Burnley Grammar School

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.

The link to that article;

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a73f16e8-023c-11ee-b730-2607a18701aa?shareToken=dcad56f883324f638a31f0f4e73294ac

Whilst I was in senior comprehensive school going to the gymnasium for PE included our entire class walking along from the changing room in our compulsory bare chests requirement of the time through the school walkways. We didn't take any tops along to gym at all with us from the age of twelve onwards. We could wear our plimsolls but once at the gym, a completely separate building set apart from the main school area, they often came off and were set aside also. Inside the gym we would then have to start a furious run from one side to the other, back and forth again until told to stop in order to warm up lasting a couple of minutes maximum, then wave our arms about for a further minute or so. This alone used to knacker some of us before we'd got stuck into anything else. I could never quite get the hang of jumping over a horse very well and clearing it. I couldn't even jump over a 4ft wooden gate very easily recently that I'd locked myself out of. All about the technique that I couldn't master.

Now whilst I had no complaints about doing the gym in a manner you'd expect to do so I did find going outside for PE without my top on to be less agreeable on many occasions. Other men here speak in particular of regular cross country running done without any top. This was also a common experience for me no matter which teacher took us out, they all did it at some point with us this way. The rationale for this, unlike gym itself, is less easy to explain when I found myself outside getting somewhat chilled out in the windswept open on days that didn't remotely seem to lend themselves to running outside with bare chests. Cross country was not a summer PE activity and only took place in autumn, winter and the first half of spring.

We had a quite nice small woodland forest/spinney area about a five minute drive away from school and if the school minibus was free to use we had a PE teacher who liked to get us into it and do the short hop there, park up and let us out to run there. The supreme irony of this was not lost on us because we could have easily just run to this place, around it and then back again but I think the reason was more about saving the teachers legs than our own. Sometimes we were left to run back towards school and our PE teacher drove off! The minibus was an old wreck, they should have been ashamed to have our school name plastered along both sides of it, it wouldn't start once and we ended up having to push start it to get going again. All part of PE exercise I guess.

I saw the comment from Tony McMahon about being herded like sheep into communal showers at school. That's right! I'm convinced that one or two of them used to think throwing a bunch of teenage boys naked into the showers was one of the most vital parts of their job!

Dukesberry School 1979-84.

Picking up on the points by both Lee and Shane here, kids actually like consistency and to have some certainty and what to expect. I think someone here already said they didn't like being unsure what they had to wear, what was your opinion Shane, did that lottery with your teachers cause you any problems?

I want to share this great piece from today's Times which I wholeheartedly agree with. You 70s (and 60s/80s/90s) schoolboys (and girls) were definitely fitter than your equivalents today.

This excellent article below;


WE SLURPED UP LOADS MORE SUGAR AND SALT IN THE SEVENTIES. SO WHY ARE WE FATTER NOW?
By Rod Liddle.
Sunday June 04 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times.

Every once in a while I get nostalgic for the 1970s and attempt to slake that longing by buying some food product that I greatly enjoyed back in the day and that is still available now. Heinz tomato soup, for example, or spaghetti hoops — or even Alpen, which hit the British supermarkets in 1971 and had us all convinced it was both healthy and slightly more chic than Coco Pops.

The exercise always ends in grave disappointment, because the products are not the same now as they were then. At first I thought it was my jaded, smoke-wrecked tastebuds that made the tomato soup taste anodyne. But no. It was Tony Blair.

Shortly after invading Iraq, the Labour government started bullying the food manufacturers to reduce the salt and sugar content in their products, and Heinz responded by reducing the salt and sugar in its tomato soup. Everyone else followed suit, and that’s why any attempt to recapture those better times is doomed. You are not allowed to experience the past again: it is both against the laws of physics and contrary to the diktat of the lefties who wish to abolish our history, or rewrite it so it is free of colonialism, white people and salt. Everything must succumb to the tyranny of now.

