Burnley Grammar School

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.

The question asked about the 1970's teachers is something hard to know isn't it. We are all only at school in our own little time bubbles and so can only know what we ourselves did at the time we did it and not another time.

There was an article once that said 1976 was the best year in the UK to be alive. I suppose that depends what age you were. Only last week another person on the news said that the country now had the feel of run down Britain in 1977-78. So very conflicting views of more or less the same time in this country.

Great piece by Tony, speaking the language of my own time in a comprehensive school from 1971 to 1976. Was there something uniquely different about 70s teachers of PE then. There was plenty of uncalled for aggression at the time and I lost count of the amount of clouts around the head I got from a specific teacher at the time.

Tanya's comment posted on 26th May is very silly.

Comment by: Geoff on 27th May 2023 at 19:34
Surely barechested physical education is a completely harmless activity.


It is as far as I'm concerned. But some people clearly gained a huge level of anxiety over it which to me is a great shame.

I wrote the following on my blog which may be of interest to readers. There is also plenty of other good reading available to check out. More than happy to receive some feedback either through History World or the blog, link below;

https://the70s80s90s.com/2021/05/16/school-gym-1970s/

On a Facebook page for my old school, somebody posted a picture of one side of the old school gym. The wall covered in wooden climbing bars with ropes dangling down that could slide out on pulleys across the gym. I was transported back to P.E. lessons in the 1970s and I’m sure like many of you, there are very mixed memories of those days.

What was it with P.E. teachers in the 70s? The ability to maintain that level of sadistic aggression must have taken incredible effort. About ten years ago, I told my millennial gym trainer what a P.E. teacher, from the Welsh valleys, screamed at me after my javelin throwing on the school field had been below par: “McMahon you s—–c, if you had to hunt for your food, you’d f——g starve!”

My trainer was about twenty years younger than me. And he was so taken by this that he used to repeat this appalling insult when I reached my limit on the bench press. For him, it was a hilarious eye opener on the 1970s school gym. For me, it was like a voice from the deepest reaches of hell.

Why was physical education made so awful back then?

Admit it, fellow baby boomer, you shudder occasionally to remember P.E. classes. There was the old-style trampet set at an angle off which we had to launch ourselves over a horsebox, arms outstretched, to hopefully be caught by the P.E. teacher. The murder-ball-style games played with a large, unevenly-shaped, leathery sphere known for some reason as the medicine ball. Why it was called that I have no idea. It was more likely to cause injury than cure you of anything.

Then there was the 1970s gym obsession with gymnastics. Because God knows, we all had an inner Olga Korbut struggling to break out. For younger readers, Korbut was a Soviet gymnast who wowed the world with her 1972 Olympics performance. We poor school kids were then expected to emulate this and failure to do so would result in a severe tongue lashing or worse from our P.E. overlords.

If, for whatever reason, you ‘forgot’ your gym kit in an attempt to avoid 40 minutes of gymnastic hell, the changing room had a box full of mysteriously waylaid kit – completely filthy – that you were forced to wear. We called these disgusting items the “VD shorts” – VD being the acronym for STDs back then (venereal disease). Nobody knew the provenance of the discarded shorts and tops nor why their owners had never claimed them back. They just sat there, festering in the corner.

Then we were herded like sheep into the showers. At one of my secondary schools – I went to two – this area was a communal room. Overhead was a row of nozzles spouting boiling or freezing water – never anything in between. The gym teacher would strip off and join us…..yeah, about that. Mid-shower, he’d turn round to us eleven-year-olds barking: “Pass the buttermilk soap!” Small bars of soap that dissolved at a rapid rate.

On one occasion we’d had to abandon a rugby match because it was raining so hard. Well, the sadist-in-chief made us play for what seemed like an eternity until two of my fellow pupils collapsed deliriously on to the swampy pitch and started chucking mud at each other. Back in the changing room, after we’d spent a few minutes passing the buttermilk soap around in the showers, the same P.E. teacher produced a trainer and gave one of the kids an almighty “slippering”. This meant touching your toes while your arse was thwacked very hard.

