Burnley Grammar School

School websites don't always paint an accurate picture and seem designed to project a certain image back at the wider world about the school.

My 15 year old chap goes to school in Nottingham at Oakwood Academy. But if you look at the current website for example, there is no mention of how he really does PE. I don't mind but I'm told the boys spend a lot of time doing gym in school in bare chests at the teachers request, more than one teacher infact.

Also, there is no mention anywhere on the school website about bringing in towels with PE kits, or that scary word - showering, yet this school maintains a need to shower after PE which my own chap has done since he started. No mention anywhere on the web pages though.

I don't mind any of it, he's a boy and boys should expect that kind of thing. I'm 53, grew up in the 80s and did all that. But nowhere on the school website does it mention a need to shower after a PE lesson, or any sense that PE can be done in bare chests, so it's being a little dishonest.

Luckily I don't mind this but I thought it was worth dropping on here for a discussion point about school honesty and why they might be trying to pretend some things do not happen in school when I know full well they do.

Comment by: James on 20th May 2025 at 10:25
I also found it excruciatingly embarrassing to be seen naked in the showers by so many boys,some of whom I didn't know and some that I had known for some time.Some of us were teased unmercifully if we hadn't got the 'right' physique.



WHY JAMES?

What was the right physique you should have had?

Quoting comment by Alan on 20th May 2025.
"Also, the shower was one place where decrepit old teachers couldn't barge in, as they did in our gym, taking a short cut to the other half of the school, as walking down two corridors was too much trouble."



In my comprehensive school I was at for five years from 1971 to 1976 even this area was open to anyone. I remember lots of non-PE teachers coming in on us in our changing room/showers. I remember many times I was in the school showers after PE and walking back out to discover there was some random teacher standing in the middle of the room gassing away to another PE teacher, lots did this. They didn't treat the boys changing rooms like any kind of private area at all. We used to joke about one or two of them, if you know what I mean.

If you looked at the timings on our school timetable for example, like any other school, you would know what time in the day lessons were ending, so when I think of it now, there would have been four times each school days when the lessons were ending, including PE, and in the final ten minutes of each of these times that would be the obvious time the PE showers were flowing with a bunch of naked PE lads made to get into them and under the water. So back in those days lessons ended at 10.30am, 12 noon, 2.30pm and 4pm, meaning if you went back ten minutes from those times and popped along to see a PE teacher as it ended you got access to the changing room, you'd hear the noise and know we were in there anyway, and would almost surely guarantee a faceful of boys all stripped and milling about, which now leads me to wonder if some teachers did use this as an "opportunity" and possibly with the connivance of a PE teacher. It's all pure guesswork and possibly over suspicion on my part, I don't know, but lots of male teachers with no direct PE connections came into our changing rooms while we were in them in various stages of undress or fully naked from showers we had to take and it was easy to do if they were there to look at us because nobody stopped any of them. I'm sure the school secretary even once dropped in on us.

The showers at school were not avoidable, they were mandatory requirement, everyone had to do them, you own personal feelings of insecurity or shyness about showing your body with nothing on with others was of little concern to any of our teachers. I think it's fair to say the attitude was boys don't do modesty.

Whether the girls at my school had a similar experience with their women teachers would be something to know.

Has anybody else ever encountered something similar to this?


When we went to the local leisure centre to go swimming as a class in those days they gave all the girls the private individual changing booths that were there but the boys had to make do with the communal changing area and we were supervised in this quite often by a leisure centre worker and not our teacher who was with the girls. The girls booths had a small crack in the build of each one of them where some of the booths allowed a view into the communal changing area and some girls told stories of how they were able to privately without anyone knowing look through at us and see us, but it was just a hazard we had to put up with!

Someone here has mentioned a modern day 20 year old struggling to grasp the realities of school a few decades ago. I've been asked this question before myself about what it was like. Whilst I never ran a cross country in my bare feet like someone suggested doing, I did do quite a few without my top on at school, not my decision, and when it comes to school gym we had a flimsy vest at times but went without it more than we wore it and shirtless was more the way it ended up being.

Not long after I started school in 1971 there was a boy who answered a PE teacher back and he took his plimsoll off his foot and threw it at him, picked it up and then, I lost count, hit him with it what must have been ten times, all because as he was being hit he kept shouting "more" which made the teacher lose complete control and give him more. At the end this lad even smiled about it and treated it like something that made him a hard man to have taken that from a teacher. For the rest of us we learnt one thing, don't answer back.

I don't think the early seventies sound like the greatest period in the history of teaching do they!