Perhaps this is why nobody eats that stuff any more. Not because it didn’t taste good then, but because it has been neutered. A new survey by British Lion Eggs has revealed that while everybody in the country adores eggs, of course, the appetite for those staples of 1970s teatimes is rapidly dwindling. According to the survey, 27 per cent of kids have never experienced Heinz tomato soup, for example, and only slightly fewer have been deprived of the joys of spaghetti hoops — which, for younger readers, consisted of gooey tori of faux pasta swimming in a magnificently sugary red broth and tasted great on toast. My suspicion is that if Heinz et al were to tell the government and all those gobby campaign groups — Action on Salt, Neasden Wimmin Against Men and Sugar, etc — to get stuffed and upped the sugar and salt back to the old levels, more people might eat their products. I think that the salt levels also did for my own favourite Seventies evening treat, Toast Toppers — which consisted entirely of salt embedded in a kind of greyish, lumpen mucus, like the expectoration of a very ill tramp, and was unspeakably delicious.

The kids today get “healthier” alternatives, especially avocado, which is even more environmentally damaging than eating polar bear steaks. Quite how healthy those alternatives really are is obviously a moot point, but the mugs think they are doing the right thing so one is tempted to let them get on with it.

What is beyond doubt is that the stuff we ate for tea — and that’s what I called it back then, even if I call it dinner now and for a brief while, when I was working at the BBC, “supper” (for which God forgive me) — was fabulously unhealthy. The 1970s was the first proper decade of convenience food, and so we gorged on deep-frozen pizzas whose bases seemed to be made from the foam that filled Toyota car seats, baked beans, fish fingers, Findus “crispy” pancakes and boil-in-the-bag cod in a prawn sauce so vibrantly pink it seemed to be suggesting that it wished to come out. Nobody could call 1970s food healthy. We shovelled the salt’n’sugar down inside us, day after day, borne aloft on this new idea that food shouldn’t take ages to prepare and that women could go to work and enjoy self-actualisation rather than be tied to the four-ring electric cooker preparing something that was actually nutritious.

And the point of this maudlin lament is the very obvious one. We were much, much healthier then. Since the 1970s diabetes, in tandem with its great friend morbid obesity, has increased enormously, so that it now constitutes a grave problem not just for those who suffer from it but for the economy as a whole. Type 2 diabetes more than doubled in British men between the 1970s and the 1990s and has since increased its grip on the population. The proportion of us who are overweight or obese has risen from 15 per cent in 1970 to a remarkable 64 per cent today. Some of those campaigners insisted, for a while, that our present obesity and diabetes rates are a consequence of our “learned eating behaviour” from the 1970s, but they cannot do that now. Not more than 50 years later.

The answer, I suspect, is that we ate less of everything in the 1970s and took more exercise. This is just a guess. Just as it is a guess that cramming avocados down your throat rather than spaghetti hoops will not reduce the obesity or diabetes rates one bit.

Shane, that wasn't a problem for us. Bare chests always indoors and outdoors vests were preferred over a shirt (my mum chose not to buy a PE shirt saying that they'd have us out in vests instead and she was right). A lot of the time the teachers would pick a team of skins so half the class were stripped off for whatever the activity was and everyone had vests off for cross country running. You could say our teachers were absolutely consistent!

What I did in early 1990's PE seemed to depend entirely on who I got for the lesson. The same early afternoon PE lesson in the school gym with one teacher might mean we did it in full PE kit of trainers, socks, white shorts and a vest or a t-shirt but the next week if we got another teacher we would be in the gym completely barechested. It seemed to be quite a lottery, rather proving that it was not really anything to do with school rules as such but more like teacher rules alone. Another teacher I had was always insistent that we do gym barefooted in his class while another wanted trainers. The only thing that all teachers acted the same about was that we all must shower properly after PE - the strictest school rule of them all, other than being punctual.

