Burnley Grammar School

This would appeaar to be a set-piece display of Physical Education at El colegio "Estudio", an independent, non-subsidized private center in Madrid that covers the entire school stage, from 3 to 18 years of age. Although topless boys and girls wearing tops are seen taking part in a display of vaulting, in other activities both sexes are "fully clad" and in no way does this video appear to represent a typical PE lesson, either contemporry or historical.

@ Dave ... it looks a bit too energetic for me!
Interesting, though, the way that the boys congratulate each other and 'bond' at the end

Dave, from the skills and physiques I'd assume that wasn't a regular PE class.

Interesting that the girls are in tshirts but the boys aren't - so it can't be a safety thing.

I'd be amazed if shirtless PE had been a thing in the UK for the last 30 years or more.

Hi!

This video proves that shirtless PE is still practiced in some school. (from 2:30) Here we can clearly see the boys have no shirt on even in co-ed lessons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO7jR9cK-HY&ab_channel=Fundaci%C3%B3nEstudio%2FColegioEstudio

Without question the most humiliating experience in my life was being belted hard with class watching in my boarding school gym back in 1966 for something I didn't even say at the tender age of just 12. I was laid face down along the PE bench and had my shorts pulled slighly down and a leather strap three times across my exposed bottom. I was wearing nothing else, boys did PE without wearing any tops, shirtless and no plimsolls or socks, barefooted. 57 years later and I'm nearly 70 now and I think about it every once in a while and it stirs the same feelings that never fade. To be falsely accused, summarily punished on the spot, with an audience, nearly naked and thrashed is a lifelong memory. I was always scared of the gym from that day on incase it happened again.

Jason, a part of that where that boy launches himself through the small metal hoop looked more like circus training than PE didn't it.

Here's another 1936 British film showing boys PE.

Take a note of one of the comments underneath which says - This is how you prevent depression in teens.

Physical Fitness - Government's Concern For The Nation.

https://youtu.be/cOsMiLxQHuA

Hi Colin, I've read your comments regarding bare chested PE and absolutely agree. Bare chests are a very easy, effective and practical way to pick two very distinct teams with minimal fuss, it certainly doesn't take very long for a group of lads to strip to the waist and you don't need extra gear. Though the majority of the time indoors we were bare chested when we were split into teams of skins vs vests it wasn't unusual to see vests stick to lads tops. Far more practical to sweat freely.

Bernard: I am afraid we had two teachers at our school who were known for certain propensities, even amongst other teachers (who of course acted like the three wise monkeys). My best/favourite subject was Technical Drawing, ironically it was taken by one of the pair - this one a discipline fetishists who would get the slipper out if he could even see a mark of an eraser on the paper, still less smudges, not hard to achieve when you are using a 4B pencil. When you are doing work like that, you might do even better if you were not having bits of chalk and blackboard brushes whizzing past your head, even if you were not the target.

By the way, you are right, I don't like to be told what to do, either then or now, which is why I have been self-employed most of my working life. I'm the boss!. To be fair, none of my employers were ever as bad as the teachers in our school - they were actually polite.

Colin: I have attached my email address, if you want to contact me privately. I don't want to go into details on a public site.

I was going to respond to Alan in a similar way to you Bernard but I will reply to one or two points anyway.

So to pick up on one or two points from your reply to me.

1. One size fits all.

Nothing is perfect. In a room with thirty or more people with differing ability and attitude to PE you have to make the best of it. But PE was often divided up into ability groups anyway, sometimes within the class structure on the same timetable hour. When you get certain people who are naturally good at something you can actually find some others who it acts as an incentive with to do better. This was best noticed to me in athletics and timing trials we did. Even boys with a lower ability like to try and be competitive in such situations. It's rare that anyone just gives up. Everyone wants to be healthy and remain well and have good fitness don't they, so in this respect one size definitely fits all of us.

2. Browbeat.

I didn't like the use of this word at all. It's a complete misconception. But if we take it to its logical conclusion we are all getting browbeaten into something most weeks, children and adults alike. If you wish to use the word then it can be used against any subject matter at school, not just PE. But what does browbeaten actually mean, well forced into doing something, made to do it. I see there is even an online definition saying intimidated into doing something sternly!

Some people just don't like being told what to do in life. But this doesn't end when you leave school, it actually gets worse!

