Burnley Grammar School

There have been a few comments on here about cold school gyms that I've seen. So if these schools wanted the PE done in these gyms without shirts then at least warm them up. I always thought there was a minimum temperature threshold that had to be met in school because I went to a school that lost its heating in various blocks more than once and everyone was sent home. I thought the lower limit was around 60 Fahrenheit.

Infact try this for size. If the school gym had been below about 60 degrees then we would probably have been sent home, or not allowed to use it but could go outside in zero degrees in shorts and t-shirts many times!

That swimming versus gym based PE as Sam has said is a bit of a conundrum.

I went through 4 years of regular swimming in school, as you do, wearing nothing but a very tight pair of swimming trunks, both the boys and the girls swam together with each other, the only divide being in terms of swim strength, but we all went to the pool and got in together as the class.

I did not feel concerned by it or remember any strong feelings about what I looked like in front of anybody, boys, teachers or the girls. I first swam in primary at age 10 and stopped a couple of years into seniors aged around 14 years old. The very same pool for both schools. Not only that but when I was in seniors for my initial two summers we did a swim gala at the same pool with swim races based on ability and strength, boys races and girls races. These were with spectators invited, our families came along and so did other parts of the school to watch.

I enjoyed swimming and learnt fast and became quite competent. I have no memory of serious anxieties during any swimming, lessons or those gala's with the spectators lined up either side of the pool watching us, despite wearing next to nothing apart from those trunks, maybe some goggles and the wet of the water over me.

I don't even remember feeling there was anything to be concerned with when I first took to the pool aged 10 in the primary either. It seemed to come easily and I looked forward to it.

But here is the big 'BUT'.

Arrival at seniors the style of regular PE changed dramatically, a cultural change of attitude you could say. Seniors PE, which started close to my 12th birthday, meant stripped to the waist in that school's own sports gym. It was a very minimal PE kit to bring for sports gym consisting of dark coloured shorts and a towel, that was effectively it.

For all I've said about swimming and enjoying it, I was no fan of doing sports gym PE at school without any top whatsoever and nothing on my feet. I did this in PE once a week from 12 years old until very close to exams in my final compulsory year of education, something like 3 and a half years that would be.

I often felt cold in the gym. Can you imagine going into a school gym this week like that. The sports gym never seemed well heated. I actually remember people in that gym standing around shivering sometimes over some of the long cold winters of a few decades ago now when the kind of weather this week was considered par for the course and barely newsworthy. Sometimes because we could be on the cold side and not properly warmed up there would be frequent pulled or strained muscles. I had a few myself, often while I was feeling cold or not doing a proper warm up. I remember feeling like I'd strained every muscle in my body a couple of times, legs, arms and across the chest and it taking days to subside. Of course everybody was in the same boat as each other.

There is most definitely a different feel to doing swimming without much on and doing a traditional style PE lesson in a sports gym much the same. Liked one, wasn't fond of the other. Boys and girls did PE completely separate and there was never any interaction unlike with the swimming.

Another thing worthy of a mention. There are the schools like the seniors I was at that seem to adopt a policy on how to conduct things and have a blanket rule. In my case seniors made it compulsory for us to do PE like I've explained and we all did it that way, not bringing any kind of tops to sports gym PE lessons. Then there are other schools which seem to have a varied attitude to this where the choice is left alone to teacher autonomy in any given lesson on what to put on or leave off. Which is better? A school which dictates policy to that kind of detail or one that leaves it to any given PE teacher?

Comparing the then and now of school PE I'm undecided which is best. There are pluses and minuses for both.

To answer Christian - it depends on how self confident you are/were. Now we have this loathsome habit (or some people have) of having all over body tattoos there are men who love to bare all to show them off, and will take to shorts and bare tops (in snowy London I saw a man in shorts on Monday this week), but a lot of boys and girls are not confident and that is why they dread it. It doesn't help when you get "banter" from other boys and sometimes teachers as well (though I doubt the latter would be allowed to join in these days). Our Mr ---- enjoyed joining in the banter, especially when he knew he was embarrassing the recipient.

In reply to John, it is rather ironic isn't it, that at the age of 13/14 or so, when as you say so many of us are particularly self conscious, it was the one point in life when we were introduced to, and had to undergo those rituals associated with school PE lessons - the open communal showers, the group nudity, the no shirts rules of the gyms, all deemed as a compulsory requirement at so many of our schools. A one size fits all attitude which took no individuality into consideration about each of ourselves and considered us all as identikit pupils who should not really hold an opinion.

