Burnley Grammar School

Hi Toby P,

So, your parents were specifically directed to purchase blue vests which your teacher ordered you to discard on a whim? This is just another example of teachers making up their own rules which they shouldn't be allowed to do. It is also yet another instance of women teachers keeping boys down. It was my impression all through my school years that all teachers but especially women, felt that boys needed to be put firmly in their box. And they made you strip like that outside and in front of the girls as well!!

At the pre-pubescent ages you state they would have been justified in making the girls take the lesson topless for the exact same reason. Why didn't they do that then?

I can actually remember an instance of 'reverse' topless PE from my own primary days. One time, unusually, we had a woman teacher taking us for football out on the fields. Although attractive she was permanently channelling her inner dominatrix, she always seemed to be angry and she was perpetually shouting, telling kids off and dishing out detentions for very little, and everybody in her class hated her.

This was a sweltering hot day and several of the boys asked her for permission to take off their tops. In a totally uncharacteristic act of benevolence she allowed them to do so and they whipped off their tops and had a thoroughly fun time playing football in just their shorts.


Hi Greg2,

In my primary school in the late '70s we had a lesson called 'music and movement', in which we performed self-expressive dancing to various tape recording which could be either musical or spoken-word narratives. It was actually quite fun. We were allowed to do it in our clothes though, unlike PE and unlike those kids in that film.

Speaking of which, that film was something else. I'm not referring to the kids' PE kit, which was standard for that time. I'm referring to that teacher. Sweet Jesus! That post-war generation really did look different and distinctive, didn't they? Like a whole generation of Thora Hirds or something. Those exaggerated facial expressions looked frightening and unsettling and potentially disturbing to kids that age if you ask me. She looks like somebody slipped Mary Whitehouse an acid tab. Sheesh.

I think you'll find most boys were shy I certainly was. I'm sure the teachers recognised that and tried to bring you out of your comfort zone particularly for 9-11 year olds.
Our school official kit was a blue PE vest, shorts, trainers however after changing for the first time we were given a lecture about the expectation to perform gym stripped down at all times. When we went into the gym the girls were there ready to start and it was their teacher who told us to take off our vests and throw them down by the wall. Everyone did so and no doubt some felt more awkward than others. After the first few joint lessons we started to get used to being barechested and the girls were comfortable seeing us without vests on both indoors and outside during Games lessons.

I like to look through old documentary film archives from various countries around the world. Usually to be found on such sites are footage covering street scenes, and with various local events important to the area being recorded. All of this I find interesting and important to have been documented. I’ve recently been exploring the National Library of Scotland, and amongst such old footage appeared this short film, ‘intended to aid primary school teachers’ entitled, Expressive Movement for Primary School Children c1959. It covers what most primary school children would have been expected to do in PE/PT lessons of the time. I wonder whether such self expression is still encouraged for today’s children in a similar way?

I’m sure I remember doing much the same as this when I was at Junior School, but in my case this would have been in the 60s, though I don’t think such things had changed so much compared to 1959 back then. I don’t remember having to be shirtless though during such a lesson, but I might be wrong. All boys here are shirtless and seem to have changed into a pair of black shorts. The girls appear to be in their regulation navy blue knickers of the time with white vests, and all with bare feet, and all being conducted in affairs by a particularly expressive teacher. Interesting, great and important footage, recording how things were for primary aged children engaged in such activities at that time.
https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3846

Following on my comment earlier this week, and reading what Spike has said here, you sound similar to my view here Spike. I'm quite shy too but that doesn't mean I automatically recoil from things that are not in my comfort zone so to speak. I think the trouble with some people who were made to do things in school they disliked a lot, especially when it was PE related and involved loss of clothing, is that they took it far too personally in some way and their sensitivity thermostat was set very low which triggered them easily over something like not wearing tops. Most of our teachers were not setting out to deliberately humiliate us.

When I was at school and deliberately chose to go skins when I preferred shirts I was trying to prove something to myself and others.

I haven't read back through too many of the earlier comments beyond the last month but would I be right in saying that there are no comments on here from anyone who admits they actually point blank refused to be shirtless in their PE lessons, or to take showers? I think it would have been quite brave to openly tell a gym teacher you were uncomfortable or too shy to take a top off and be shirtless in PE in the company of other boys.

