Burnley Grammar School

Danny C,
So sorry to hear of your awful experience, that was definitely abuse and needs calling out. We weren’t abused, our PE teacher didn’t use a permanent marker pen and we were used to doing Indoor PE stripped to the waist. I didn’t mind the PE kit rules and neither did my school friends.

John, your comment about having a cross penned on your chest as a team marker actually happened at my school once too, so similar did your anecdote sound that it could almost have been written by a fellow classmate of mine. Infact I'd like to share something else from an actual email I sent a few months ago to a friend talking on this subject. The following is a cut and pasted paragraph direct from one of my detailed recollections. I've blanked out the teacher name on this public forum......

One of the most surreal things that ever happened to me personally was in a sports hall lesson. The sports hall was where we did the basketball, indoor footy and the most serious exertions in fitness tests that worked up serious sweat. We'd write our times and stats on a whiteboard. One day we entered and the whiteboard was in the middle of the sports hall, rather than at the edge out of the way. We had to sit down cross legged around it in our usual barely clothed attire as our teacher a Mr P****** scribbled some health and body stuff on it. He then decided it wasn't communicating well on the board and picked me and another boy out to get up in front of the rest of class. Without much warning or asking if we minded he began drawing various diagrams on my actual body from the shoulders all the way down to my waist, over the entire chest and arms. Stuff to do with bones, muscles, lungs and breathing and internal organs. The other lad standing with me had the same done all over his back. The idiot used one of those strong smelling thick black permanent marker pens to do this. When he finished he was so proud of his "artwork" that he signed his initials on me. It looked ridiculous and me and this other lad then had to spend the next hour doing our PE class with our teachers graffiti on us. I was not amused. I immediately knew I was going to have trouble getting it off and I did. I remember saying to him but it fell on deaf ears. The shower didn't shift it properly and the teacher seemed the usual oblivious self. The other lad was in an even worse position because he couldn't see what was on his back and couldn't reach it. I went home and that night spent ages soaking in the bath and even had to use a nail brush and a pumice very gently rubbing the black ink off my skin, with my mother wondering why I wanted a bath on a night I didn't usually have one, as she knew I didn't have a bath on PE days as I would have already showered in school. She then got suspicious as I was taking longer than normal. I never told her this happened as I felt an absolute fool. As if barechested PE wasn't enough in itself to be dealing with I had an idiot PE teacher using my skin as his personal drawing canvas.

Jamie - our school had a shorts only policy for all p.e. including cross country - nothing to do with any particular teacher. The only exception to this was the elite football group from whom the school team was chosen. They wore boots and socks with their shorts and practised in shirts and skins throughout the season. They used the better football pitch while the rest of us did activities which usually involved kicking a hard, heavy leather football around the less well drained pitches clad in nothing but our shorts.
One week in three and also if the pitches were deemed unusable by being waterlogged or frozen, we went out on a cross country run wearing the same kit. It seemed a little weird though exciting at the same time to be running barefoot through open countryside and the streets to get there and back. The logic of this became clear after the first heavy rain of the term. Several parts pf the course became very muddy and, if we had started out with plimsolls we would have ended up barefoot or spent a lot of time retrieving muddy plimsolls from the gunge we were required to run through. It was far more sensible to start out barefoot.

Greg, why your parents wanted you to be shirtless all the time?

Let me guess why Greg's parents wanted him to attend gym class barechested.
Maybe they thought going barechested was better for his self-concept.
Maybe they thought going barechested was better for the respiration of his pores.
Maybe they were proud of how he looked and wanted other people to see him.

I give up, so I'll ask Greg:
Greg, why did your parents want you to attend gym class barechested?

Danny C,
Sounds very similar to my experience at school except we only ever wore white shorts for indoor PE. On one occasion when we played basketball our PE teacher couldn’t find the box with the bibs in and had to resort to drawing a large cross on half of the lads on chest and back (non permanent marker used).No tops were ever allowed indoors in the gym.

At a school like mine where all boys had to show up barechested for indoor lessons in our gym and sports hall as mandatory, there was no such thing as skins v shirts because none of us was ever allowed to wear a top of any kind at any point in an indoor PE class. So on the occasions we did some kind of inside team games, mostly in our sports hall, the way we had to mark our teams apart from each other was much of the time simply through the colour of our shorts, one side being black and the other white. I recall a couple of occasions when most of us had just one colour of shorts with us and to mark our teams apart one side had fabric armbands, or wristbands, quite bizarrely. There were no bibs or anything like that ever offered. It was like my school was absolutely determined to keep the purity of its boys barechested PE requirement indoors come what may, even if at times a bib or a temporary top would have made sense.

John, bibs or sashes were worn over white T shirts.