I also found it excruciatingly embarrassing to be seen naked in the showers by so many boys,some of whom I didn't know and some that I had known for some time.Some of us were teased unmercifully if we hadn't got the 'right' physique.
Same as when we had to go topless and bare foot for PE and we just had wear our shorts.I was the only boy to wear satin shorts as other boys wore cotton.My mother chose them and they were bought to fit perfectly which gave a shiny shimmering effect.I was just as embarrassed to wear those as I was to go in the showers.

Comment by: James on 19th May 2025 at 22:31


......The shower thing - I like showers myself, and didn't object to taking them, it was our pervy P.E. teacher sizing us all up, so to speak, which I objected to.




"I don't really understand this Alan. You objected to being told to do school PE in a bare chest total shirtless, but you actually liked taking showers where you lost the bottom half as well as the top half at the same time, kind of naked was fine but semi naked was not! Ugh?........"

Probably does sound a bit mixed up, James, but I will try and explain: I have included that small piece from myself because in a way that sums it up in a nutshell. When you are 13/14 it is very unpleasant to know that a middle aged man is getting off on watching - I think we can all agree on that. Also, the shower was one place where decrepit old teachers couldn't barge in, as they did in our gym, taking a short cut to the other half of the school, as walking down two corridors was too much trouble, I remember once our school secretary, a lovely woman called Mrs. Fennemore walked in to the gym because she had an urgent message for the teacher - it was only once, but it had to be in our lesson. I don't want people seeing me at my worst.

The fact is I perspired very easily from a young age, and it is very uncomfortable. There were times, for example, when playing trumpet, with lights overhead that I reminded myself of Louis Armstrong, who made a feature in his act about sweating - the pile of handkerchiefs on the piano which he would constantly dab his forehead with, and draw attention to. Like you, perspiration would be dripping off my back, and I can remember instances where in the middle of winter, I would be wearing a lightweight summer suit, shirt and tie, standing on a tube train platform with the sweat drying on my back and getting very cold. Of course the adrenalin and indoor heat, turned very icy when you were outside, and my suit would still be damp next morning, so it would be off to the dry cleaners, as I couldn't wear it a second time. I had two "playing suits", and they alternated but the dry cleaning bills were quite expensive. I have always liked being physically clean. These days I don't perspire quite so much, but even so, when we have weather like we have recently, I still shower in the mornings and then again in the evening, and often do in cooler times, if I have been dismantling some really dirty equipment. Of course, these days I shower in privacy.

All that said, I would still prefer lads (and girls) to make the decision to shower or not a matter of choice. Though Lynx won't make perspiration disappear it does mask it, and I am sure that many shower when they get home from school.At the very least adults should not be allowed into the shower area, unless there is some emergency - they should not be allowed to have their free peep show.

One final point, in answer to a message yesterday (I have forgotten the name as I have been busy recently and just saw it without registering the name) regarding making lads to PE in their underpants - what sort of creep makes boys do that?. Some underpants have fly holes not always secure to do up. Are such teachers like my one was and it gives them an extra cheap thrill. It is demeaning and it should be stopped if it is still going on.

Paul if nobody's ability to do the PE was affected then you have to wonder why more school's didn't simply do like yours did there. If I had been given a choice I'd have probably been boringly obvious and gone with a decent pair of trainers/plimsolls, a snazzy pair of non white shorts and a t-shirt. I very much doubt I'd have chosen shirtless for the gym.

James I don't think what you said is that unusual if you come from a large extended family who all live in the same close area. I had three cousins who went to the same school as me, two girls and a boy, all were much older than me so our paths did not cross but had we been the same ages who knows what might have happened.

Comment by: Alan on 17th May 2025 at 09:56I wish I had been a student at your school, Paul!. Your school embraced exactly the kind of regime I would have encouraged, you could wear what you like, so you were, all, automatically, relaxed and comfortable. You have also confirmed what I have always suspected, that most lads preferred to wear a top.
The shower thing - I like showers myself, and didn't object to taking them, it was our pervy P.E. teacher sizing us all up, so to speak, which I objected to.




I don't really understand this Alan. You objected to being told to do school PE in a bare chest total shirtless, but you actually liked taking showers where you lost the bottom half as well as the top half at the same time, kind of naked was fine but semi naked was not! Ugh?