Despite the best efforts of certain P.E teachers I kept up sporting activity throughout my life and I still weight train today. But really, that is DESPITE and not BECAUSE of my experience of the 1970s school gym. Sadly I have many friends who were permanently put off any kind of organised sporting activity for the rest of their lives. I rather hope today it’s a more humane regime for schools kids than it was for us in the 1970s school gym.

A lot of kids used to complain at school about doing algebra because it wasn't going to have any meaningful application in their adult lives after leaving school. Looking at the gym picture from Burnley School in 1959 accompanying this thread I was looking at the boy being held upside down on the horse by the PE teacher and wondering if that isn't the PE equivalent of algebra. Who needs to learn how to hold themselves upside down at arms length exactly? Where is doing that going to prove useful later on? Serious point.

It looks just about identical to PE lessons I was doing in school at that age in 1985. Shirtless most definitely. The gym was not a place I enjoyed at all. Nothing I did in it went any further. I swim, cycle and walk and that keeps me more than fit. Gym and PE played no part in any of that.

I'm one of those who thinks school PE put more people off keeping fit than encouraged them.

Chris G - Whenever I was out in summer with my friends I always wore my polo top or a tee-shirt with shorts and would never dream of going shirtless and was very particular how I dressed and looked even when very young. This contrasted with school, especially secondary but had a bit of it in primary too, where the general gym rule was bare chests whole class to fifth form in the academic year we reached sixteen. This wasn't really my thing at all. But just because me and the friends from school had seen each other in PE like (and full nude mandated showers of course - who can ever forget those) that didn't make me think okay then I'll do it in my own time out with them around our homes, street or park. Yet one of my friends at primary school when we were about 10 years old who lived near me would come outside a lot without putting on any top or any footwear and walked the streets in his very dirty bare feet and his bare chest which I found a bit embarrassing at the time because it made him look a bit uncared for compared to the others. Although it's now over 45 years since I've seen this boy from my own childhood the way he used to roam the street is the thing about him I still remember the most.

I also have a lot of strong recollections about PE and certain teachers of the subject. I had a lady at primary who would make the boys in class (1974) dress completely down to just the underpants to do movement and music based PE with girls in just knickers and top. Didn't like her much. That was eight and nine years old. A right old dragon she was.

My secondary year book for 1979 lays boys gym out quite clearly using the term - bare chests for boys. There is also - towel for showering. We wore our own dark shorts of choice. On the latter part I did give that quite a lot of thought at the time and thought it wasn't something that would happen very much and only if any of us got particularly unclean through a lot of sweat or dirt. But I was proven wrong when we did so every PE lesson without fail irrespective of actual genuine need in what to me seemed like a going through the motions rigmarole.

Not being the most confident boy in school I nonetheless took part in PE without complaint, discovering my strengths and weaknesses along the way. I lacked confidence in my appearance and was not keen on taking my top off for PE many times.

So you can imagine my thoughts when I was in my late twenties and working for a major sports retailer on the High Street in the late 90s who sent a collection of their management teams on one of those away day team building weekends together and I found myself suddenly hearing the words 'shirts off lads'. It was an instant throwback to school as we did a childish water and paint gun task and got messed up. I remember making a comment saying 'am I back at school here then' and putting my foot down to be met with the boss pulling rank telling me I was getting paid well to have fun and me backing down but quietly seething like mad over it all.

So my question to the men here who promote the whole shirtless at school ethos is would you have had the same feeling as an adult in the workplace if your actual boss had pulled the same ask on you that your former PE teacher had done.

Comment by: John on 27th May 2023 at 02:21
John, I'm with you on this one. Up Until I was about 12 or 13, we wore vests, gnerally our everyday underwear ones, for PE, except on a few rare ocasions when we were outside in summer, and the PE teacher suggested we might like to go topless, which did, virtually without exception. When topless PE was introduced in my third year at secondary school, there wasn;t a single word of protest, in my class anyway. We all took to it like the proverbial ducks - not surprising really given that most of us had spent a large part of the immediately previous summer holiday playing out minus any shirt or vest.

That's the thing with getting into trouble in school. If you had responsible parents the chances were you would be in a type of double jeopardy, getting punished by the school and then back at home by your parents for getting into trouble in the first place.

