Burnley Grammar School

Alan.

SIX strokes of the cane for sneezing and then moving your hand to your face - in the 1980's, just because he told you to stay still.

Across your hands or behind was that, and at what age?

I actually find that quite incredible. You certainly don't sound to me like you were a bad lad of any kind. That is excessive.

I'm genuinely angry on your behalf. I can see why you hold such deep resentment. What did your parents say at the time?

My whole experience at school in the same time period just over forty or so years back was completely different. Quite fair minded PE teachers in the main, only one or two other teachers who were a bit unlikeable, nothing unusual in that. PE was mostly in proper shirts and shorts and only occasionally did our tops come off for the skins team side. Never went outside without full tops on. After the first couple of years by third or fourth form the showers weren't even compulsory anymore and we could leave without and nothing was said.

Which is funny really because I didn't mind in the least taking my shirt off for PE on the few times I did it and going in the showers was something I got used to almost instantly and thought almost nothing of, although others did I know that. Never heard of any corporal punishments either. I can't say I even remember PE teachers shouting very much in any kind of anger.

I went to a normal regular average comprehensive school as far as I'm concerned.

It seems that Alan’s experiences and mine are actually quite similar. The PE regime, no stopping, no talking, always barechested inside or outside he describes is very familiar to me. There were never any exceptions of any kind. I remember a very unusual lesson when I was about 14. We were to be introduced to the game of chess by members of a local chess club and it was decided that this should happen during PE hours. Of course, our PE teacher only complied grudgingly. When we entered the gym, he told us that we would be playing chess and that that it apparently was considered to be a sport. As such, we would have to get changed. I quite clearly remember us boys looking at each other thinking that he would surely not make us strip to our shorts only to play a board game but of course he did. We then entered the gym as we always did, barechested and barefoot, forming two lines for the last two boys who had to run the gauntlet, doing five laps around the gym before standing to attention in front of him. He put us into pairs of two, had us take out an exam table and two chairs, set the whole lot up and made us stand to attention behind our table while the very bewildered looking elderly members of the chess club set up the boards for us. They explained the game to us and we had time to have a go at it. I actually quite enjoyed chess but dared not to show it in front of our teacher. 15 minutes before the end of the lesson he abruptly interrupted the matches made us a line up again and put us through the most gruesome and intense work up I had had up to then at the end of which we were completely soaked. He then sent us off to have a shower by saying that a sport that didn’t make you sweat was for sissys. I actually remember it so well because I felt very embarrassed not because we were made to strip to the waist but for the members of the chess club who put a lot of effort into their activity, which was ridiculed by our teacher. I also felt ashamed because I didn’t dare to show them my gratitude for fear of our teacher’s disdain.

Nathan
I remember a few years back going into the local Co-Op - there was a lad there on 'work experience': he was not happy. Something about having to get up in the morning, and be where he didn't want to be, and packing shelves in a tidy manner, and folding up empty boxes. I'm afraid he got little sympathy from customers - one lady said: 'Cheer Up! Only another forty-five years before you can retire!'
This is 'off topic' but: there are lots of very good lads (& lasses) about- a credit to their families & communities but some others do worry me. 'Nuff said

Tim H, I follow your reasoning . I like many others left school at 16 . At that time we were the "Top Dogs" of the pupils. Prefects etc. Then straight into work back to the bottom of the pile and treated as such. The managers were strict and to be obeyed. Addressed as Mr. ..... no matey first name terms.
So all aspects of secondary school I suppose prepared us not only with academic education but prepared us "for the great outside world"
From my latter years at work i think youngster finish their education whether school or college or university and expect to walk straight into the top jobs with no idea of how the world really works.

I agree with Stuart & Lance ... the ability to face up to things 'as they come'.

Bear in mind we'd all be moving (eventually) out of home and school into jobs or FE - the move could come as a shock, especially if, as many did in past days, you moved into an apprenticeship or 'manual' work - you grew up quickly.

Isn't being "tough/acting like a man" a combination of physical fitness and mental fitness" OK, it's running in winter stripped to only shorts etc etc, but also the mental strength to accept that sort of thing.