I disliked showers for another reason at school in the early nineties. I had a cousin, Andrew, I was close to and the same age as me in another form at the same school but our two classes combined for boys PE at secondary school and we ended up together in all our PE lessons. This meant we had to shower together as well and everyone knew we were cousins and it made for a very awkward feeling situation for us both and we even had to put up with a 'pervy' comment from some idiot about teenage cousins sharing a shower together, even though we were doing it with 25 others. When we first knew we were going to share PE and did so we knew it was going to be very, very awkward to deal with and we were in one of those schools which did the majority of gym PE in bare chests. When we first saw each other naked in the school shower after PE in our first lesson when we were twelve (1990), both of us tried hard not to look at each other. Our parents all thought it was absolutely lovely that we did some things like this at school together and could look out for one another. Up to a point though.

The one positive we made of it was we became quite competitive with each other and our cross country times and strived to beat the other, having our own little contest within the class itself. I was fastest cousin most of the time.

Between 1990 and 1995 shirtless PE was continual and showers at that time were compulsory in our secondary for all boys and I think girls too.

Comment has been made replying to Paul 1975 that asserts the minority only like doing PE shirtless but unless I am mistaken wasn't the reverse point made here last year when the PE teacher asked and discovered three quarters of boys were fine with shirtless PE where he was.

The easy going school that you went to Paul bears no resemblance to mine that's for sure, but isn't it telling that even in your 'easy going' school on PE kits they were not prepared to allow that to play out when it came to the showers after PE and you fall into line with everywhere else at the time. It was the one immovable requirement that everywhere did at one point. Every day of the week forty or fifty years ago there must have been a million or more school kids getting slung in the showers after PE by the teachers! Possibly more. I was a confident school showerer and shirt remover. I even ran shirtless when I was at uni on a running team there, but that was all our choice to do that then. When I was at school proper I was told to but found it fine for me.

I was a bit like you Paul 1975, I quite liked going off to PE and stripping out of my uniform, especially on hot days, and if anything wished I could stay out of it for longer. Remembering how my bare back used to be dripping with sweat after PE on such days I cannot imagine not having the use of a shower to rid that sweat off me before putting on my shirt again. Perhaps because we knew we were all going in the showers come what may after PE lessons we just went for it much harder and faster in what we did because it didn't matter how sweaty we got, or muddy, we were sure to be cleaning up at the end. The fact that so many schools nowadays refuse to even offer it is an absolute disgrace. You cannot spray Lynx over sweat and call that freshening up.

At my secondary school in 1972 if you got an after school detention you had to report to the teacher on that day who was taking the detention class. This would often be a maths or english teacher which meant simply reporting to a certain classroom and being bored doing extra maths for an hour at a desk, but two of the PE teachers at our school also were on the rota for after school detention duty and if you found your detention was on a day when they were taking it you didn't sit on your bum at a desk but instead went direct to a changing room and got ready for an hour in the gym with them and others on detention, even girls if there were any, although it seemed mostly boys got them. If you had no PE kit on you that day then you went to detention in pants and nothing else, but even if you did have a kit on you it was a case of get along in your shorts just like normal PE was, and no top on, a bare chest was our school gym kit anyway. Some boys on detention actually preferred getting this as detention and finding out one of our PE teachers was taking it for an hour. You didn't know what you were getting until you turned up at the detention room if it was a desk detention or a gym one. The average detention seemed to have about 7 or 8 boys in it of an afterschool and if it was a gym one, I had a couple of these, we were made to feel like scum by the PE teacher in charge who would work us to the point of near collapse, and we would be made to shower after the detention too. Boys at school were known to actually get detentions for failing to shower after PE at school as well or not have the correct PE items. The PE detention could be taken inside or out and if the PE teacher on detention rota on any given day had a sense of humour failure he might even take you outside to get a soak in the rain with your shirt off to punish you. All boys in one of my classes got given a detention once and this happened to all of us, and I remember a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of aggro from these teachers on defenceless boys having to agree to their wilder ideas.

Paul 1975, that school of yours sounds to have offered quite lot more free choice and seems an outlier for the time compared to many others, including me. I went to PE exactly how they wanted me, not how I wanted, and wore the exact items I was told and nothing else. We were all expected to look the same, and when tops were off they were off for everyone, which was gym PE in my school. The shorts had to be the same colour and style.

Comment by: Paul 1975 on 17th May 2025 at 03:00



"...It was not quite so set in stone for PE like many of you guys when I was at secondary school, 1987 - 1992......."

I wish I had been a student at your school, Paul!. Your school embraced exactly the kind of regime I would have encouraged, you could wear what you like, so you were, all, automatically, relaxed and comfortable. You have also confirmed what I have always suspected, that most lads preferred to wear a top.