PE is there to push people into developing skills and abilities they might not even know they even had or were good at until they tried. It's not meant to be an easy ride, it's there to serve a purpose, the clue is in the physical part of the definition. But I also know that it affects a lot of people in a mental capacity as well as physical, many can't wait to leave school and never do it again. That's a shame and where PE in school fails badly if it leaves people not wanting to remain active doing something sporty or just exercising regularly.

Nutrition was mentioned a few days ago. I think there could and ought to be an academic aspect to PE where nutrition and mental aptitude is factored into the PE sphere. Without the fuel and the mind the body can't do it's job properly.

I read the piece about the boy with the GP note and that should have been accepted unconditionally without questioning. That surprised me a lot, if the facts were as presented and I don't doubt that for one moment.

3. Barechests for PE.

This one seems to draw a lot of attention. I am familiar with this myself from both sides, being both the pupil and teacher myself. I am fully aware that it might not suit everyone. But how many things during the course of a school week don't suit everyone? Special treatment opt outs are not the way to go in most cases and are often detrimental.

I see no major problem with the full class bare chests for PE issue or the asking of PE to be done ,compulsory, like this when required. I required it too many times to mention and have no concerns about that. Think of it like going to the doctors and being embarrassed without needing to be because the doctor has seen it all before and there is nothing to worry about. It's much the same really up to a point. We all worry about how we look, either to ourselves or others, I fully get that. But look at what the previous comment by Grant says. I can confirm his comment multiple times over. In PE and notably even in PE with bare chests, Time and again I saw people come out of their shells and bloom with confidence they didn't think they even had. I'm sorry when it doesn't work for some people and leaves them so deeply unhappy. Only a very few bad apples would be setting out to make anyone unhappy. There were always a hardcore who refused to try or truanted and were full of excuses on why they couldn't do things, they left me unhappy! I used to give them reasons why the certainly could do them.

In your case Alan I'd quite like to know how your average PE class panned out from the moment you walked into the changing room, did the lesson, and up to finally leaving the changing room and off to what came next. What did you do, what were you thinking, what did you wear, what were your interaction with your teachers and also fellow pupils? How did you yourself project yourself at the time in these situations? If you've got the time to spare for a detailed breakdown of how things were for you in some greater detail I'd like to read and understand it further and maybe give you some follow up thought if that is not too cheeky of me.

Sometimes we can have a psychological mindset that we need to unblock to move forward.

Josh, I was exactly the same as you in my teens! Shy about being barechested in public and couldn't make myself do it of my own accord outside of school... it was almost like I needed an authority figure to make me take my top off. That's the role my PE teacher filled I suppose, he was an imposing figure and in most lessons he would divide us into groups of vests and skins. Sometimes there was no obvious reason for it, but if he decided to make me a skin then of course I had no choice in the matter!
But I still found it difficult to take my top off voluntarily. Peer pressure probably helped as I got older though.

Alan - I appreciate that there was something terrible about your school p.e. experience that has left you very negative about p.e. and that no-one will ever change your views. I wonder if you have such negatives views about other parts of your school life where you were "forced" to do things you would have chosen not too.
As I've mentioned before at my school we did all p.e. both shirtless and barefoot though never thought about it as being forced to do it like that - that was the way it was done and we just got on with it. However, we all had to do Latin to "O" level and there were plenty of boys who resented being "forced" to do this.
Perhaps an important part of school is teaching youngsters that, if you expect to get on in life, you have to obey certain rules whether you see any value in them or not. It is, of course, sometimes possible to get rules changed if enough people feel strongly enough about it though it is wise to pick your battles. In my school there was far more anti-Latin sentiment than concern about our p.e. kit and I believe the Latin requirement was reduced soon after I left the school.

Barechested PE rocks.

I was the unconfident kid when I went into mandatory barechested PE classes in my youth and it was transformational in how I came to view myself and behave.

At school I was initially very shy about it and the only time in my youth that I ever took my tops off (other than washing/showers at home and in school) was when made to do so in very many PE classes. But I so wanted to do so in the summer months away from school but had a complete mental block and inability of being able to do so voluntarily by myself even when I actually really wanted to. I just couldn't do it unless made to do it by a schoolteacher in PE. Does anyone else here recognise this behaviour of mine in themselves?