Hi Kevin, you're right it's a logical thing but it's just how it was. Taking your vest off outdoors wasn't everyone's cup of tea. My parents notified the school of their preference that I would do all exercise barechested for aand the teachers made sure that I was.

Tom B,
As you had different coloured bibs or sashes to differentiate teams in the summer did that mean that you all played shirtless?

We had coloured bibs or sashes to differentiate between teams in the summer.

Outside in the winter we wore the reversible rugby shirts.

Hi Greg,
Don't really understand why your class put vests on in the first place to go to the playing field if there was a chance you'd all be taking them off immediately! Surely more logical to make it clear beforehand if the kit was only shorts?
We were told vests or skins at the start of the lesson, before we went into the gym. That way when you were picked as skins you just took off your vest and left it in the changing room.

Out on the playing field we went out wearing vests. Then you were picked as either as skin's or vests or all the class stripped to the waist. In the gym the majority of the time was spent bare chested but occasionally we played basketball as skin's vs vests. X country, inter house boxing we stripped off for. Fitness and basketball your house was either were vests for the first half with you stripping off at half time to become skin's for the second half and vice versa

This recording shows that it was the norm for British boys to go nude even in public space, that's why naked swimming in schools was plausible back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptqy1N0Z_kk

The clip from Steven matches quite well my own mixed gym lessons in the 80's, although our gym and our sports hall were much posher and brighter looking. The one notable difference is that at my school in our mixed midweek morning gym class the girls had to wear plimsolls or equivalent on their feet yet none of the boys were ever allowed to come into the gym in anything other than our bare feet during a lesson. This double standard annoyed me as well as baffling me, especially as I was very self conscious with nothing on my feet. If anyone can come up with any rational explanation for this then I'd like to hear it.

Steven, great video and not too dissimilar from my own PE lessons us boys were shirtless and barefoot for all PE whilst the girls were allowed a top

Michael, You are probably right about unsuitable and ill-prepared teachers just after World War 2,, some probably suffering from then-undiagnosed mental health problems, like PTSD, however, that doesn't explain - still less excuse - some of the dregs coming out of teacher training college in the 1960s and 1970s, who would have been teaching in the 70s and 80s, probably into the 1990s. For a lot of them, they felt the pupils was a major inconvenience to endure before they got their monthly pay cheque.

Everybody is different. Some need that 'push' in order to achieve their best, whereas others don't.

A good-humoured and carefully-judged degree of 'assertive encouragement' at the right time, may well unlock latent ability in the less confident pupil. This is when inspired teaching makes such a difference.

Sadly, such teachers were in short supply following WW2, with many vacancies being filled by hurriedly-trained ex-forces personnel.

Steven, I agree shorts only is a sensible policy when it comes to gymnastics. That's what the boys wore when we did gymnastics at school and it seems to be a fairly standard training uniform for boys at gymnastics clubs, even those who compete at a high level.
With that said, I would have found it weird if we'd been required to do all PE activities in bare chests and bare feet. Hardly seems logical for running, or football or whatever.

In the 1960s it was normal for boys to do PE stripped to the waist and barefoot

Steve: "Pissed off" not passed off. I loathe injustice and to me treating girls with kid gloves and the boys with a cane and a regime like national servicemen endured in the 1950s.

Of course I didn't want to be "treated like a girl" - I just think that equality means treating everybody with the same respect, regardless of sex.

If you felt a sense of "achievement and pride" by running round like that - well, with all due respect it seems to set the bar for pride v ery low.

There a still schools that have a sensible shorts-only policy for PE. This video showing a gym display in a Spanish school in front of a large audience and all the boys wear what must be their standard PE uniform: white shorts bare chests and bare feet. What do boys need a shirt for in PE anyway?
https://youtu.be/FO7jR9cK-HY?t=152

Hi Alan, and thank you for your sensible reply. I also agree with what you say, but do now believe that we’ve become slightly neurotic regarding how we rear children today, to the extent that there’s almost no trust left in society. This doesn’t really help anyone in the end, including the childen! I’ve noticed in general that there seems to be an almost incapabilty to settle on a balanced point of view; everything seeming to be either one extreme or the other! Anyway, thankfully it’s probable that such situations I mentioned could no longer take place today, and that we can only regret the naivety and sillyness of those in charge in the past.

I do remember my Gym and Games master at secondary school as being unnecessary sadistic; being far too handy with the slipper given any opportunity to use it….this included on me once! in my last year at junior school, the boys football coach was a woman, where I was captain and top goalscorer! She was really a wonderful and characterful teacher, but I have often wondered from past memories, about her private inclinations!