I remember a Saturday afternoon summer fete at our primary school where the headmaster ended up in the stocks and we were allowed to throw wet sponges at him and smack him straight in the face. He was a sport like that, no youngster either at the time, close to retirement. I thought it would be a good way to punish naughty kids in school like any bullies for example, because it would be humiliating and I think people fear humiliation far more than a short sharp pain. I think the Dennis cool down is driven more by a humiliation factor, and there's already an admittance that someone would prefer a short quick cane than a cold shower. The one thing I never wanted to feel at school, was humiliation in front of anyone.

Comment by: Dennis on 28th May 2023 at 01:23


I think, Dennis, this proved that the headmaster (who was probably as bad) knew the PE teacher was a sadist. The only consolation is that if a teacher/headteacher had the audacity to do this today, he/they would find themselves in court charged with assault. But they should never have been allowed to "get away with it"

Good evening David.

My memory remains quite strong. I was just thirteen years old at the time. I had no notice period when this happened to myself. It was straight along to the headmasters office, sent there by the teacher of the subject I was doing, English Lit I think, immediately he'd had enough of me. Then the headmaster spoke with me and I had to explain myself alone without the teacher who had sent me, who then appeared quite briefly to confirm everything and then disappeared. I was not given any options. The headmaster then made his decision and a PE teacher came along, was given instructions what to do with me and I then had to follow him and afterwards be returned to the headmasters office and from there back to class. Memory suggests the whole thing leaving class to returning to my seat was possibly a half hour, which I then had to catch up with too in my own time as that lesson was almost over by that time anyway. As I said, it was five minutes under the cold water, timed exactly by a stopwatch. Nothing on whatsoever, no pants, just naked, same as after real PE, my back to the teacher as I did so. What I remember of this is that the five minutes seemed never ending but also that after about a minute or two the water no longer seemed as cold and was easier to deal with, so anything more than a couple of minutes was rather diminishing returns as I didn't feel colder the longer I stood there which may seem surprising.

At the time I thought it was a really stupid thing to do. It didn't hurt after all and I have no clue why that was given to me rather than something more traditional out of the corporal punishment handbook. I knew boys who had taken some corporal punishment with the headmaster for other things. I believe others received the "cool down" but its very hard to know how much this kind of thing went on. The PE teacher blamed me for wasting his time when he did this with me, rather than the headmaster for summoning him to do it.

I was given a typed note to take home for my parents to read and sign and bring back but never showed it to them and signed it and gave it back myself. That never got found out and I got away with it. My parents would have certainly sided with the school in that situation so I saw no reason to show the note and quite possibly find myself grounded for a week if I did.

It's quite surprising that cold showers haven't been brought up much on here before that I know of. They must be a bit of a schooldays myth then and everyone must have had nice warm ones after PE.

If you were going to lay yourself open to getting a cool off style sanction from the head teacher like the one described from long ago best make sure you get mouthy with the teacher on a hot and humid sticky day then it won't feel like a punishment more like a pleasure. It seems an odd choice to do rather than just the normal strike of a belt or something.

Spot on John. I'm sure there were many who preferred it too. When we were indoors it was guaranteed we'd
sweat during lessons so bare chests were way more practical. We used to have to do bare chests outside regularly. I found exercising in the cold air or in the pouring rain definitely woke me up.

Dennis, cold showers were used as a punishment too. Our head gave the choice of then cane or shower, most chose showers. You had a day's notice and you wore your undies in the shower (we had to bring a spare pair of undies to change into) and was usually overseen by the teacher who'd sent you to the Head in the first place. I tried to remain as quiet as I could for as long as possible, some of my friends admitted they'd yelled out as soon as water hit them. Did you remain silent throughout and how? I remember gritting my teeth. Some teachers kept us in longer than they should've but that was the nature of the thing.

Surely barechested physical education is a completely harmless activity.