The shower thing - I like showers myself, and didn't object to taking them, it was our pervy P.E. teacher sizing us all up, so to speak, which I objected to.

Hi.

It was not quite so set in stone for PE like many of you guys when I was at secondary school, 1987 - 1992.

They were fairly relaxed in our school gym and you could make your own choice. Unlike many here I liked to get out of my restrictive school blazer, strangling necktie, shirt with top button done up, my long trousers and knee length socks and hard leather shoes, so I always preferred just getting along to gym in my bare chest and not bothering with either a tee shirt or a vest. I also liked the feel of being bare foot and did that too, and always took my pants off before putting on my PE shorts so I didn't put any clothes on that I'd worn for PE. I liked having an hour like that in PE doing gym.

How I seem to remember it was that it was a mixed bag among the boys, most did wear either a mix of tee-shirts or vests for PE, and boys like me who actually chose to wear nothing on top at all were the minority, I seem to remember about 5 or 6 of us would often be shirtless in the school gym for PE out of a class of about 20 to 25 of us. It was generally a mix of bare feet and trainers too, the majority wore trainers but not everyone chose to. Some who wore tee-shirts chose going bare foot, and some who went bare chests wore trainers.

Our teachers seemed fine with any combination going in the gym, and we had one quite young PE teacher in the late 80's who would frequently also do gym with us shirtless from time to time. I'm unsure why he chose the moments he did that, it was just here and there, rather random, but you noticed because teachers didn't usually take their own tops off to do PE with us.

I suppose this way kept us all happy. If you wanted your top off you could, if not you didn't. There were skins v shirts team games though where bare chests were asked of boys to make up the teams, I seem to recall it was mostly done for basketball, but do recall volleyball and indoor football the same.

I never ran a shirtless cross country, and reading this now I rather wish I'd been brave enough to give it a go. I don't think the teachers would have minded, but the weather when we did them always seemed the worst. We never ran cross country in the spring or summer. I did do a lot of summer sports outside with my top off like in the gym though.

When it came to showers that was where the freedom to choose ended. Nobody could refuse to shower properly at school and they made you do it, fully stripped bare with nothing on. Luckily for me I liked having a shower at school and didn't mind sharing the deed, and I do think making us do that was sensible even if it does give some people a nervous breakdown. School showers were never that bad in the end where they, after three or four years everyone was well used to doing that. I did notice how some teachers took more notice of us doing that than others. None ever attempted to share though.

Mark, I watched that and it's true. I did swimming for the final two years at primary school and the first two at secondary school, and swam at one of our swimming galas, a series of races for the stronger swimmers at school. At that age there did seem to be some quite big girls compared to us, I can remember them now and boys did seem to be less big than some girls before we had our own growth spurts. I did swimming and PE with girls and wasn't in the least bothered if they saw me shirtless or in a small pair of swim trunks, and if we had to share the gym PE with girls I was no less likely to choose to do it without my top on like I did just with boys only.

I think the only difference between people like me at school and others on here is that I didn't think too much about it and it seems like others did. My own physical appearance was not earth shatteringly awesome, I was a normal looking schoolboy with a slim to medium sized physique and a pale while skinned body much like others.

Here's another one of those children's schools TV programmes showing up a bunch of boys (bare chests of course!) and girls at the age of 12 for their differences at the same age, poolside.

There's a clearly overweight boy in this. I bet he was picked for that reason too. Imagine that, and for TV.

Everybody's Different - https://youtu.be/QyJAo5SAT68?feature=shared&t=277

Comment by: Martin on 15th May 2025


What some people may not get Martin is that it's very hard for men and boys to admit to certain feelings, even online from relatively safe anonymity.

It must have been a very big deal if so many of you are now saying things like this after such a lengthy time has passed in most cases.

I was a crushingly shy schoolboy in my youth (the late 80s and 90s) and was not very sporting at all, I'd much rather have gone and read a book or done something else. I knew I was going to find comprehensive school PE really difficult and so it proved. I remember a chat with my parents and it was actually my dad who first informed me that thought I would have to shower at school after PE because he had done this. I thought he was joking, and remember saying - but they can't make you do that can they - and he told me they could. I remember being absolutely frantic about this discovery as an eleven year old, still about six months away from even starting comprehensive school and the transition arrangement to go up.