The old footage of cycling and PE, brought back memories.

Certainly that was exactly like my PE lessons, other than we had to be barefoot as well as shirtless. We were scared of the PE teacher, after all he could slipper us, and even used the cane - you stood to attention when addressed (surnames naturally).

In the background there are numerous boys up on the wall bars, maybe as a punishment. Any minor error (or slowness) got you a period hanging from the gym wall bars with us (and it hurt your arms like hell), let go too quickly and you were likely to be stretched over the gym horse discovering how much a hard caning hurt !

Comment by: Colin on 18th July 2023 at 12:26

With all due deference , Colin, if you are a sports psychologist, I am especilly surprised that you seem to imply a "one size fits all" approach is appropriate useful or necessary. Presumably you wotk with people who WANT to excel at a sport, and good luck to them, but you have to bear in mind at school there are pupils who have little or no interest in games and "gym" (a local one in my area which opened with great fanfare just a couple of years ago has recently closed down) - those pupils are more interested in the sciences, or the arts. You cant force people to like a subject, and bullying them will never work. There has been a recent idea floated by our Prime Minister in waiting , for example, that all school children should be made to play musical instruments. Not all children are musical, I'd like to see any music teacher worth his/her salt trying to force a boy to play the trombone or violin. Then there are the practicalities - not every home has the money or space to spare, because practice is essential. Imagine three would-be musical children in a high rise flat - and more and more people live in such situations these days.

By all means encourage those who are interested, but you cannot browbeat anybody into liking your subject just because you do, and for teachers to become petulant with the kids because they do not like or cannot do what is requested of them seems puerile in the extreme. We have had in recent posts an exmple of a teacher so conceited he was not prepared to accept medical opinion - just how stupid and vainglorious was he?

Just a comment on Ricks last posting.

As people know we had National Service in the UK from the late 40s through to 1960. There is a suggestion that many of these young men were not particulary fit and that school PE teachers put these lads through it in the gym to try and develop a degree of fitness which would help them though the first weeks of basic training. Many of the PE teachers would themselves have 'done their time' and seen their unfit peers suffering and were trying to ease this 'rite of passage'.

Without checking I think I am right in thinking that the first Outward Bound School (Aberdovey) was established during WWII to teach seamanship & survival skills who might be joining the Merchant Navy and facing long voyages in open boats after their ships were sunk.

Christian on 17th. July.
What a silly thing to do by your Gym teachers. Especially as you appeared to be still recovering, and doing well to be back in school. It’s hard to understand how they could totally disregard the medical advice forwarded to your school. No wonder your dad was angry, good for him. I hope they were both told and made to understand the error of their ways. Then subsequently to mark you down is just childish. I’ve detected in the past as an adult, when sometimes having dealings with teachers how some seem to take on behavioural standards of the age group kids they associate with all day. Sad really. At least, despite my perpetually grumpy Gym teacher, he was sensible enough to leave me out of things until informed I could join the class proper. I can’t remember him making any allowances for me from that day onwards though, which I managed to cope with.

Robbie on 18th July.
I enjoyed that film, which I hadn’t seen before. These old films are always particularly interesting, as they really capture a snapshot of how the world was back then when growing up, so thanks for the link. It was made at a time when children’s films were frequently moralistic, and I would have been in early junior school at that time. A few years later I also did a similar cycling proficiency test. I remember that on passing, we received a pennant to attach to handlebars, and also an orange and green metal badge to wear. I noticed during the closing titles of the film, they showed the same triangular symbol, which was the very design of the triangular badge we all received.

How come all us boys who were in school in the 70s and 80s weren't also going through all these alleged intensely militaristic PE routines to knock top level fitness and total subservient discipline into us when we were constantly being told WW3 with the USSR was about to break out at any moment and we lived in fear of that at any moment and the Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Granted that no amount of fitness was going to save us from the dreaded 4 minute warning.

Very good post TimH. It would be interesting to know what the daily food and drink intake was of those boys back then compared to now. They looked good on far less one must surely assume. No hi-energy drinks and bottles of water constantly at their side. Just a drinking fountain somewhere, like I used at school. Remember those.

My brief: Ex-PE teacher of 15 years standing. Now a 69 year old part-time sports psychologist.

I have a bit of a problem with two of your comments Alan.