"A sense of achievement and pride" is not a widely held experience I felt or discerned from others at my school in similar circumstances to you Steve. Far from it. Half the class would have kitted up properly given half a chance when we did so much that didn't need to be done in just shorts. Like you, I was sent out barechested in wet weather to run during the spring/summer and early autumn months but forgive me wondering about a school that would send any pupils out on a snowy winter day with a snow covering with nothing on their feet at all as a matter of policy other than there being a sadistic disgraceful PE teacher overstepping the mark. There can be no defence for that if authentic. That is called abuse, simple as that. I doubt you'd tolerate a child of your own being sent out like that and put up with it.

TomB - I did not have a particularly bad time in school, despite the experiences I've mentioned, just a few isolated incidents, but I did think that you came terribly close to almost defending a bullying culture. Nobody needs bullying as a kind of life lesson for the future.

Hi Alan,
Having done myself PE in a mixed secondary in the eighties in shorts only, I fail to see what could have caused you to feel "passed off". Is it that you wanted to be treated like a girl??? To us, exercising shirtless and barefoot even in rain and snow gave us a sens of achievement and pride.

Greg/Greg2: I have to say I entirely agree with you and all you say. I am sure there are a great number of fantasies disclosed on this site, with some very strange kinky ideas - usually centered round nudity, near nudity and /or obsessive thoughts about physical punishment.

I am equally sure a great number of schoolteachers are either homosexual or lesbian, and, I am sorry to say, in more deferential and innocent times, used their positions of power to frankly indulge themselves. I am sure our games master had some very unhealthy thoughts running through his head.

I also agree that girls, probably to this day, are treated in a much kinder way than boys at school. Even in my time at school, which ended 1986/97, punishment was for boys "normal" which made me glad my school was single sex - I know at mixed schools even as late as that, boys were expected to wear minimal PE kit, while the girls were nicely done up and warm and comfortable - the injustice of that would have really pissed me off.

I am very glad that these days at least some attempt is made to ensure that teachers (and some older students) have their kinky ideas thwarted, and the pupils themselves are more aware of what is now termed "inappropriate" behaviour, and not afraid to speak out if they have concerns.

Having just posted my first post below, about reading comments from the beginning on this forum, I've just realised that there is already a Greg posting here. So, from now on I will change to Greg 2. Hopefully there isn't also a Greg 2 posting!

I’ve been reading some of the back pages of this site and can’t belive what I’ve read at times. I didn’t realise so much forced naked swimming went on for boys; especially in private schools, and seemingly, often coached by females! I remember reading somewhere of one boy aged 12 having extra help with tumbling turns by thier female coach. She even had him undress on the poolside each time, which he thought was rather odd, and not in the cubicle as usual. She was then was alone with this naked boy as she helped him roll over in the water! Unbeleavable. It also seems that other female teacher would often appear during 13 year old boys’ swimming classes to ask boys to come out of the water, hands by their sides, while they asked them questions! Elsewhere it was mentioned three women running a boys only cubs camp in the 70s, where they insisted boys run around with just t-shirts or pyjama tops after 7:00pm! Totally unecessay and obviously decided by these women for their own delectation.
It seems there have always been double standards; especially in the past with females feeling completely confident and socially comfortable with this situation. I’m sure in the past these females enjoyed and took advantage of this and took every opportunity to see the boys nudity when possible. Females are just as curious as males, and these women (and sometimes same age girls at swimming galas etc) would enjoy this opportunity, perhaps quietly with slight disbelief of this situation they find themselves in! I’ve worked in boys prep schools, and at times noticed what I always thought of as slightly strange female matrons. Often youngish women, and sometimes with a 16 year old (always female) school student who they would always select, to visit the school as a work experience trainee. These girls would always appeared at bath/shower time with a slightly embarrassed expesion, where there would always be some quite brazen and exhibitionist boys, with others more shy.
I’ve never understood why young developing boys sould be treated like cattle, while same age girls are always treated as sacred. Also, I do think there are a few strange male fantasies submitted here; though I’ve never understood why some males enjoy of the thought of boys being forced to be naked and humiliated in front of female staff, or even same age sisters at swimming galas etc. I just find it annoying and certainly abusive.

TimH: I think you could turn your question on it's head: how many men on here have gone on, at length, about the "good old days" when boys wore nothing but shorts, and they got a good old sweat on, and if they didn't they got a good old caning?. While it is clear some lads didn't care or wasn't bothered, we can see, if you read objectively, that a great number DID.

I would not go so far as to advocate swimming tops for boys, but many of us, in work we have done after school, have worked up a sweat, and it would have been inappropriate to use that as an excuse to take our shirts off. Everyone should be treated with respect (and little "respect" was given to boys in my time at school) and nobody should be forced to do anything they are not comfortable with, even if this deprives some old games master of his cheap thrills.

A question to Mr Dando ... have you ever considered the views of the boys & girls concerned? Are they happy with what they're wearing?