I do think that even people who appear on the surface to be quite confident within themselves can still be consumed with self doubt and self consciousness at times. In my own work I will project a lot more confidence than I sometimes actually feel.

Actually I think it's rather healthy that so many adults have now chosen to come out and say, hey, yes I did have an opinion and although I never said it when I was in school, it doesn't matter how many years have gone by I am going to finally say a few words about what I thought and felt right now.

For those on here who talk of their cross country running, I saw a middle aged man going for a run in my neighbourhood this afternoon just before the sun went down, he must have been a hardy fellow, he looked like a grown man in a school kit to me, in white shorts and a vest, it was so cold, below freezing point by a couple of degrees and his legs were red and so were his arms, presumably from the chill air. I was instantly reminded of one or two posts on here when I saw him. I bet not many of the fans of cross country runs in all weathers from school would be prepared now to go for a run like that gentleman, never mind a bare chested one in this weather. Any takers?

Sam,
I can understand why you found it challenging at the age of 14 as that’s the age when many teenagers start to feel self conscious as their bodies are changing rapidly. It was easy for me going to Senior School and doing indoor PE barechested as that was what I’d been used to at Junior School. It would definitely have been easier for you if your Senior School had had a strict shorts only policy for lads indoor PE.

Tim Newton: I guess it was what turned the individual teacher on, but I agree with you entirely that it should be a matter of choice. I daresay a few boys actually enjoyed the attention, and there was some sort of unspoken agreement, but the vast majority of boys around that age are generally self-conscious and it seemed like a sort of punishment to be inspected in that way. I am very glad that modern lads do not have to undergo that sort of humiliation. I can only say to all those posters who think it natural or even desirable that boys are treated like cattle. I wonder how they would feel if, for example, they go to their local swimming pool, and somebody was staring intently while they get undressed and watching them throughout their shower, every time they attended. Would they regard THAT as normal behaviour, or would they complain?. If it were a member of the swimming pool staff, I think he would soon get the sack. I think a boy of say, 14 is just as entitled to privacy as a man of 40.

Genuine question.

Can someone explain this sickening dread that seems to come over people such as Jake on here and which some others have written in the past just for discarding a top and showing off your exposed chest for an hour because you're told to?

I can't relate to this but would like to understand why it creates such strong feelings.

I'd like to remind you Tim that girls also got bundled into the communal showers, as you put it, and I don't think you'll find quite so many girls as boys who found it an okay thing to do. I think most of the ex schoolgirls have vented about their school shower experience on Mumsnet and virtually none that I've ever read there or elsewhere have a good word to say about the way it happened in school. Indeed some have taken their own experience and become over protective of their own sons if they had them with fears they might face the same, even in this day and age. One of the most extreme examples I read on Mumsnet had a woman writing some five or six years ago saying 'over my dead body will I allow my son to have a communal shower at school'. But I think most boys can look after themselves and genuinely acting on that comment would just end up very counter productive, especially if any of these sons had a more tolerant easy going view of them.

My school still did the communal showers for girls (and boys) when I left in 1998 at the age of 18, but I hadn't used them since not long after I was 15.

To answer William's question about how those of us who disliked being bare-chested for PE felt about swimming... as you said, the difference was about not every boy being treated the same way. At least, that was how I saw it at the time. It seemed normal that, to go swimming, you took your shirt off and wore just trunks or shorts,  that's what I'd been used to growing up and I'd never seen another boy do any differently.
Playing football, or basketball, or just running or doing gym exercises bare-chested... that were things I hadn't been used to until I was 14 and my new PE teacher suddenly announced it would be 'vests and skins' and ordered several boys, myself included, to take off our PE vests. I had a sense of dread and panic as it dawned on me I'd have to do the entire lesson with the top half of my body exposed - compounded by the fact half of the class were still in full kit. I'm sure that increased my sense of self consciousness, wondering why it wasn't the same for everyone. Of course I had no choice but to get used to doing PE as a skin on a regular basis, but it took a while.
Yes, logically there wasn't much difference to a swimming lesson but it felt very different at the time, running around the gym bare-chested. Maybe it would also have helped to start doing shirts and skins at a younger age than 14? Or if the school had just made it a blanket rule that the PE kit for boys was shorts only?
That way we'd all have got used to it sooner and, as I said, it all depends what seems familiar and normal to you at that age.

Completely different school showers experience to you Alan.