1. Gung-ho physical fitness.

What is wrong with physical fitness, even a bit gung-ho as you put it, or done with a bit of collective purpose. I wonder just how many of the boys of the film in '36 if they had all been around 40 or 50 years later would have rubbished their school PE class like that. Not many I'm sure.

2. Discipline fetishists.

Again, what is wrong with discipline and using it constructively such as we saw in the PE class of '36. It was discipline for a purpose and in no way is that any kind of negative as you attempt to paint it. The film was a good example of well practiced discipline in a hugely beneficial manner. Many of those boys probably felt the cane too at some point in school, now I've never been a fan of that at all but the PE discipline should be highly regarded, and that includes what they did, how they did it and how they dressed.

So both the points you raised as negatives, physical fitness and discipline are infact massive positives for a good, healthy and well lived life and physical fitness and discipline for me both go hand in hand with each other and are excellent for the brain and that modern word nowadays, mindfulness.


On the war point. What's wrong with being physically prepared just incase? What's the alternative, be unprepared, unfit and lose a possible war? Of course nobody in our country was looking for such an eventuality or wanted it but we didn't have the luxury of ignoring it unfortunately.

For Will (& Alan)
Pre-1914 the state of the 'National Health' was pretty poor - many young men joined the Army & Navy to get three square meals a day. When Britain went to war many in the Army were unfit reservists or recruits.
Moving on to the 1920s there was still this general ill-health - think of tuberculosis and rickets, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. With increased medical care these were overcome and there was the feeling that a good physical life could help everyone. People (who could) started good healthy exercise - think of the YHA, the Ramblers (founded 1935), the mass trespasses on Kinder Scout, etc. as well as local football & athletic clubs, etc. Some 170 'lidos' were built in the 1930s, as well as improvements to open-air swimming pools. I think you can go on about this - the film of Leyton High School (and, I think, earlier, a school in B'ham is from this period). 'Outdoor Education' also started at that time - I'm thinking specifically of Whitehough Camp School in Lancashire and Ingleborough Hall near Settle - all of this is on the lines of a 'Healthy Mind & a Healthy Body' and I don't think it was necessarily militaristic.

As Alan says, by the mid-1930s, many people were aware of the threat from Nazi Germany and preparations were begun to fight a war that many saw as inevitable. (There are pictures of a car with the placard: 'half-a-mo-hitler-lets-have-our-holidays-first'). Many young men sensing the inevitable, threw themselves into an 'outdoor life' to be fit for war. One guy I knew, a leading rock climber, went to Mallaig and then walked across the Highlands to the Depot of his fathers old regiment, where he enlisted.
Having rambled on, although these films are from this inter-war period and knowing something of the history of the period, I still find it very difficult to find anything purely 'militaristic' in all this.
End of rant.

Comment by: Will on 16th July 2023 at 22:59


You haven't seen the old Pathe' newsreels then, Will - apart from the 1936 PE one?. You will find stock footage of old Mrs Smith taking her kettle to the salvage yard to get them to turn it into a Spitfire, or elderly Mr Jones joining the Home Guard or fire watching at the age of 70. I am sure that most people on here will have seen examples of the "Britain can take it" trope they employed. Examples of gung ho physical fitness was another.

Why as adults should we concern ourselves with what schoolboys do today for exercise?. Times change, and even schools have to change with it. The days of sub-Army drilling in school is long past. Many of those lads had to join the army whether they wanted to or not, and there is definitely no money for the discipline fetishists to get their way with conscription again now. I am glad they don't have to go through the miseries some of us had to go through.

One here for Mike and Greg.

A short film about cycling proficiency from the sixties somehow ends up showing boys doing barechested PE in the gym, and if you look to the background there are all those boys hanging from the bars along the edge of the gym like you described. Not easy I agree. Then off to the shower - who would think they could get a shower shot into a cycling proficiency short film. I did that bars thing too by the way in gym, and took the proficiency test.

https://youtu.be/JlEm4tEodhU?t=197

Is it even legal to defy a genuine doctors sick note like that or are they just advisory?

Greg2.



In the spring of 1976 I had glandular fever and was off school for a month at the age of fourteen. Two PE teachers at the time actually defied a doctors note given to my school when I returned very weak and lethargic and with low energy levels, making PE a big struggle.