That phrase takes me back to primary school in the early to mid 1980's with a class teacher I had called Mr Wharton who threw that phrase around at us a lot, every school trip we went on, and any after school club etc. He used it when we went swimming too. The primary made us all shower (without trunks on) after we came out the pool and I remember telling him my mum didn't think I needed to do that after swimming or needed to, a white lie of mine as she'd not said that, but Mr Wharton used his loco parentis line at me and explained the meaning and then told me to get on with it. I didn't argue after the explanation. I remember it very well and him asking me if I now understood and said yes. He then said yes what, I said yes Sir. So if mum had been genuine he'd have by definition overruled her opinion as a parent I suppose. The primary I was at 1982-86 used showers in the top two years after PE and I'm sure he used the loco parentis line around that issue too when there were a few school showers rebels at that tender age who didn't want to go into them. I never heard any other school teachers use the term verbally to any of us to ram home their authority over us although I think the word was written in some school trip letters home that I remember seeing on the return slip parents had to sign and we'd take back.

In the end you'd think parents have the final say about their own children in school and their view would be sovereign but if you take school lunch, a friend of mine not long ago had his children's lunchbox "assessed" and was told certain items would be confiscated if he brought them for lunch, despite the food all being balanced and healthy he packs for the child. An oat bar was deemed a banned item for instance. Quite outrageous. It's none of their business.

As far as I know it still does Tim. I left teaching in 2015.

If I might answer that question Tim, that isn't really a term that I've heard bandied about nowadays myself, although my career is less than ten years old anyway, but the principles of that term most certainly do apply, so yes absolutely.

I also agree with the words Graham wrote.

@ Graham Butterfield

Thanks for your comments. Does 'in loco parentis' still apply?

TimH quote - 'When one talks about PE teachers in showers - what about responsibility for the boys health? A boy with strange bruises - a victim of family abuse?'


A very good point here that I had intended to make on a much earlier post I placed but this gives me the opportunity to raise it now.

School showering without any clothing served a very good secondary purpose like Tim mentions and he's quite right, it gave us chances to observe anything unusual that we might see, such as bruising, cuts, grazes, burns or anything else that might not be accidental. Because not all youngsters come from good homes it's worth remembering. Now everyone has bumps and bruises from time to time and youngsters certainly do. They even happen in PE but if someone was seen to have frequent signs of bruising or cuts then that would be something to ask questions about. I often asked questions about how some had come to have bruises and scratches on them having seen them in the changing room, and the showers obviously gives a complete view of people. In my case nothing to report and all was satisfactory and explained. It was always something done with extreme caution and discretion if there were doubts that might need a bit more following up. There was a procedure to go through if there were any suspicions which was fairly similar in all the schools I worked at right up until less than ten years ago.

The last thing you wanted to do was accuse innocent parents of any physical wrongdoing.

I do remember at one school I worked at in around about 1993 where a boy aged I think about fourteen arrived at school one morning with two black eyes and other facial bruising and it transpired he'd been getting beaten up by his father for some unknown reason a number of times. His situation did not need a shower to discover in PE as the bruising was self evident all over his face the moment he came into school, he could not hide it. I think he was taken aside to the medical room and it was discovered he had further bruising elsewhere. It was a topic of discussion among many staff actually. I don't know the outcome or how that resolved but remember the father of this person from parents evenings.

Another time I remember a boy with a large bruise all down the back of one leg and he told me it had happened in an earlier PE lesson with another teacher. Other youngsters said this was true but I doubted it and so made a point of double checking the story out and it matched up and was straightforward and explained fine.

I would never stand in a changing room, look at a boy with a bruise anywhere on his body and ignore it. I'd ask every time. The same for a noticeable cut or graze.

There was one other problematic area with this - school based physical bullying by other pupils. Even the best schools have pockets of this. I once discovered the bruising on the legs of a boy had been caused by someone else in his class during a lunch hour. The culprit was dealt with swiftly and very seriously indeed. That was discovered in the school changing room while the boy changed for PE, his assailant actually bragged about it in front of others. Not nice but very unusual in my experience over 40 years.

Thankyou Tim for reminding me and giving me a good opportunity to make this point. The school shower has had a bad image problem over the years that is not really all that fair.