When we boys were aged 12 and 13 our PE teachers and other hangers on were always all over us in the changing rooms and looking us all over coming and going in our total complete nakedness, as mandated by these same people of course. One even grabbed my arm in one lesson coming from the shower and made me listen to him while I basically had to drip dry in front of him. Then when we got to 14 and 15 it all became a lot less, the occasional shower after PE began to get left out and there seemed less general interest to the level we'd had at 12 and 13. We had a bit more confidence at those later ages too and most of us were finally developed through the change.

When you think about it, what other job is there in the entire world that lawfully allowed grown adults to order children into full on nudity at their command and expect total compliance, other than maybe if you were in some children's home. And yet this was literally a national thing that no boy ever escaped until maybe the turn of the millennium. A kind of naked school conscription of sorts.

I wasn't bothered by any of it at the time too much in the latter part of the 70s and just into the 80s but it's almost impossible to not feel a bit different now and feel it was weird how so many boys used to be bundled together naked into communal showers, many against their wishes if truth be told.

Quite a lot of these school showers we had were completely unnecessary.

Not against showering after sports, even in school, but am very much pro-choice in this matter.

With reference to the post by William 12/12 just like him at my school tops were not worn by for PE. This was an all boys school circa 1961/66 and as as he and other people have commented males do not wear tops when swimming and that does not seem a problem.
I also pick up the point made by Marcus 9/12 and reiterated by William,
in our pe lessons we had to to help each other with various exercises and there was physical contact. I remember doing handstands when we had to hold each other's legs. It felt a bit embarrassing upside down with no pants under the shorts but we knew that in a moment the roles would be reversed. The other exercise we had to do was sit on the floor face to face with feet touching and then moving backwards and forwards in a rowing motion. And again because we wore nothing under our shorts both of us were "exposing" parts of our anatomy.
It was just part of the lesson and no one thought anything of it.
I do not know if it is relevant, but most of us were in the same Scout troop and when we went camping there was up to 6 of us in one tent and when getting changed or undressed for bed there was very little room and privacy was non existent. That was life.

To Dave: To put in bluntly, our PE teacher never used to enter the shower area when we were 11 or 12 - he would just bark his orders from beyond the area, but when we got to 13/14 until we left as young men you couldn't keep him out of the shower room, and he clearly enjoyed himself more than we did under lukewarm water. Most of the lads noticed it and commented on it. Near nudity in the gym and the shower afterwards all seemed to be of a piece. Let us stop pretending that all teachers were like Mr. Chips or those benevolent old gentleman that litter school literature. There were some very dubious characters. These were long before the days when anyone, let alone teachers, were applauded for being "out and proud".

I'm commpletelely agree with Jaon 11th December 2022 at 18:31 Sorry.

I'm completely agree with James cause I don't see any attack towards privacy having boys remove their shirts for intense physical exercises. If anyone says shirtless PE is an attack toward privacy thinking by their logic every swimming lesson sre. Boys are shirtless for swimming too and no one has a word about privacy. What's the difference? I think the most of overrecactions comes from adults not from the boys themselves who had/has to do it.

Many people, like Jake, have said how much they disliked topless PE. At the grammar school I attended there were no skins v vests. No-one ever wore a vest for gym. I was shy and skinny but it did not trouble me. Is that becasue we were all treated the same? My question for all the people like Jake is: how did you cope with swimming? If you didn't mind swimming topless, was it because you were all treated the same, or did you hate swimming too?

Marcus made an interesting point that few have mentioned among the hundreds of comments on vests and showers etc: the amount of physical contact in a gym lesson, usually between the boys. We were told to help each other with vaults, forward rolls etc, and for handstands we had to hold each other's legs. It felt a bit embarrassing upside down with no pants under the shorts but we knew that in a moment the roles would be reversed. Close physical contact was an integral part of gym.

God how I remember being at school (state comprehensive 1974-80) and getting the "skins" order. I was one of those schoolboy shirtless haters. Can still remember the strangest feeling of sickening dread that came over me when I was first confronted by this arse of a teacher with a beaming smirk across his face. It's not an exaggeration to say I felt light headed and almost faint. Yes, I know it sounds rather daft, don't judge me too harshly, just telling it as it was at the time. It was probably some kind of defence mechanism that hit on me. It's a very strong recollection. Light headedness and a somewhat churning gut with it. Quite a powerful reaction, a fear, even if that fear should be considered largely mis-placed. But nonetheless very real. I can't be alone in that kind of sensation can I.