Comment by: Spike on 13th June 2025 at 21:07


I think the fact is, Spike, that some people are lucky enough not to be self-conscious, or if they are, are able to hide or disguise it better than I would, for example. You clearly had good self knowledge and was able to master it.

I also have to admit I am by nature a rebel, and I strongly disliked then (and now) being "told" what to do, and as it is less painful to rebel these days than it was back then, I wish more lads and girls would start to ignore stupid "rules" which are totally unnecessary, and be the individualists they are meant to be.

When you get to men aged over 40 I think the amount of us who got the skins treatment in PE rises dramatically to well over 90% and possibly near 100% on showers for boys at least. Everyone used to shower at school, no ifs no buts, you did it and any sensitivities about it were pushed aside and you were made to face up to your own and others naked bodies no matter how terribly shy or anxious anyone was about it.

My take on being shirtless in PE though. I'm 49 so you can work out from that when I would have been at school. When I was in my very early teens I was what they used to call 'stick thin' which when undressed was very obvious, to me anyway. I'm not someone who would have walked though the local park or downtown with my shirt off at the time, although I might have picked a quiet corner somewhere with a friend and sunbathed while listening to a battery operated radio at the time, just lounging about somewhere nice and peaceful and quiet. I do remember just one occasion when I went fishing with someone from school on a hot and humid day in a very quiet area and he took his top off and after a few minutes I felt brave enough to volunteer the same, mostly due to the heat really. Other than that I would not do so. I was very self critical about my slim frame at that age and often checked myself out in the mirror trying to see if I was gaining any muscle or weight.

At school in PE there was one lesson in the gym each week when nine times out of ten we were shirtless as a whole class, as far as I knew it was the school's thing rather than the teacher's. Despite my slim frame and lack of desire to take my top off because of that, I was never upset or troubled by skins in PE which I saw as a good legitimate way that I could be shirtless in a proper environment to do so where it was fine to be and expected. At school in such lessons I never noticed anyone looking at my body in a critical way or saying anything about how I looked when I had my shirt off and was a skin above the waist. The teachers never said anything critical about my body or how I looked and nobody in class did. I also don't remember anyone else saying anything to others. I guess we all accepted what we were and how we were. The most critical person who had a go at me about my body and my shirtless look was infact none other than myself at the end of the day. There were other boys in class just like me anyway, and there were a couple of clearly overweight boys but even they did not seem to attract negative attention about their weight.

So I can lay claim to being quite self critical about my body and not really ever wishing to expose myself to the wider world out of school as a skin very often but at the same time feeling alright about school expecting me to do that in gym week after week, and just because you are very thin with little muscle definition doesn't mean you're unfit. I've got a marathon runner type physique still and can knock out half marathon distance without thinking of it.

As a tourist I would certainly remove my top to sightsee the temple if I was asked to do that. I think most men would do that and it shouldn't be seen as a problem to do.

Do some grown men just have a problem being shirtless in front of other grown men like they did as boys in school?

PE showers were the school religion, the act we all had to bow down to.

Not sure I would have wanted my head teacher towelling my back dry, I didn't even like mum doing that to me when I was seven!

Hi Alan,

'Out of date "rules" have no relevance to us - for example, when did any of us covet our neighbour's ox?. You would be hard pressed to find one in London'

Never wanted an ox in my life. Nasty, smelly things which would take up loads of room, cost a fortune for food and healthcare and crap copiously. Presumably these must have been the go-to status symbols for men in ancient times before we had cars and Rolex watches.

What has far more unsettling implications in the ten commandments is that two of them - the fourth and the tenth - make mention of slaves: 'everybody in your house, including your slaves, shall observe the Sabbath' and 'thou shalt not envy your neighbours' possessions up to and including their slaves'. At no point in the ten commandments is slavery itself as a practice ever condemned - there is no commandment stating 'thou shalt not hold thy fellow man in slavery'. This by itself invalidates the entire christian message.

I couldn't agree with you more. It has never been more urgent that we as a species move on from the Bronze Age.