In the June we went up to the school for a pre-arranged visit where our teacher guide took us all around and tapped on various doors where a teacher would come out and say hello. I especially remember the metalwork teacher and looking in and being interested in what they were doing. Then we walked off to the school sports hall and the door was already wide open and you could hear the lesson going on, so we waited outside while the attention of the PE teacher was got from our teacher guide, I could already see a few boys inside and none seemed to have a top on. The PE teacher came out and invited us to quickly look inside the sports hall and I couldn't believe it but everyone in the lesson was shirtless. I had so many questions but he didn't take any and we went off quite quickly, but the boys in there stuck in my head. I'd never done PE like that before and absolutely didn't want to very much either. I was thin with a very slim waist.

So there was this prospect of doing PE shirtless to come and showers as well, everything that set me off into big time worry about myself and I was horribly concerned by all of it. Plus I was already informed they were going to make me play regular football and rugby, neither which I had any liking for at all and actually couldn't stand the thought of.

On top of all that, I was a very early onset puberty at age eleven as well, this only became apparent to me when I started and had to use the showers for the first time. I was the only boy in the whole class with very obvious signs of puberty and some very thick and noticeable hair and size. I would have done anything to avoid the school showers anyway, but this made it so much worse and got me targetted with comments like - do you stroke it to make it that size - a reference to the hair I had and being a bit bigger than the others. There was some really awful shower taunting and the teacher took no notice of it. My dad had been right, they could make you take these showers at school and there was little say I got about it, horrible when it means being naked and self conscious. There was always some messing around in them and comments, the quiet boys always the targets.

There was no top to wear for PE in the school sports hall, just like I'd seen on our visit. I really struggled with this requirement because although I hit puberty very early I didn't feel I had the upper body to match and was forever thinking I was not getting as big as I should with my body and disliked even having to look at my own shirtless body in my early to mid teenage years. Nearly everything I did in the school sports hall didn't need me to be shirtless, and I was often quietly angry about it to myself when I started, but I was also highly aware when I began these kind of PE lessons how much my heart would pump faster as I got changed and went to PE in my shirtless body, I could feel my heart easy with my shirt off and it raced through the nerves this whole situation at school gave me.

For me, all this was torture for a long time. I built up a tolerance to it but never got used to it.

The PE teachers were all fine, but despite that, none seemed to have any sense that some of us find all these things extremely difficult and hugely nerve wracking.

Why was it important to PE teachers to make us do the lesson shirtless anyway, and I could never believe how madly severe and strict they all were about imposing mandatory communal showers on the whole class after PE, hurrying us all up to strip naked and get in as if our lives depended on it. That is not a pleasant experience for shy and quite lads.

When I enrolled at secondary school the uniform requirement for boys was long trousers or short trousers.There wasn't a debate about this phenomenon at home,my parents agreed that I had the physique and the statue to continue wearing short trousers as I had only a 26"waist and could wear shorts with a two inch inside leg.When I attended my new school I informed my mother that there were over 200 boys wearing long trousers and I was they only boy in my class in shorts,to which she replied'you are not an ordinary boy,'

David Borthwick has natural understated comedic talent and I also found myself amused and chuckling away at a few of those comments.

I also take any top off over my head (how else) by grabbing the back of the neck and sliding it forward in one move. That's the easy way, I have even been known to remove short sleeved shirts that way because I can't be bothered with the buttons! Isn't the other way of doing it, by grabbing the front crossing your arms the way that men like strippers do it to look all sexy and suggestive. They never pull from the back of the neck do they and over the front. I've never even thought about it before, that's just come to me as I ponder my reply here.

Borthwick, look what you've started! Sorry, I meant David. Discussion on surname only by teachers has been a previous mention on here. Is it rude, or is it practical, or something else? There were about 3 Chris's, 3 Robert's and 3 David's in one of my classes at school, names were often duplicated two or three times, sometimes four times a class. Mine wasn't ever though. Some people don't care if they are called by their surname only, others do. Most of mine used my surname alone, but there was one who called me Terry and it did make him seem friendlier at the time.

Good points also about changing rooms. We were introduced at a young age to the need for communal hygiene that was strictly expected in most schools after PE lessons but it was also that communality and often the dampness of everything that went together to spread things about. The school cleaners were known to clean the classrooms but did they go and clean the changing rooms, and what about those shower areas, who cleaned them properly each day, regular school cleaning ladies didn't do that did they, or maybe they did? Any old school cleaners out there let us know.

Regards all this measuring and perfection. Perfection isn't perfect because if you are perfect then the only way is down. Poor Mickey will now be wondering what the perfect belly button is. Isn't what you get there down to how they snip you off at birth? You need a midwife who can tie a nice little bow or something, or maybe I'm completely and idiotically wrong.

