions. 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.

The campaign to end all showers in all UK schools will continue so we can end all abuses of state power against innocent pupils.

Comment by: Nick on 6th June 2023 at 23:40

Hi Nick -no our first experience at my school was at eleven and it is frightening, especially if you are either under or overweight (the latter not so common back then), especially when "banter" was actively encouraged by the teacher. I went to a boys school, with no women teachers involved, so at least I was spared that.

Martin. I so agree with you, and in hindsight I wish I had had your courage. Our PE teacher was a (slightly) more Starmeresque character, who said a lot but did little, but was an out and out bully. He really got off on the power thing, but as a whole, the school regarded PE as a minor inconvenience. It reminds me of the old musicians joke about a quartet being three musicians and a drummer. Our Mr. R was the Buddy Rich of the teaching staff.

It always frankly concerns me when people, long past schooldays would like to see the allegedly "good" old days return, because you have to wonder why they enjoy the idea of the discomfiture of others - we have from time to time seen such thoughts expressed on HW.

Now this really is the ultimate barechested PE lesson, taking no half hearted pupils here Stateside in the early 60s. Shirts off and get performing! They all do too. Quite impressive, although it doesn't feel very civilian.

High School Fitness in 1962 - https://youtu.be/NGa6BPj3Mcw

Quite a rare post from you Martin, a school shower rebel. I seem to remember someone else last year possibly on these very pages also admitting to much the same thing but that's all. Actually if you start to think about it isn't that quite a brave thing to have done to stand apart from everyone else and not just buckle down like most do in situations like that. Are you saying you took that stance from the first time you faced it and got away with it completely and never once took a shower after a PE lesson at all, ever? No consequences other than the plimsoll you spoke of and nothing more again. Knowing my school I can't see how that would have ever worked out. They would never have allowed someone in one of our PE classes to get the upper hand like that I feel.

I don't disagree with you for a moment Alan that you're more self conscious at the age of eleven than you are at six or seven as you state but I can vouch for this, my middle school placed a lot of importance on us using the open plan shower they had there at the time ('73-'77 in my case) and although it didn't get switched on every single time while I was at middle school I think it was used at least two thirds of the time after PE lessons for boys and girls, not together obviously, we had separate areas. Now I think I was initially anxious even at the age of eight about such things but not for long, after the first time the second time felt much better, sometimes a bit fun even on the good days. But I did feel quite anxious again briefly at twelve when I started comprehensive despite being used to it, insofar as the whole PE ethos is different anyway and also I was around mainly new people I didn't know very well and the PE teachers, unlike at middle school, looked and sounded similar to professional sports people themselves who really meant business and took few excuses. We had to use little yellow soap bars at middle school changing room shower time after PE but at comprehensive it was just hot water and nothing else much of the time unless you came along with your own, yet we definitely needed a proper shower in school PE at that age than we ever did at middle school. In middle school in the early 70's you did have to put up with being seen by the women teacher in the boys changing room at PE time though if she took your class. That would not happen now. Did you shower at your middle school then Alan and would you have been alright about that? Did anybody else do so?

Gym was a horror show if one was not athletic. I was always picked last for teams which was very humiliating. The kids also got to choose who went skins as well in that scenario many times, and that was always the PE shysters who got that delight too. We were given tests on rules of games such as rugby, hockey or basketball. A waste of time. The teachers were like something out of that old film Full Metal Jacket. I didn’t hate exercise either. I went home and exercised. I rode my bike, I swam and walked. I just wasn’t very coordinated, hated ball games and anything involving teams. As far as taking a shower no chance, that was never gonna happen in my school lifetime. I wasn’t gonna take my clothes off in front of other people. I refused to do it and that was that. The belting with a plimsoll I got for that was worth it. They failed to beat me into submission. I think I was ahead of my time. Never one to follow the herd. They couldn't make you get naked and shower even in the 60's and 70's if you refused as long as you were prepared to get hit by a flimsy sports shoe, but they soon stopped that and left you alone. I'm surprised more boys, who hated forced school nudity, weren't like that, and many boys DID hate school showers and being made to go naked with each other under a watchful and sometimes short tempered PE teacher, don't let anyone say different. Physical education should be about health and different ways to achieve optimal health. Not everyone is athletic so there should be other forms of activity besides football, rugby or basketball. How about yoga or aerobics or weight training or even dancing? There should be instructions on nutrition and healthy eating not let's go outside and play skins v shirts football in the rain. Yes we really did do that in the pouring summer rain. PE teachers favoured boys being shirtless, that was obvious, they were always going for shirtless rather than shirts in PE given half a chance, or even when there should have been no chance of it, like running the 4 miler cross country through the falling autumnal leaves in October, sliding down a wet 45 degree 1 in 2 inclined slope leaving your back (or chest if you went front down) and legs smothered in mud and a few scratches if you were unlucky. So why not wear the tops we had then you wondered to yourself. The problem is everyone is dumped into one size fits all or class. We were all expected to have the same ability, think the same, like the same things and feel the same way about ourselves, our bodies and fitness. Such ignorant claptrap. I was in school in the 60’s and 70?s and it didn't change any for my two children late on either. They too had bad experiences in PE as well, very similar to mine. Neither my son or daughter, let's not forget the girls in this, followed my lead, both went for the quiet life and did their penance at school as they were told. Today they are both slender and healthy who regularly go to the gym. One size method of PE was a fail then and still a fail to this day.