Robert Coulson - briefly we had a teacher who was a sadist - two actually - the other one was worse, but that is another story. This particular teacher played mind games. One minute he would be quite jocular, then suddenly he would change and become beligerant (either mental health problems or too much to drink). One day after one of these episodes he told us all to stand up and not to move until he told us to. We were in the (so-called) science lab. After five minutes I sneezed and automatically moved my hand. I got six for that. Totally unjustified, and I loathed him even more from that day onwards. If I had done something to deserve it I wouldn't have felt so angry about him. Teachers had far too much power, and it went to the heads of men like the late Mr. Boreham. I fully agree MOST teachers were probably more like you, but the rotten apples should have been weeded out by their colleagues and headmasters, and shown up for what they were, as it gave the profession a bad name. I like to think that taking away the 'power' of the cane made his final years in the profession miserable. I think it was phased out completely in 1988/9, which was a year or too late for me to enjoy seeing him banned from performing his favourite hobby.

My definition of toughening up would be nothing to do with anything physical or about muscles and shirts coming off but more to do with mental attitude and resilience of the mind, and maturity of thought.

I think from a PE teacher angle they simply thought of it as taking whatever they threw at you and putting up with it without answering back. Which most of us did obligingly.

When two men fancy having a pop at each other, such as in films, you often see one or both of them whip their shirts off quickly before starting any fisticuffs with each other and then fighting barechested as if that's the manly thing to do. So it's quite clear that getting boys in PE into their barechested state is one of those manning up kind of things they used to make us do. Real men take their shirts off and show their physique whereas those who don't like doing so are seen as wimps or girls. Not my words but the words I once heard said to a couple of boys in my PE class when I must have been no more than about 12 years old when I distinctly remember a teacher telling the pair to take their vests off and stop acting like girls about it.

Bernard,
I agree with you entirely that the PE kit rules were sensible and had been properly considered and were not decided on a whim. My mum was pleased that she only ever had to wash a pair of shorts when I did gym and cross country running. When it rained as it often did doing cross country shirtless was more comfortable than having a sopping wet shirt stuck to your back.

"Toughening up"

To me at my school it meant being very fit, not worrying about being cold/wet during cross country (thus not shirt, bare feet), accepting minor bruises during sport, cold showers, accepting canings if deserved and so on

Sam and Steve both with comments about toughening up and making men of boys during PE. What does it even mean anyway?

You never hear about girls and making women out of them do you.

Bernard

Thanks for your response.

We had to run cross country shirtless, but wore plimsolls. Other than one lad who always ran bare foot - his choice, or maybe his fathers (his dad was military and believed "boys need toughening up etc")

I would have hated being barefoot, but maybe we had a different type of course to you. Not just because of ground conditions, but also it would have seemed even more of a punishment on a freezing day in winter to be not only forced to strip to the waist, but also to have to strip to all but nothing, in that we world have worn only a thin pair of shorts and been on full public view.

Are you saying you were running ankle deep in thick wet mud with literally nothing on your feet Bernard in those conditions, with it also raining and having to go out stripped off bare chested too at the same time, and you approved of that? What a mess you must have made coming back into change with all that muck on your feet. The showers must have looked a right state.

But I guess you boys like getting muddy don't you at that age and perhaps still wouldn't mind. All that mud must have given your lot great feet, as long as it was the right sort of mud!

What school and where Bernard?

Why do so few people actually name names on here.

I had a PE teacher who took our whole class out cross country running one day right through the centre of town (Banbury) and back to school again TOTALLY SHIRTLESS the lot of us. I just wanted to hide and kept looking at the ground as we went. Absolute tool. He was one of those 'it'll make men of you types'. I think it was in 1979, late summer, just back to school.

I'd like to respond to Tom's comment of 6th April 2023.

I was dismayed to read your comment Tom. I can assure you, and others that even fifty plus years ago kicking a child in school would be considered well beyond acceptable.

I was actually very surprised to see the drama from 1983 showing a boy being hit in his PE lesson like that because that was not something I ever encountered even many years before that time, in the late 1960's or 1970's and it is not how many I knew behaved.

By the beginning of the 1980's although corporal punishment in schools remained legal for a further few years until I think it was about 1986 when it finally ended, many teachers would not have gone near using any kind of physical admonishment in school by that point.

I was interested to see you Alan say you received the cane in school yourself, are you not a 1980's schoolboy. What did you receive it for?

I remember in my early days teaching and hearing from an old hand in my first school about his long career which must have stretched back pre-war and him telling me how he used to strike this boy and that boy time and again for this and that, to which I said something like well if you had to keep doing it over and over to the same boys again and again then it really wasn't working was it.