Comment by: Chris 1970 on 12th June 2025 at 20:09


"You wouldn't have stripped to the waist and been bare chested so you could enter the temple then Alan, even if the others all did?"........

Definitely not Chris!. Apart from all else I do not subscribe to any religion and it's edicts, so I would be making a thorough going hypocrite of myself to pander to their rules. It is interesting to read about various religious customs, but I scratch my head and think - why the hell do they have these bizarre customs?. It is akin to the grotesque "underwear-free" PE lessons, there is virtually logical reason for it - it just grew out of somebody's fetish.

Out of date "rules" have no relevance to us - for example, when did any of us covet our neighbour's ox?. You would be hard pressed to find one in London

Some of my earliest PE at school memories casting my mind back involve doing it in my pants in classes full of children like me in our underwear with nothing on our feet or our bodies whether boy or girl. But that was the late 1960s.

Then boys at my primary school could only ever wear some dark coloured shorts in PE, but at least it wasn't our underwear, bare feet and bare chests for the boys and a lot more for the girls by then.

Secondary school was a variety on the outside, we wore long sleeved sweatshirts, football tops, t-shirts or vests and also some shirtless days too. The school gym was mostly bare chests with the occasional bib on.

So it was more or less compulsory bare chests when told in PE from quite an early age for me and that went right through to the point of leaving.

I was made to take showers in primary and secondary school. The headmaster at my primary school would come along the corridor and watch us shower when we had our lady class teacher take our lesson because she kept out of that area. He even used to help some of us dry off our shoulders and backs.

You wouldn't have stripped to the waist and been bare chested so you could enter the temple then Alan, even if the others all did? I'm on the shy side of things but I would have taken the plunge and done so like a couple of others have said, certainly on a school trip type visit. Whether I would do so on an adult trip under my own steam I couldn't say for sure unless it was something I really wanted to see.

We had a mosque day out on a trip at school in the early eighties and had to take our shoes off. I remember that, and some people peeled the socks off too and others left them on, that bit didn't seem to matter, socks were okay, shoes were not. I've not heard about the need to go shirtless to enter temples before, you learn something new every day. There do appear to be a lot of pictures online of people doing just like David did 37 years ago at school on the trip, mostly those who practice the religion from what I saw, obviously they made no exceptions even for the white western non believers. I agree with Ronnie's last part.

Comment by: David P on 11th June 2025 at 22:39


"I'm quite shy about taking my own shirt off in public, always was. I counted doing so in a school PE lesson as taking my shirt off in public too, I don't know whether anyone else would agree with me on that definition........."

I quite understand David I am exactly the same myself. In the days when I was employed by others I would never take jobs which required medical examinations, because I am quite shy and private, so I fully understand your feelings. I'd only go to a doctor if I had some reason to do so, not to be told to do so by some pen pusher.

I was astonished to read about your Indian trip. One of the reasons I have no religious affiliations, is because I find them so intrusive with their rules and laws, which have not been made by some deity, but by human leaders who set themselves up as some divine authority - they make no sense, if you are RC you have to go and confess your wrongdoings to some old chap in a booth, every week - he will just tell you to say Hail Mary - just say it and cut out the middleman! if you are Jewish or Muslim you have to have a bit of your anatomy snipped off your anatomy - the C of E is, I think the only one that doesn't have "rules" but I am not even tempted by that. In my personal view religion has caused more trouble and dissension over the centuries than anything else. Still, it was interesting about the practices of the Hindu religion - you learn something new every day, but it still prompts the question in my mind - as do all religions - why?

What an astonishing coincidence that you've written about a school trip to India on History World just last night David and within 12 hours news comes of a devastating air disaster on an Air India flight from there back to the UK.

That was a great sounding school trip and an interesting anecdote on having to take tops as well as shoes off there. Chris G there is quite a bit of information on what David has written out there, it seems confined to a certain area of that country based on the couple of items I briefly read, with associated photos. Like you Chris, if I was on a holiday and visiting I would oblige such a rule too and wouldn't let a shirtless rule stop me visiting such a place. It's meant to be a hot and humid area anyway. When visiting somewhere else of course you should follow their rules if you want to do things, something we here in the UK should require of our visitors and immigrants a lot more.