A few days ago someone asked on here what the actual issue really was about doing PE bare chested in school and there have been no direct answers to her yet on that one, but a couple of the comments since talk about not liking being told what to do, a common thing with many at school in all areas. I think this plays quite a big part in the whole bare chested PE thing where some boys rather hate that someone like the PE teacher can actually tell them they have to do something like fully remove their tops and compete in PE bare chested which for quite a few boys feels rather personal. Much the same principle would apply to school showers wouldn't it. There is no doubt a lot of us hated being told to do that.

Am I way off the mark or onto something with that?

Replying to Nathan Hind
I’m glad that you mentioned that there are many lads who prefer to exercise without the restrictions of any top. I was one of those lads who preferred to do PE stripped to the waist.
All too often this forum has seemed to be one sided with most comments relating to people posting who disliked shirtless PE. At my school the lads who disliked shirtless PE were in the minority, most lads preferred being bare chested.

We should be grateful a certain PS on TV wasn't in PE.

A previous forum writer mentioned being a natural rebel at school who didn't like being told what to do, even as an adult. You are not alone. I was at school a very long time ago now and was slightly rebellious from time to time by the benchmark of the late 50's & early 60's which covers my senior school education. That streak within me never quite left and it's not a bad thing as I see it within reason.

I remember being insolent to a teacher of mine, when insolence meant a lot less than it does today, simply answering back one time too many at a teacher, no more than that, and going to the headmasters office over it. I then found the headmaster summoning a PE teacher to take me to "cool off", and I was led out and followed him to the changing room where I was told to take everything I had on off for a cold shower punishment as I was kept a close eye upon. It was freezing. Teacher barked "get your head under the water and keep it there boy" as the natural inclination to move aside took over, but had to stand completely bolt upright still and not move a muscle for the five minutes the headmaster told him to keep me there. He had a stopwatch timing it too.

Most ironically I never received the traditional corporal punishment in school that was also a regular feature and hazard with a cane, belt, slipper or anything like that, just the one "cool down" for a bit too much answering back.

Back in 2007 we had friends in NZ who were making their plans to emigrate over here to the UK the following year and spoke with me many times before finally settling over here. We both had a couple of children of school age at the time. I distinctly remember a phone call when we were talking about the school they were arranging for the eldest son to join once they arrived here and they said they'd got all the details. One point that was picked up on and I got asked about was PE at my own children's school because they'd got details which stated the PE at the UK school they'd arranged would involved boys having a bare chest and our friends in NZ actually asked me if that was a big thing here in the UK and they were surprised by it. To be honest I had no idea myself and hadn't given it any thought and then realised how little I knew about my own two children at school doing PE, one was aged 15 at the time, the other was 12. Although neither had to turn up as a matter of course each time like that, in both cases I discovered they were frequently being asked to remove their PE tops and exercise in school PE shirtless. I wasn't bothered at all by that and neither of them mentioned it as a problem either, however our NZ friends did seem to find this something they were surprised about and the fact they mentioned it aloud must have meant they felt some sense of unhappiness about it. I think the school they talked to me about was one of those that used being shirtless for PE as an actual uniform on a permanent basis for all comers.

Thanks for your response,Nathan. That is reassuring.I would like to make the point that I was not making any personal critique of you. Sadly in our day some PE teachers thought they were a cross between an Army officer or a prison warder, especially at the sort of dump I attended. I always felt treating us all like that would be more likely to encourage criminality,since we were treated as guilty and not even the opportunity or thought of being innocent.

Josh talking a lot of sense.

I had one of those dismal kinds of PE teacher who liked making an example of someone and that example would be the removal of a top leaving a lone boy in the class shirtless to themselves. Happened to me for having a very faint old stain on a t-shirt of mine that I reused before a wash as mum had told me to do, so I wasn't allowed to wear it and had no other and went shirtless alone in PE that day. Now that is when you really feel exposed and vulnerable. That almost unseeable stain made no difference to anything. Now that's a PE teacher power trip Alan.

Women's footy, not a fan of it myself. Take a look at the 5-2 thrashing the women's adult world champions too from a bunch of 14 year old schoolboys. Hilarious.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4389760/USA-women-s-team-suffer-5-2-loss-FC-Dallas-U-15-boys.html


No way should girls be getting told to do football in school, I agree with you Melanie.