There were some five or six male teachers who took my own PE over time. Four of the six went for shirtless PE quite a lot, and if you had two out of that four you knew it was no shirts for PE because they never allowed us to have them on in the gym hall. Two others were very different and were happy with our t-shirts, vest tops or whatever we came with to PE and could wear them.

One observation about the two teachers who allowed us to wear tops in PE was that they genuinely seemed to be the best and all round nicer pair we used to have in PE, and I'm not saying that simply because they let us wear tops in their lessons, I'd probably be saying it even if they'd been like the others and made us strip off up top. The two who always made us do PE without a top were the two least likeable. Whether it amounts to anything I don't know but it's just an observation of note for what it's worth.

Jason "to be honest", you probably didn't have a PE teacher like ours. When does privacy start to become an issue, in your view?, 18?, 21?, never?.

I am glad these days the feelings of younger people are taken into consideration.

Privacy gets a lot of mentions on here surrounding PE lessons. But I don't think privacy should come into it. I don't think you can cite privacy as a concern just because a teacher told you that you had to take your shirts off and do his lessons barechested, and I don't think you can go on about privacy being invaded just because that very same teacher told you to take all your clothes off in the changing room and get into the showers. I find it a bit of a false narrative to be honest.

Great post Marcus. I felt like I was with you at your boarding school. :-)

If you were a long termer at a boarding school like myself in the early 70's then you had to kiss goodbye to your privacy from the first moment you arrived and said goodbye to your parents until term ended.

Actually I think I might have been luckier than many. I only shared a room with another four boys my age. It could have been a dormitory in some I'm sure.

PE was three times every week, up to an hour and a half. The school day went from 8.30am until 4.30pm. Bed was 9pm for the younger years, 10pm for the older, an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays. Up was 7am, or earlier, but mainly about 7am, every day, Saturdays included, Sunday was a lie in until 8am.

Privacy simply didn't exist. Every single day, weekdays and weekends, we had to get up and walk along the landing to the showers at more or less the same time as everyone else in our house and year group almost as soon as we got up. I remember the morning shower as being noisy and a bit chaotic, too many of us trying to do the same thing at the same time and the communal nudity of us coming and going. There wasn't much towel covering, just going about without, letting it all hang out. One or two house masters were always on call keeping an eye on everyone making sure we did what we needed to do.

As long as we were ready for breakfast at 7.45am we could be as long as we liked getting ready for the day ahead, showering, teeth brushing, toilet and all that. If you wanted to you could spend half an hour in the showers. Not sure anybody did that but I sometimes went well over ten minutes. The residential showers were not the same as the ones that got used when we did PE. Showering properly was compulsory in the mornings and after PE.

Those of us scheduled to have a morning PE session would find ourselves in the position of showering at about 7.15am and then by the end of a PE lesson having another one in another shower as soon as 10.15am only about three hours later. But any day we had a PE lesson meant taking two showers with your class in one day. If showers were your thing you were in heaven.

School also had some proper baths too which we could use with permission under certain set circumstances. If we were allowed to use an actual bath then we were encouraged to share it, two boys together, and also share the water once we got out if anyone else wanted it. It won't come as a surprise to know that rarely did I notice sharing of bath water like that. I was a bath type of person at home but at school I preferred to stand up and shower. It was always the cleverer boys who seemed to bag a bath.

I can't tell you what a luxury it felt to come home for the holidays and actually have a bathroom all to myself, with a locked door and to do exactly as I pleased. A real luxury to me, something so basic that most people would have taken for granted.

Our PE seemed top heavy with an awful lot of Rugby and cross country running for one half of the year, and then switched to a heavy emphasis on athletics in general. Some weeks we did two outside lessons and one in our gym or it could switch to two in the gym and just one outside. We we went outside in all weathers and all conditions except for any heavy settled snowfall which wasn't too often.

Outside we always wore tops except for brief periods over early summer. This contrasted with the gym where it was strictly no shirts, vests or anything else and PE was as many others have mentioned for themselves, a fully barechest lesson for all. Unlike what I've seen others on here state, many of my own PE teachers came to gym with us and dressed like us and wore no shirt either, even the older masters. Sometimes we did have some plimsolls but the vast majority of the time we went barefoot and would be told to be that way. I seem to remember that our PE masters kept their own plimsolls on.