At school, or even out of school, children pick up on any kind of perceived imperfections going don't they and some will pick them out on others. It's probably surprising how few of us made personal comments to each other in PE lessons where we stripped off and showered with no clothes on, all our potential imperfections laid bare for scrutiny, and that is probably at the root of why so many hated such things.

David Borthwick on 12th May 2025 at 22:31, what great comments. Your well made points made me laugh. I think you should have just gone ahead and booted the football into the middle of next week. Not sure how your games teacher would have reacted, but it would have been a memorable moment. I used to feel sorry for kids who so obviously had no interest in football, but unlike my two older brothers, I just did. My dad always followed football and perhaps was waiting for a son to come along who showed more interest. He eventually took me to my first football match when I was 7

Whenever I took a top off, I was always a, ‘Grab the back of the neck and pull off over the head forward in one go’ type of person, and I still am.

I really do hope the 231mm size you gave is the distance between your nips and not the size of them…but as this measurement transfers closely to the magic 9 inches, then yes this must prove that you are indeed, perfect :)

Thanks Greg for that wonderful reply to me, I really appreciate how you are prepared to answer so fully to anything asked.

Isn't it often the way that those with the least to worry about often are the ones that spend time worrying, such as overly shy boys with good looks and a physical appearance to match. Often, like the 'ugly naturist' comment that was made, those who are not as great to look at don't seem to care much about it. There seems to me to be a sweet spot where it's good to be, with just the right amount of self awareness without it being a problem turning into excessive self consciousness or shyness, and too little self awareness that can maybe make you act over confident, arrogantly or inappropriately.

I remember being told in my younger days that girls really were attracted to bad boys for some reason, but then I met someone who told me she liked shy lads a lot, so take your pick!

I've actually got a hair comment too from school. What a silly thing to suggest a lad wafting his hair from his eyes like himself too much. At least they didn't tell him to cut it. I remember having a lot of hair at one point and a side parting with it combed from left to right. I always liked it looking just right but if it was windy at school it blew everywhere and looked a mess and made me self conscious. I always took a comb to school. One breezy day I was caught looking in a doorway window while outside using it as a mirror to check my hair and was accused of being vain or something like that by a teacher who approached out of nowhere. It was lunch hour. He then ruffled my hair up a bit. This was in my primary school when I was 10! I remember this phase because for some reason I had to keep looking to make sure I looked alright in front of a reflective window when outside. I hated wind blowing my hair all weird at school. But this period passed and I think the solution was to get a shorter cut or something.

The while still at primary school someone told me I walked with 'a bounce' which I didn't understand. I went home and told my mum and she agreed! I then used to walk past shop windows in town and try to see what they were on about and could never understand it or see it. I remember having to get up and walk to the front in assembly one day and was intensely thinking about the way I was walking up front. This must have gone on for a year or so, self conscious about the way I was walking, as a primary age boy. This phase also passed and was never mentioned again, and still remains mysterious to me because I walked quite normally as far as I could tell, but it fed into self doubting.

I don't know about you Greg, or anyone else here, but I always heard the criticism loudly and tended not to hear or absorb any praise. I feel the criticism from family, friends and school teachers always outweighed all the praise. This may or may not be true however.

I spent six years at a grammar school in the 1950s, and in all that time the boys in the school gym there wore an all white PE kit of plimsolls, short white socks, small white shorts and a simple white t-shirt, no vests, only t-shirts, so not even a bare shoulder.

When we were outside we were always covered up too, and wore the same white t-shirts for summer athletics. At no time were we ever asked to do PE lessons with our t-shirts off and remain without as a bare chest.

The only time any of us saw each other without clothing on was while changing and obviously there was the mandatory shower to be taken without fail.

We did some swimming but not a huge amount, and went on a couple of school trips, one involved time at the coast where we swam in the sea, but but that was the sum total of it, not a lot really.

We never even did any of this PE shirts against bare chest skins type of thing that seems to have become popular later on.

When I joined the RAF on leaving school we would do PT sessions and none of those involved us doing the PT without a proper PT kit on which always included top, vests permitted as well as t-shirts and plimsolls. Even in the RAF it was uncommon to see anyone doing PT without full and proper kit on.

But it does seem to me that somewhere along the line, making note that the boys of 1959 are shirtless for their grammar PE, after I went to school there became this new fashion within schools to discard the need for t-shirts doing PE and go to a very basic, almost beach style way of doing things that become quite widespread across most schools for a long period of time and boys of the 70s and 80s seem to be common here saying these things more than others. I had no boys, only girls, so can't compare.