John from early today -

I think eleven or twelve is a dreadful age to suddenly hit boys with a sudden barechested mandated ask in school PE on either a permanent or semi-permanent basis, so you're on the right track I think. I think it did come as uncomfortable to many, if this site is anything to go by, even though human nature dictates you adapt fast even to uncomfortable changes.

It is fair to say that doing PE like that was not necessary much of the time and that it was a choice the educational establishment seemed to be very keen on, dramatically more so over a certain period of time. Perhaps there are some peer reviewed articles on the whys and wherefores about it somewhere. I think this principle applies even more so to the sudden onset of showering at the same age for obvious reasons. During primary there was a fear of the things long before we arrived because of what older brothers and sisters were saying.

Comment by: Owen C on 5th June 2023 at 19:37
Is it still legal to make them shower at school?




Yes it is.

Comment by: John on 6th June 2023 at 08:12


I think you have put your finger on it. When you are 11 and getting to the teenage years you are very much more self-conscious than you would be at 6 or 7.

Replying to Jack,
Just curious to know if you did PE shirtless at Primary School like I did?. From the comments on here the lads that seem to have had an issue with shirtless indoor PE were the ones that had been used to doing PE at Primary School wearing a top.
I think if lads do PE shirtless from joining the school system they have no problem with it, some lads become self conscious about being seen shirtless in their teens.

Is it still legal to make them shower at school?

I finished school back in 1971, I think my last PE lesson must have been sometime around May or June 1971 before taking my final school exams and right up until the last lesson the boys were turning out for both gym and often the sports field shirtless. I never saw a great deal of discussion about it or any need to be told to do it, we just did it. I also had one teacher among the half dozen or so that rotated as our PE teachers who conducted the gym shirtless like us and if we had a summer kick around outside he would always personally pick a shirtless skins team and then also be part of that team himself, really getting stuck in with us all. I remember him as very fair and genuine with everybody however good or bad they were at anything.

Despite what I've said above, we always ran our school cross country in a long sleeved brightly coloured school sweatshirt, one layer, nothing allowed underneath it so if you were one of those who came to school wearing a vest under your school shirt you had to take it off, I do remember that bit. There was never any suggestion that we might do that with a bare chest only. I am struggling to understand the logic of being told to run the school cross country shirtless and what actual benefit that brought. I know I was always being told about the benefits of being out in the fresh air when I was younger but I'm not sure that extends to the cross country explanation.

Lucky you Pete for doing cross country at the local countryside proper - funny about the minibus though.

The running joke at my school when we went running was wondering where the country part of the running actually was. Our whole course was urban streets in the main and having to wait at certain points for traffic before going across a couple of roads. When it was warm we got taken out on this so called cross country shirtless many many times, no say about that at all. A right old liberty that. Christ that used to embarrass me and I wasn't easily embarrassed. Along this course we passed a parade of shops where there was a local Spar convenience store regularly used by kids from our school. A day happened where about five of us had separated from our main running group and the teacher had run ahead leaving us far behind so we piled into the Spar, a mate had already stuffed a pound note down his pants just incase, and we all filed into the shop in our PE kits, no tops on and promptly got thrown straight back out onto the street laughing uncontrollably but then seeing our PE teacher marching furiously back down the road at us. Our teacher gave us a right mouthful. Then we ran the rest of the course faster than we'd ever done back to school on pain of an imminent detention if we didn't.

That Sunday Times article isn't wrong is it. Not so sure about the sugar and salt in food bit though. 15% obese in the 1970's and now 64%, really. So only 1 in 3 are okay weight nowadays.

How many noticeably overweight boys do you have in PE Nathan? Most old timers on here don't remember any in PE, which probably accounts for why bare chested PE is not seen as a problem from those years gone by.

But I know some quite overweight people with Apple watches and iPhones who use the health app to count their steps religiously but it makes no difference to them. We didn't need them 50 years ago and all these health apps are now out there and we're less healthy than ever.

With the warm weather in the UK at the moment I have observed numerous lads walking around in public with their shirts off. I doubt that these lads would be concerned about doing PE bare chested. I can understand concerns regarding the dangers of getting sunburnt if not wearing a shirt for outdoor PE but for indoor PE I cannot see the need for lads to have to wear a shirt.