Replying to Mikes posting on 29/05/23 - yes - I agree - we are all individuals, in our own 'time bubbles' and can really only comment on our own experiences. I attended a Boys Technical Grammar School in a not overly large city in the East Midlands from 1960 to 1967. I honestly can't remember things like enforced cold showers or shouting and sarcasm from PE teachers (although with hindsight the classes might have been better organised). Were there any sadists amongst the teachers? I don't think so - some were certainly stricter than others, but not what I would describe as sadistic. (There undoubtedly were some sadists out there, but then there were also bullies amongst the boys).

Thinking back and trying to look at things on a broad perspective, its easy to look at school as individual classes which it wasn't. In the 60s managerial staff from the foundries in town would be looking for likely lads to offer jobs or apprenticeships to - skills in technical drawing or metalwork, for example (The fact that the foundries would be closing down within ten years or so wasn't thought about). Similarly, mention has been made of boys with football skills - the club scouts would be out talking to PE teachers to see who might be suitable. When one talks about PE teachers in showers - what about responsibility for the boys health? A boy with strange bruises - a victim of family abuse?
Its all a broad field.

1976 - a good year? Mmmm ... my first car - an Austin 1300. Doing a job I enjoyed, on a 'fair' salary. 1976 - a hot summer - trips to Air Shows & railtours. Camping in the Lake District. Parents both in good health, although they were in their mid-60s. Yes - those were pretty good years.

Yet another seventies senior school attendee here - started Sept 1975, left June 1979, the gym horror show years as I think of them.

Looking over your comments Tony I well remember the aggression of one teacher in particular but never encountered any foul language in school from any of them at all. That seemed to be a line that was never ever crossed. Nobody much talks about teachers of PE using bad language so it plainly wasn't something very common at any point in time.

You asked the question why was physical education so bad back then. There was a month at school when three people fractured or broke their arms in one man's gym class at my school and nothing happened. I was in his class and he was quite prepared to make unconfident boys climb frames and ropes higher than they were happy to do, or jump from apparatus onto hard floors rather than mats from quite a height. I hated heights. Injury was just brushed casually off.

I myself remember intense PE classes where we were totally exhausted and breathless and still expected to do more and more and if we couldn't manage it received highly sarcastic comments bordering on insults.

Many of the men on here talk of shirtless physical education. Yes, again here that's the way much of it got done at school with me between the age of 12 and 15 in particular. Boys at those ages aren't meant to feel any fear about doing so but it was always obvious to me that lots just didn't feel they wanted the PE teacher making them take their tops fully off in school PE and the size and shape of anyone's body didn't seem to have much to do with it. My top was always off quite quickly when I got changed and I took to shirtless PE quite well but the boy who used to be next to me was a timid and quiet well behaved fellow who you just looked at and knew the whole PE thing was an absolute uncomfortable endurance for from beginning to end.

The fixation with gym apparatus is well made. I hated being in the actual gym yet liked going outside and being part of team games. The two different lessons made a huge difference to me.

My views match that post written by Tony McMahon two days ago and it will resonate strongly with the majority of regular average 1970s schoolboys - and possibly the majority from other nearby decades surrounding the 70s too. I'm an early 80s secondary schoolkid and boy does that spell out everything about PE that I was put through.

Answering Tony and Jet - I don't think it was an act, there were really some very vicious men (and I suppose women, though we had none) teaching who were really unsuited for the profession - if these days there are too many sociologists and bleeding heart liberals, back then there were too many who saw the job as an extension of a police, army or prison officer role. They didn't have to undergo "anger management " classes, because they were allowed to get away with bad behaviour, usually with the connivence of a weak head teacher, who just wanted a quiet easy life. Certainly we had two teachers, one the PE master and the other a science/TD master who were, I am sure insane - certainly the science master was off the latch. I suppose they would be kind and call him neurotic these days.

The problem was a lot of these teachers took their 1940/50s attitudes into the 70s and 80s and never adapted. They would just be unable to cope in the world of 2023, certainly in the classroom, and as they now often have to cope with adults of 17/18 that is just as well.