The effect of this on some people appears to have been deeply profound. In my RAF days there would not have been one of us who would have hesitated to do our PT in a bare chest if that was asked of us but obviously going to school is slightly different as a minor.

Our secondary school was very keen on school PE for boys being done in bare 'skins' chests. I remember having to remove and not wear a top in PE over many years there. Not baring your chest in gym PE would be very unusual. None of it voluntary, all teacher/school instructed.

Schools used to send regular newsletters home didn't they in the days before online was a thing. Our secondary school did this with a monthly A4 we got given to take home. I should think most people just read them, kept them a few days and threw them away.

When I was clearing some of my late parents bits up a couple of years ago I discovered they'd kept literally everything related to my schooldays. Photo's I didn't even know existed, even official class ones I couldn't even remember being taken, and a whole raft of paperwork and school letters, including the monthly newsletters I would bring home.

In one of them from the time I was in secondary school it is clear the school was attempting to deflect parents from making contact about certain PE related issues at the time.

In a newsletter home dated 23rd September 1977, by which time I myself was actually a fourth former so not a new boy, there is a piece about incorrect PE kit being brought into school by many new pupils and reminding parents what is expected. There is also a line which says - "I would like to remind parents that we do not need telephone calls to school regarding PE unless it is medical related. All our pupils are expected to take part in PE and shower fully unless there is a valid medical reason not to do so. No other reasons are valid. Please remind your child of this, make sure they bring the correct items and a towel."

This gives me the impression that in 1977 my school in that month must have had some parents ring the school up and mention this. It could have been girls parents or boys, it doesn't say. Something about the newbies of 1977 got up the nose of somebody, the school receptionists were a bossy bunch of women, I could see them complaining about moaning parents on the phone. The newsletters were written by the headmaster or his deputy and and signed off by both.

These newsletters had no photos on them, it was just type written but they did put various school PE sporting achievements into them and the results with our names.

When I started in in 1975 they listed the boys PE (gym) kit as "boys go shirtless", so that was quite clear to everyone male at school. When we did team games in gym we simply had to wear a silly little annoying blue or yellow ribbon over one shoulder and under the other arm diagonally across the body to denote which team we were.

I think most of us at school in those days had far better body image than they do today with young people wanting to constantly modify what they look like or stick another tattoo on themselves. We shared showers with each other, did our PE without our shirts on and most of us were fairly rounded sensible and natural looking youngsters not wishing to be something we were not.

Comment by: Mark on 12th May 2025 at 15:46

Hi Mark, I’ll try to get this out of the way first. I never liked the term, ‘Adonis’ but I have dug myself into a bit of a hole here haven’t I, which I sort of dreaded. I just wanted to try to expel a few things from memories over the years, and I did have a few strange moments when growing up. All I’ve written was just how it was, and I do understand it could be taken as a writing by someone with an inflated ego about themselves, but I’m just not like that. I do come from a good looking family, so there’s not much I can do about that, but at times this didn’t mix too well with someone who hated attention and was always a bit self-conscious. I certainly used to get fed up with older girls asking me about my older brother, who’d just left the school the year before I arrived at 11. My sister, 12 years older than me, was the one in the family who lapped all this up much more than myself or my brothers ever did.

I think we all just had a slightly different look about us somehow, maybe because of our German/Northern European background? This very appearance our headmaster seemed to dislike about us so much, as he’d been in the RAF during the war and so hated the Germans, so both my brother and myself immediately copped it from him. For instance, my elder brother’s hairstyle always had a long, floppy fringe, that used to hang down when he worked at his school desk, so that when he looked up he had to move it out of his eyes, as you would. Can you believe that the headmaster once complained to my German mother at a parents’ evening, that he thought my brother fancied himself rather too much as he was always running his fingers through his hair! What utter nonsense! Thankfully I never had such a hairstyle as my hair was always an unruly thick mop that stuck up everywhere. But my sister did say she’d swap her straight hair for mine anytime, which I would have happily done!

No, I certainly didn’t ever feel full of confidence when I had to get my kit off, and would describe myself as being naturally bodily shy from an early age. I was even uncomfortable wearing swimming trunks during school swimming in front of the staring girls, and never liked school showers. I remember I was the first one out of there my first time, and already with my shirt back on before I’d dried myself, which got me my first shouting at by our gym teacher. My first school shower experience was delayed but reinforced that it was coming, due to having to attend gym for weeks but not being able to do the lesson due to still recovering from a bad leg fracture that happened during the summer between the two schools. So it was towards the end of the second term before I eventually arrived, by which time the other boys were all so used to showering, having shared that first experience together; but I wasn’t, as I’d missed all that. This seemed to make the moment of my first school shower even more awkward for me, as for weeks the others had been asking me when I’d be joining them in there, so that when this time did arrive, I felt like I was even more on display. But at least by then I’d already discovered that I was very average down there, so like all the others, just got used to it by becoming resigned to it… rather like I’d had to get used to the morning ritual of naked bed baths given by two nurses before I could eat my cornflakes every morning, when previously in hospital with my leg in traction for months on the children’s ward; I really hated that too.