I've heard that people who go to India either love it or loathe it.

Comment by David P, 11th June
My wife and I spent a fortnight on a trip around Northern India a dozen or so years ago. At our final stopping point, the holy city of Varanasi, we were fortunate to experience both the evening Arti service on the banks of the Ganges, but also to visit a Hindu temple the following day. At no point in either of these events were males required to be bare-chested, something I would readily have done if required, or even invited to do. In fact, I don't remember seeing any bare-chested males at all in the temple, and very few at the riverside ceremony.

It always amazed me how obedient boys were at our school and always did as we were told by our PE teacher.He was in charge of about 30 boys and we were always told to shower naked when he required us to do so,
We were made to do our PE just wearing our shorts and some boys wore satin shorts including myself which was even more embarrassing.

Comment by: Tony on 11th June 2025 at 15:54


"I know there has been a lot of PE teacher comment in the negative on here at times but the line in bold - 'Are PE teachers in the UK really as bad as the reputation they have to the rest of the world?' in the article surprised me. Did British PE teachers really have this appalling reputation that went way beyond our own shores, that's quite a discovery if true"

Hi Tony, I think I may have an explanation, though certainly no excuse. I suspect the majority of P.E. teachers are very interested - perhaps TOO interested because they themselves had ambitions that were never fulfilled, - of becoming professional athletes, and teaching is the only way they can go on enjoying whatever they were interested in and making a living of it. I know a few semi-pro musicians who, like me, when I was young had ambitions of becoming full time professionals and living the life of a musician. Like me, though good, we were not QUITE good enough, (brass players are ten a penny in the business) so most of us go away and do something else that we are more successful at, but a few I knew decided to take up teaching, and they changed more or less overnight from happy-go-lucky players into really bitter and resentful men. I think they genuinely wanted to pass on all they knew, and perhaps had one or two
protégés, , and they resented the rest of the pupils who were not up to that standard, and had little time or patience for them. In one case the teacher began to resent his star pupil, because he was convinced the pupil was better than he was. It's a toxic situation, because they assume everyone will be as committed as they were, and set their ambitions for them too high. That is bound to end in disappointment, hence the hissy fits, temper tantrums and resentment. It must be even worse for them these days, since they can no longer take out their frustrations with a cane or slipper. I suspect the same is true of P.E. teachers - they were not quite good enough at their chosen sport which leads to disappointment and resentment. Teaching is a fairly well paid profession (despite what the teaching unions never tire of telling us), and I suspect most of them enjoy the idea of passing on their knowledge, and regard it as a personal affront if the pupils are not as motivated as they were themselves. I also suspect that both musicians and sportsmen realise that their knowledge is more practical than academic, and, as in all walks of life, they realise that they are regarded as "lesser" in the brainbox stakes, and you will get snobbish colleagues who will not disguise that fact, and treat them somewhat patronisingly . The way they treat the lads and girls they are teaching, adopting the martinet persona, as a compensation for the slights, real or imaginary, makes them their own worst enemy. The only difference is music teachers cannot make kids shower, but they have their own form of punishments - trying to make a kid play C above C at 11.00 on a Monday morning is grim. In the case of P.E. teachers they compensate by treating their pupils as recruits for the Royal Marines - they become merely risible in most people's eyes as a result, Most lads treat this over-enthusiasm as a joke, they have no wish to be an Olympic champion or Wynton Marsalis. Teachers of all subjects should realise that not everybody is as keen on their specialist subject as they are themselves.
.

I'm quite shy about taking my own shirt off in public, always was. I counted doing so in a school PE lesson as taking my shirt off in public too, I don't know whether anyone else would agree with me on that definition. I wasn't made to run the public streets on cross country without my vest on though, it was all within school buildings.

But this happened on a foreign school trip:

When I was in the fifth form, part studying Hinduism in RE (religious education) in 1988 I was lucky enough to be among a group of a dozen selected interested and responsible academic minded pupils who were offered a two week trip to India's southern Kerala region taken by two of our RE teachers, the male head of RE and his deputy a woman during the Easter break. It was a heavily subsidised trip only partly paid by parents and a lifetime opportunity to widen our horizons and see different cultures.