Clearly my own PE masters did not feel this need to define themselves differently from the rest of us by means of wearing a shirt. In so many gym lessons we were encouraged to be quite tactile with each other, mostly boys on boys but there are memories such as the cold hands of a PE master grabbing around my waist as he lifted me onto a horse for example.

You had to get used to touching people and jumping onto their backs, linking various limbs or touching people's feet or having them standing on your shoulders or back or something like that.

I always considered it a mostly positive place which tended to knock any hang ups out of people quite quickly and the lack of any privacy on a daily basis simply had to be overcome sooner rather than later for your own sanity.

School also had a couple of old style matron type ladies who were always seen going around in what looked like white lab coats. These ladies gave us check ups in just our pants annually but it was soon done and over within minutes. I seemed to remember there was more talking and questions than actual looking at. Quite soon after I arrived as a boarder one of them came along our landing in the morning into our wash area bold as brass among us and collected sight of a number of our year unclothed entirely, although I never saw that happen again when a woman was able to enter an area like that and mingle amongst naked and semi dressed boys. although we were very young, just eleven and twelve.

It was a good all round education and a good physical education too but I would never send me own offspring away for weeks and months on end as a boarder. Like I said when I got home and could have my own space all over again, I really learnt to value my own privacy. Some people really take to the regimented lifestyle like that and many choose it in adulthood in the army or other service life. I was pleased to leave it behind when I finished school and moved back in full time with my parents when I was seventeen until I left home five years later.

I know in some countries boys always run cross country bare foot, and I knew there are arguments in its favour, but......

Aged 11, my first detention, turning up (nervous, told to do exactly as I was told etc etc), then seeing all the other boys ready for the run, JUST shorts on, nothing else, I was unconvinced it wasn't part of the punishment. One of my classmates said to me, you can't wear plimsolls, we have to have bare feet.

The course was mostly grass/forest tracks, but there was some tarmac at the start and end - not only was I freezing and wet, but my feet hurt as well. As my Dad said afterwards "you are being punished"

John - I wasn't too bothered to find we would be running barefoot but some of my classmates had a little difficulty at first. This didn't last long as they soon got used to it.
Barefoot running wasn't punishment - it was just common sense. At first we didn't understand but by about half way through the first term and after some heavy rain our route developed some very muddy stretches. Plimsolls, if we had worn them, would have become detached from feet and stopping to fish them out of the mud and put them back on would have been a nuisance. Similarly, the prospect of cleaning and drying our soaking wet, mud encrusted plimsolls would not have filled us with much joy. Muddy feet and legs are much easier to deal with.
My school, although a grammar school, did try to keep costs down for parents so a minimal p.e. kit would have been in keeping with that.

I find very interesting what Kevin said about state school in the 80ies and their rules on shirtless PE. This concurs with my experience. I went to a state comprehensive which had a very strict PE regime for boys, white shorts, bare feet and bare chest for all indoor activities with additionally plimsoles being allowed for outdoor activities such as cross-country, athletics, etc. There were never any exceptions form this rule, all boys were treated in the same harsh way, always shirtless, and our PE teachers did install a very disciplined environment.
When my little brother passed his 11+ and started attending the local grammar school, I vividly remember my mother complaining during dinner about all the additional washing she would have to do with his PE uniform (trainers, shorts, house-vest, T-shirt), rugby kit, etc and asked why he couldn’t just wear shorts like myself. I especially remember my dad’s answer who explained, that he was with the posh boys now and would be treated more gently as they didn’t need to be put line the same way as this lad (pointing to me) and his mates.
His remark left a big impression on me as they way he said it was quite ambiguous which was his way of showing his disapproval of (in his eyes) un-manly educational practices for his boys. On other hand it made be aware of the discipline that was instilled through our minimal PE Kit, which left us always stripped to the waist whereas our teachers never took their tops of. This is certainly one reason why state school might have been keener on a shirtless PE kit the other being quite simply economic as a lot of my classmates’ families could not have afforded the kind of PE uniform my brother got to wear.

The school had an excellent reputation, so my parents were more than happy when I got a place. It also had a reputation for being very strict !

It was common to see boys at the school out running (both during the day and after school). Not that I ever thought about it, but they were all stripped to the waist and sometimes the whole group had bare feet as a well.

The first week, we had cross country, and I soon discovered that everyone had to run shirtless, so we turned out in just shorts and plimsolls. Before long boys were given detentions, these involved a gym session and run - then I found out why the groups of boys were out running with bare feet - it was minimal kit for a detention run, meaning only shorts, both striped to the waist and bare feet. The price of a "good" school !