Because of that GP note I came into school without PE kit with full expectation of sitting it out or doing some other desk work. But I was called a malingerer who looked perfectly able to do at least something and was given a spare pair of shorts first timetabled PE back, and only shorts, and sent to gym as normal. Protest dismissed. I could barely stand for more than five minutes at a time. I was standing about doing an indoor ball game of some sort, barely touched the ball. Made to shower and could barely manage to get back dressed at the end. Even my friends were all hacked off for me.

Next day, after a very mad dad had taken charge of things with the head it took the family doctor to actually phone my school directly right to the top as well, following up his actual note, to bring PE two teachers into line and tell them I was not to do excess activity for a further month, meaning no PE.

I spent my time in the school library instead, quietly working and reading. They didn't want me even sitting out within their lessons. Neither did I much if I wasn't taking part.

Boy did I discover that PE teachers don't like being told what to do in the aftermath. I'd generally been a B grader in the subject through school but suddenly became a D or even E grader and the PE teacher/pupil relationship failed to recover even when I had done so and was back to my old self.

I don't know what the "Britain can take it" attitude is exactly, perhaps you know your history details better than me Alan, but I'm not sure schools in Britain were actively militarising their PE lessons in the mid 30s just incase of future hostilities. Perhaps the bigger question should relate to now and why schools are diminishing PE so much, far fewer hours each week than years ago, and what they do barely raises the pulse at times. We should think about getting back to the Leyton style of doing PE for intense working out and agility, not casual half hearted team games with half the class dragging their heels. By getting back to the Leyton style like the film showed I don't mean having to do it shirtless, just the actual content, although surely everyone doing PE shirtless like that does give added incentive to the lesson and foster a certain kind of collective spirit in some way. When I was in classes like that, every single boy without his shirt on, told to, it felt like we were all at one in some way and generally more disciplined. I associate being shirtless with being highly disciplined and I think it works well.

Mike, Yes, the school had been informed that I wouldn’t be able to take part in any form of P.E. until cleared by the hospital, and I think I can remember taking a hospital letter about this to the headmaster. I think I gave something to the Gym teacher as well, telling him when I would be able to take part. I expect this gave instruction on what I would and wouldn’t be able to do, and until when. I don’t remember doing rugby for instance for a long time. I’d actually been captain and top goal scorer in my junior school football team (!) but although I did again get into school teams, I was never as confident again somehow. Thankfully, my leg grew straight and strong, and was never a problem in later life.

Your description of the wall bars exercise was exactly what we did. We had such fixed wall bars all along one side of the Gym. I also remember it being very difficult on our arms at younger ages, until we’d built up some upper body strength during later teens.

I'm fully aware of the date and its significance Alan, so not sure you draw my attention to it. It's why I made the comment. My father was born in 1923, so 13 at the time of the film so 22 when the War ended, having joined up for training at the age of 18.

I'm making a big assumption here because I don't know, but has anybody ever addressed why there was never a no underwear rule for girls all those years ago in school PE like there was for the boys in some places? If not, why not? Why was it so vital in some schools for boys to do that and not girls? It's a presumption I'm making that this practice never involved girls, maybe due to monthly issues developing I don't know, but boys still had that little bit extra to keep tucked up didn't they. The whole thing is a head scratcher to me.

Greg2 did your parents not write or contact the school in some way to actually tell them about your fractured femur so that at least your PE teachers would be aware of any potential difficulties you might have in class rather than expecting the same from you as the others? I would imagine if you missed three months during your transition they must have known something. What a nightmare to be off school for so long at such an important moment in time that must have been.

I also remember being hung up on the side of the school gym on the frame bars we had while they were pinned to the wall rather than pulled out properly. We would hang in a line and have to lift our legs right up together to a certain height parallel to the floor, so our body was bent at an angle of 90 degress. When I first did this I was surprised just how much hanging my relatively light body with both my arms fully outstretched above me pulled on those arms and really strained them. Others found it harder than me and simply fell off too soon.

There was no obvious choreography in the style of Lewis's film that I recall myself doing but it looks like it might have been quite fun learning to sync up a routine with everyone else once in a while, I would have been alright with that.

I hope they all survived the war, especially the older boys at the end who may have served. A couple maybe still with us today, testament to those fine PE lessons they were given then, and good family genes.