On the trip we had 7 boys and 5 girls and our two teachers. We did normal sightseeing while there but much of it was focussed on aspects of our studying. I was keen to learn about others.

During our fortnight we visited three Hindu temples across the Kerala region in the far south western tip of India. One thing we didn't appear to have been taught before we paid our pre-organised visit to the first temple who were expecting us was that not only do all visitors into the temple have to remove their shoes on entry but that all males must remove their tops before coming into the temple and can only enter them bare chested. I had no idea that would happen, the teacher must have done but he didn't seem like he did. So polite visitor etiquette meant the boys on our visit had to take all we were wearing on our top half off so we were fully bare chested and then we could enter. The females, the five girls and their teacher did not have to do this, just remove the shoes. We spent quite some time in the Hindu temple in Kerala region and it was a calming experience albeit I was a touch anxious about what I was like, our male teacher had to do just the same as us too. We visited another two temples across the Kerala region and had to do the same in those also. The removal of our male tops was seen as a signal of our respect as visitors and dignity, and was also meant to symbolise energy being allowed into our bodies. None of the males on our trip would have been allowed anywhere inside the temples if we had refused to comply and disrobe like that.

So depending on where you are in the world, forcing the male of the species to take his top off can be seen as the polite and respectful thing to do in religious etiquette. It was certainly an experience worth undergoing. One of the girls on our trip did at the time say she felt it removed our dignity and freedom of expression and she felt it made HER awkward because of having to spend time touring the temples with all the boys and our teacher in bare chests on those visits.

Comment by: James C on 10th June 2025 at 22:07
These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!




Yes James, when they are 5, 6 or 7 years old, not 15, 16 or 17....or even anything after 10. It's quite a big difference. Scandanavia may be many things but they are not so easy on things that they do what you describe at secondary age!

When I was reading the short comment by James C which he is entitled to say, I wondered how many actual PE teachers held this view themselves which might just explain why some, or infact most people on here talk about the lack of empathy they felt. It did feel like a teacher trait.

Here is a little read I have found on greatathletes.org.

PE; Physical Education or Public Embarrassment?

https://greatathletes.org/p-e-physical-education-public-embarrassment/#:~:text=Any%20person%20that%20had%20to,but%20their%20vest%20and%20underwear!


I know there has been a lot of PE teacher comment in the negative on here at times but the line in bold - 'Are PE teachers in the UK really as bad as the reputation they have to the rest of the world?' in the article surprised me. Did British PE teachers really have this appalling reputation that went way beyond our own shores, that's quite a discovery if true.

A number of my PE teachers used to split our gym classes up at the start of lessons into an exact half by whatever means, one had this specific method, pointing at one random boy on one of the sides who was told to decide - skins or shirts. Almost every time the answer came back without hesitation - shirts, whoever got picked to make the decision! This way of deciding seemed to be a bit flawed, it gave the same answer every time, until the lesson when my PE teacher pointed at me to answer his binary choice question and I just wanted to be deliberately different and actively choose myself as a bared chest, so I answered - skins. All I can remember was the other half smirking at our half and my half of the class and a few boys being mad at me for saying it. I actually got a lot of aggro after PE for daring to make 'my side' go skins in PE like that, but if I'd chosen shirts I was still making the other half of class go skins anyway. I remember the PE teacher being quite pleased I had broken with the precedent and been bold enough to commit myself and our side to going skins for PE that time.

No way would I ever consider myself a confident shirtless person at school when I first had to keep removing my top in PE lessons, but I found it got easier the more I did it and I thought it was important to show my PE teacher at that time quite clearly that I was not as predictable as the others when choosing. I knew if I got picked again I would have to say skins again, and did when it happened. I was only asked twice though.

I always rather enjoyed having a shower after PE at school. This was soon noticed by another PE teacher of mine who I heard say to some of them in our changing room that they needed to find the eagerness I had for showers. I was one of the quick and keen boys for that. Collective nakedness in a group situation like that in school showers never really concerned me very much at all, I seemed at ease with it almost immediately and didn't mind being told I had to do it because it made sense to me when you saw the state of us sometimes and a shower is the most natural place to get everything off. I class myself as a fairly shy person too.