I think I'm quite approachable and pupils often have one-to-one contact about a variety of issues with me. What gets worn, or not in PE is rarely a discussion point. Anybody is free to say anything that troubles them at any point. Alone if they wish. The occasional bare chested PE has not cropped up with me ever. Showering has a couple of times with other colleagues, not with pupils but parents wanting reassurance.

Here is an example of one of the fitness test lessons today for year 10. We went outside and got those boys running as far as they could in 12 minutes around the school track. They were not running against each other but against the clock. Older people on here might remember doing a set course and then being timed how long they took to do that. This however makes the course distance variable for different abilities, but everyone has to run for 12 minutes, some slower than others obviously. The boys did this in trainers, shorts and vests. I've seen another teacher doing this with his class wholly in their bare chests before. That would be his decision. I made mine today.

It's worth remembering that many do like doing PE without the restriction of any top and are not concerned about how they appear whilst doing so.

Comment by: Mark on 25th May 2023 at 01:47


That was one of my problems, Mark. If we agree that most teenage boys would not, in our day or now , be up front about being uncomfortable, as Nathan said he has no wish to make anyone feel uncomfortable (and I believe him), unless he asked each boy their feeling, how would he know he was making some uncomfortable?. He said himself that all pupils at SOME time or another will do bare top lessons, so by the law of averages he will make SOME of them feel uncomfortable. My answer would be to make nobody do it - but as I have said so many times, those who wish to do so should be allowed to. Even as an adult I am a natural rebel and I don't like being told I "have to" do something,which is probably why I have been self-employed for some years now!. Like Robbie, I think it was, I would be interested in knowing what guidance teachers like Nathan would be given today.

The ex-primary that I went to over thirty years ago has now jumped on the girls football bandwagon and is making girls, including the daughters of friends of mine, play football in PE even though none of them has any interest in doing so. I know we shouldn't stereotype the genders but womens & girls football is still a very niche thing and should not be getting imposed on girls who show no interest in it in school.

Must agree with what Robbie and John have said, for boys who feel less confident about doing PE with a bare chest, there's a sense of safety in numbers. I was certainly someone who fell into that category in my early teens and felt nervous about shirts v skins in PE in a way I actually didn't about swimming - when, of course, all of us took our shirts off. When everyone was wearing the same kit it seemed less of a big deal than those situations in the gym where we'd be lined up waiting for the teacher to allocate each boy to a team. What was worse at my school was we actually did use coloured bibs but there were only two different colours! So for games like basketball or small-sided football there would be four teams instead of two and one of those four was skins. That meant if I was a skin there were only another five or six boys who had to take their shirts off and it felt like I stood out a lot more than would have been the case if we'd all done the lessons with a bare chest.

You are being very judgemental and are calling Nathan out for power tripping Alan, and said about if he said to do it you had to do it but actually if you read what he really said it was that he had no interest in making anyone feel uncomfortable, so in no way is he forcing anything on anyone by his own admission if they make it clear to him. He meant the shirtless PE by that didn't he. Now that is very different to when you and me were probably at school when the occasional PE teacher would come along and possibly enjoy making you feel very uncomfortable and certainly would have laughed in your face if you asked to be excused from a bare chested PE lesson on account of feeling awkward about it.

Replying to Robbie’s post of 24th May 2023.
I like you was never a fan of shirts vs skins and preferred lessons where we were all shirtless. Selecting who was going to be a skin seemed a waste of time. I was apprehensive when I had to do my first PE lesson bare chested but this was merely fear of the unknown as after a few lessons I got to prefer not having to wear a shirt.
Several years ago I’m sure that I read a post from someone who said that at their senior school boys had to wear reversible shorts for PE with a different colour on each side. This was sensible in my opinion as there was no need for shirts vs skins, before the start of a lesson involving team games and before lads had got changed into PE kit the PE teacher could tell half of the lads to wear the black side of their shorts and the other half the white side. I cannot recall any lads at my school being bothered about doing PE bare chested after they had done it for a couple of weeks and when we were all shirtless. There were a few lads that disliked being picked to be on the skins team when we did PE outdoors, they didn’t like being singled out.