Steve - Yes barefoot and stripped to the waist. We thought it a bit odd to start with but appreciated it after the first heavy rain. Our route had several sections which became very muddy after heavy rain. Plimsolls were the alternative and these would soon have become detached from the feet they were meant to be on. It was really a sensible kit - we didn't have to stop a number of times to retrieve filthy plimsolls. In addition, muddy feet were a lot easier to clean than mud-encased plimsolls.
It was not uncommon to fall over and get very dirty so it was practical to only have a pair of shorts that needed cleaning - my mother certainly appreciated that!
I was very fortunate in that my school tended not to do things on a whim - there was usually a good reason even when the rules might have seemed strange to start with.

Matt, seems a sensible arrangement.

Bernard

Did you have to run cross country barefoot as well as stripped to the waist ?

If so, how did boys/parents react to that.

Thanks

Though I in no way condone violence towards or against anybody, did anybody else see this story?:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11954249/More-one-10-teachers-physically-assaulted-pupil-year-survey-finds.html


I wonder what percentage of pupils were assaulted by teachers for no good reason when they were allowed to use corporal punishment? - and it is not that many years ago, either.

Hi Claire, thanks for your interest. We were all told which form we were going into before we started and that remained fixed and each class had it's own colour. My class wore green shorts and the other colours were red, blue and yellow.

Matt - were shorts colours allocated permanently. In house colours or similar, or did you have several pairs in different colours to choose from?

Matt - we were stripped to the waist like you, inside and out, all year round and wore different colour shorts to distinguish teams outside as well as being barefoot. It meant we had little kit to remember and no-one was made to wear a shirt. I think this was fairer than playing shirts and skins.
Cross country in the middle of winter could be a bit challenging but you got used to the cold after the first five or ten minutes. No-one seemed particularly bothered by our basic kit and I certainly wouldn't have changed it. This was in the 60s and applied to the whole school.

I had an older brother who went to the same (grammar) school - he was 3 years older than me, and we shared a bedroom.

So I more or less knew what to expected, namely indoor pe in only shorts, cross country bare backed and so on.

He was caned a few times, and I saw the results - clearly much worse once he was in the 4th year and got the heavier cane.

What I didn't expect was the association of surnames by one of the PE teachers, who immediately picked up he was my brother - thus I was "trouble" By the 2nd cross country run he had me down as "lazy" and pretty soon I was in gym detention and slippered for "now trying" in his lessons. My first caning soon followed !

Joe, yes that took me by surprise. Like you we were stripped to the waist regardless of activity or weather. We wore different coloured shorts to distinguish between teams.

John, It's not just at senior school level though. From the moment I began at middle school we did PE in the hall without tops (and took showers) as boys and many of the PE lessons were combined and basically just the everyday full normal class together under the supervison of both male and female teachers at the time. We also did parents day PE showcase annually, twice in my case where we did a gymnastics display and much more. I did not much like parental performances of any kind especially like that but the choice was never ours to make. My dad thought we were doing something special when he saw it and didn't realise that was how we did normal PE in middle school and I think he was a bit surprised.

I'm going back to 1969/70 with this when I'm not sure if there was any national set standard for determining how one school or another conducted PE lessons with regards to what we did and what we wore or if we must shower or not. It's one of those mysteries to me about who made these actual decisions and I've had a flick back through quite a lot of pages here and nobody else seems to have any ideas I've stumbled across yet.

Replying to Nathan,

Like you my experience of PE was very similar and having to be PE stripped to the waist at Senior School was no shock because I knew that was the kit rule that my older brother had.

I think if lads had been prepared what to expect it wouldn’t have been a big deal for them having to do PE bare chested. Most lads at my school preferred it to having to wear a hot sweaty top.

Comment by: Terry on 6th April 2023 at 20:39

Saw that live myself. You beat me to it.

Check out Stuart Agnew here tonight on the GB News Channel, a farmer and former MEP who went to Gordonstoun with then Prince (now King) Charles in what must have been the start of the 60's. He speaks of a tough regime where boys were actually woken first thing in the morning before 7am to get going for cross country running. At one point he dismisses a scene from the Crown where it was suggested Charles was able to avoid cross country running, saying if he had done that for real then nobody would have forgotten it for the next few years.

I've read about this school before in the press and our now King's hatred of it. I think it was notorious for cold showers too. It sounds less like a school more like a juvenile prison camp to me. Awful sounding place.

https://youtu.be/tn44St6Ha9w?t=89