Depending on who you get teaching you, your school and the whole general set up, the whole experience of shirtless gym or the after-PE showers routine can probably vary and affect your view on it. A good school can calm your nerves on it if you have them, a bad school can play on your fears and make things worse. It can also depend if you are in a good class too with the others.

Comment by: James C on 10th June 2025 at 22:07


"These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!"

James you don't have to read these comments, that is a choice you have made of your own free will. In between your bouts of "despair" and amusement, you ,might like to consider the psychological effects that many people on here can recall events that took place forty/fifty years ago - and more, I suspect

Web got through it, though without resorting to the current ideas that we might be cats or dogs, or that we were transgender &c. so we were not the "soft" blokes you plainly consider us to be. Perhaps you sailed through school with no problems, or problem teachers at all - think yourself lucky. I would also remind you that we are not in Scandinavia. Have you got something more constructive you might like to add to the forum?

Hi Yours Truly,

Thank you for your reply, it was my parent's decision that I should continue wearing short trousers when I attended secondary school as it was not obligatory.They considered it normal and healthy to continue wearing shorts until my later school years.Although I found it disconcerting wearing shorts at secondary school my parents enjoyed the the spectacle of a teenager growing up in shorts.

Comment by: Chris on 9th June 2025 at 02:58
'Only 26, all this (going shirtless in PE and having naked class group showers) was still demanded of me when I was at school and that was only 8 years ago when I left. I refused to do any sixth form PE when they kept on at me to. Fortunately I got away with it but the PE teachers hated me for that. I think I last actually did a PE lesson in my bare chest just over ten years ago some point in the first half of 2015 and it was never a free choice of mine to do it, I think I last had a school shower in the same period actually. There were no refusals that I ever saw up to that point before I was in sixth form.'




While many of us on here were at school in the 60's, 70's or 80's it's good to have more up to date input as well like yours Chris and also the one from Kenny as people who were still in school at the start of the 2010's just over ten years ago now, although I think the country and the world has changed rather a lot even since this point in time. There's been a steady trickle of younger people come on here and say they've done their fair share of shirtless PE lessons as well as teachers say they ask for it to be done still. Clearly mandated showers still happen all over the place too, that current school website Mr Dando linked made that very apparent only a few days ago.

In the month of June most boys used to go out and do athletics on the field in bare chests at my school, many seemed like they wanted to, but as we already did it in the gym we were all very well conditioned to the whole ethos of doing PE shirtless anyway.

These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!

Comment by: Anthony B on 10th June 2025 at 03:34

Your teacher sounds like a genuine creep to put it mildly. Knowing my own ability for occasional backchat at teachers, I might have felt obliged to pull his waistband and check him too even at the risk of a smack from the sports shoe on some part of me. The teachers kept their underwear on in these classes didn't they? Of course they did!

Some people mention on here that when they were allowed to wear trainers/plimsolls for gym they were not allowed to wear socks with them. It's hard to tell for sure but it looks like all the boys in the associated photo here above are in the no socks situation, but the teacher has his white socks on. Now I was always told it was less hygienic to wear trainers without socks on.

The first time I ever heard the term 'birthday suit' was when I was a newby at senior school (1973) and a teacher used those words when we were about to take the plunge into that first over anticipated communal shower as a whole class. I was so naive at the time I thought it meant we had to wear something for a second or two. I then learnt the meaning of the term rather rapidly in front of my eyes.

As we got older I remember a number of boys used to just drop out of PE and not even show up, not feeling up to a cold morning on the gym floor, tops off and doing whatever it was that day, much of the lesson content now a blur. Unauthorised dropping out of PE in the fourth and fifth year got them into massive trouble every time but didn't stop them.

These teachers we used to have could be canny operators though, and we were about to go off for our metalwork lesson one morning and the ones who had dropped out of PE the previous day were made to go to PE with another class instead of to the expected metalwork, and were given spare shorts for the job. This had quite an effect of the hard core PE drop outs, and anyone else thinking of it, that we might just get pulled from our expected lesson the following day, bunged some old spare shorts and sent as extras to another strange class.