Like Walkerson says, don't think there seems like much difference between what type of school anyone went to, grammars, secondaries, comprehensives, private or public etc. Like I said in my previous entry on here, my secondary remit was for going shirtless rather a lot, including cross country runs time after time. Indeed, is it not possible that it is the state school secondaries that went bigger on the concept of physical education being done wherever possible without requiring any top.

I don't know whether there are any genuine health benefits from running or doing any other form of PE without a top but I do remember back when the London Marathon was first run in the early 1980's and seeing a presenter on Blue Peter running the race, Peter Duncan I think it was, and on taking advice on running long distance he was shown being given a couple of plasters to cover his nipples as he ran so he didn't chafe them rubbing against his top. I remember finding this very funny at the time and wondering how that was even possible.

But I rather doubt my own PE guys who took us out for cross country in our bare chests were doing it out of concern that we might finish up back in the changing room with a load of sore chafed nipples if we were to stick any kind of top on.

One thing I felt was that the occasional PE teacher would enjoy seeing us very cold just so it would make us put some more welly into our lesson in order to warm up. I do think there is something in this. On very fresh days when we would go out running barechested I feel I would try to run faster in order to warm up better.

I know damned well that I ran quite a few school cross countries back in the 80's in weather comparable to this weeks and that it might have seemed ridiculous but after a few minutes you warm up and that in turn makes the conditions seem less cold on you. Well it did that for me anyway.



"Runners nipple" does seem to be genuine though.

Stuart, definitely not just grammar school "standards" My local high school insisted we also did cross country stripped to the waist. Such fun...

Bernard raised the point about different school having different kit rules.

Certainly my grammar school had a shorts only rule in the gym, and a shirtless rule for cross country. The secondary modern school in the same town allowed shirts etc. In fact we were reasonably close together, so boys from my school would be out running in winter stripped to just PE shorts, while their boys would be in rugby kit.

Maybe it was grammar school "standards" ?

To answer David, I think it fair to say that, thanks to the idea that men are "so brave" for "coming out, think Tom Daley and that Welsh rugby player, who was also brave enough not to tell his partner he was sadly HIV positive, there are certain types of gay men that think that gives them carte-blanche to behave as they like (think LadyBoy Eddie Izzard and his false breasts and clown make-up actually pretending to be a woman, and using women's lavatories - despite many women objecting to him so doing - to try to become an MP. Sense prevailed on Sunday and he was rejected. This is today but think back 30/40 years before Elton John became such a hero to the "Sun newspaper", and these flamboyant men had to be much more guarded,and so their interests had to be disguised. I can give an actual example. I used to work with a man in his 50s, who had been a promising footballer, for whatever reason he didn't go into teaching, but spent much of his spare time training a local under 16s team, and despite many appeals from the teams managers always refused to take on the adult team. You have to wonder why, especially when he lived at home with his mum and just hadn't found the right girl yet. Yes, I do think a minority - and it WAS a minority, of sporty gay men did deliberately go into teaching for reasons that had little to do with sport. Our PE teacher most certainly did. It does have something to do with power and domination as well- one lad I was friends with confirmed his behaviour - but only after we had left school, and he felt safe to do so, having been told several times during the later school years that "it is me [the teacher] they will believe not you".

I have always believed teachers of all subjects should have to undergo a psychiatric examination, rather than a medical one.

Bernard,
I like you did X Country shirtless as that was the school policy but we were allowed to wear training shoes. Not being allowed to wear a shirt when you get hot and sweaty on a run is no big deal but I wouldn’t have enjoyed being made to run barefoot.

I must admit I am surprised, disappointed as well, perhaps that so many people want to attack individual p.e. teachers for the lack of clothing their classes were allowed to wear.
At my grammar school all p.e. classes were conducted with the boys in exactly the same kits which did not include shirts or shoes. This was nothing to do with any particular teacher but was school policy. There were about 5 teachers involved in p.e. and games and they all treated us the same.
I had a friend in the local secondary modern school - in the first year they could choose if they wanted to wear shirts or shoes for cross country - quite a few chose not to wear one or the other with some wearing neither. In the second year that changed and all the boys were sent out exactly the same as us - no shirts or shoes. This was a new rule for the whole school - not any particular teacher. It might have even come from the local authority.
I doubt if many teachers were trying to prove a point about shirtless p.e. - it was just the way things were in those days.