Fourth and fifth form boys had to run the school cross country shirtless in those days, but they spared the bottom three years from that. It was well known that once you entered the fourth form at school you were liable to do this and not just stay inside in the school gym shirtless. We had one very young teacher who ran shirtless with us but none of the others ever did that, sometimes we had three teachers running with us, one up front, one in the middle and one at the back all keeping an eye on us for any cheeky shortcuts or deviations along the way. They made us run a very long way indeed, possibly as much as four or five miles I think.

Alan, many younger parents, like my daughter-in-law, are very interested in their kids education.
Kenny, do you know if they have the same rules today?

Hi James,

This was in infant school. I'm very grateful to say that the shorts thing faded out in junior school, apart from my first year teacher who tried to order all of us boys into shorts for the summer, but got nowhere.

My parents were all for it. They just thought I was being silly not wanting to wear shorts and totally approved of the silliness being knocked out of me.

Alan, many younger parents, like my daughter-in-law, are very interested in their kids education.
Kenny, do you know if they have the same rules today?

Further to what Alan has said about the no pants under your shorts rule, I was at an otherwise normal secondary school that had this strange rule in PE lessons in my time from 1977 until 1982. The rule did not bother me too much even though this meant bare bums and willies were coming out before PE as we changed in a way they would not had we kept our pants on, but that was a second or two. What I remember about this strange rule in our school is nobody could explain to us why we did it, and how we had no problems with three of our PE teaching men but another two men who took PE, and one in particular were keen to check the rule out. The worst teacher for this would wait until boys were in the school gym at the start of the class and look around and randomly pick a few boys and check them by pulling the elastic of the shorts at the front quite far away from the body, but not just that, when he did this he would give what was an over long look downwards into the shorts, clearly observing the random bare penises of boys he probably knew full well were not wearing pants anyway. There were boys who would keep wearing their pants under shorts into PE for whatever reasons, I don't know why they did that. This particular teacher always waited until we were in the gym to do his random check, rather than in the changing room before we were let out to go to the gym itself. When he discovered someone who was wearing pants under their PE shorts he made them take them off on the spot, meaning shorts and pants came off before shorts went back on, while we watched. In one example of this he made someone in my class wear his pants on his head for the rest of the lesson, not allowing him to take them off and when they fell off he had to place them back on his head again. That is deeply humiliating stuff to dish out on an already dubious rule anyway that served no real meaningful or useful purpose.

The shorts we wore to PE at the time were very short and tight on the upper thigh things with little give in them and very high up the leg, nowhere near the knee for example, like some are now. Most of the time I seem to remember we were in our bare feet in the school gym and for long periods of time I remember never even needing to or bringing any footwear for gym (inside) PE days, and once more as so many I have already read on here are saying, I only recall the secondary school gym PE as a bare chested lesson but I have no idea if this was our school rule or a teachers rule, and I suppose I could say the same for the no pants rule, whose rules were they really? The communal showers rule is another interesting one. Was this the school rule or the teachers rule, I don't know. Why did there seem to be so few liberal minded teachers about in those days, unlike now.

With compulsory PE showers at school boys had to act all big and carefree about it and not give any clue to their more inner feelings about it. We had these weird tiny white soap bars laying on the shower floor that we just had to go in and pick up and basically begin rubbing all over our bodies when we showered. These same soap bars had already been used by someone else that day and left lying there. I don't even know if that is a health hazard in itself or unhygienic, or whether it is fine. The PE teacher who checked the no pants rule was fond of instructing boys to wash their armpits and groins I seem to remember, and he was watching as we did it.

I saw four of my five secondary PE teachers use a gym plimsoll to discipline boys over the years, happening mainly to the under 14s, not the older age group. This was used across the back of the legs, the buttocks or the hands. Once I saw the gym plimsoll being used against someone's head for swearing, a fantastic swipe at pace across the back of the head. This is casual violence in reality isn't it, a genuinely nice person doesn't want to do that to anyone even if they have sworn at them.

Nothing I've said is new here and seems to have been said dozens of times before from the look of this site.