Now the measuring student moment. He seemed to just appear one day after we’d all got changed for gym. I don’t remember being told, but perhaps the others had been. I think we all found it quite interesting actually, as I'm sure I remember him explaining about what he was doing, and at least it was a change from the usual shouting we all had to put up with from our gym teacher.

He seemed keen on the differences of measurements between joints, and how these all differed slightly on us all. So things like wrist to elbow; elbow to shoulder etc. Then similarly on our legs. I do remember he even measured our hands and fingers, then writing all this down. I know he spent several minutes on each of us as we stood on the bench in front of him, while others waited their turn and just sat and watched. It does seem strange now I agree, but things like this must have gone on somewhere if someone was doing a particular study of research I suppose. I think he seemed to be interested in how we all differed from one another as much as anything else, and in some way trying to confirm a theory of how he thought we’d be when grown up. We couldn’t possibly understand any of this at the time, and so just did as asked. But having given this some thought again after all these years, he must have been doing some research for his thesis or something, as all degree subject students would have to do. Perhaps it was something to do with a growing body during the years of puberty? Thankfully we were all allowed to keep our shorts on!

People describing their body shapes and the discussion about being measured (never happened to us, how bizarre!) leads me back to being very self conscious about my belly button more than anything else. I didn't mind shirtless PE in theory (mainly shirts and skins) and showers were just something you did. But revealing my upper body, including the putie navel, was the awful thing!

It's funny in a way, looking back now. No idea why they are so unusual.

Comment by: Jeff on 12th May 2025 at 20:38




"........Without wanting to single out Phil's young son, I'll speak in more general terms. It seems to me that the average twenty something year old nowadays acts like anything that happened before they were born was unlikely to have really happened if it wasn't exactly the same as they live their lives now......



Some people consider the imposition of shirtless PE or mandatory showering as abusive acts, especially when demanded of those who were unhappy about it or shy, sensitive or unconfident. I disagree, that is a poor argument to make. Making boys like many of us on here run cross country in our skins against the elements or do general PE shirtless was not abusive it was more about self discipline and moving us out of a place where we might have felt more comfortable to remain in, and there's nothing wrong with that. Pushing the limits of our endurance maybe. That's how I saw it and still do.

Over the past day or two I've heard a 101 VE Day veteran say he doesn't think the young of today have what it takes to defend our country or hold the same values he did when he was 20. You sit up and listen to men like that when they say that. It was one of the saddest things I've heard anyone say all year. I do hope he's wrong. Some of the things we went through at school as youngsters are nothing compared to what men his age did as youngsters......."

A few comments, only, Jeff. A man of 101 would have gone through things we can't even imagine. No doubt his parents would have been affected by the great depression in the late 1920s and throughout his childhood the ugly machinations of Nazism in Germany from 1933, when it must have been obvious war was coming, then the unimaginable horrors of the war itself. That said, all of us think the young people of today are not so good/tough/robust as we were. No doubt in 30 years time the teenagers of today will think exactly the same. It's human nature. That said, I am sure boys in the nineteen thirties were not preoccupied with their pronouns, and fretting they were born the wrong sex, or even the wrong species. Neither did we - or I HOPE we didn't!. I never thought I was a tabby cat or an Aberdeen Angus. I doubt any of us did. The longer school goes on, the more we are encouraging teenagers to act like children. I learned more in my first year at work, and in the band, than I did in the whole of my secondary education. These days they are restraining the teenagers from growing up and finding independence, which I think is as ugly as the mad doctors (and politicians) who want children to be allowed to take "puberty blockers". I am convinced that this "control" the state wants over what are virtually young men is what sparks a lot of the bad behaviour we see - low level vandalism, smoking marijuana etc. Let them leave and find that independence we all need. Prolonging childhood is the problem, not what they are not "allowed" to wear - as a result today a lot of young men and women seem helpless - expecting help from "the bank of mum and dad", an expression that was unheard of twenty years ago. If you wanted something you had to go out and earn the money to pay for it. These days, through no fault of their own, they are kept in school till they are 18, if they have no job to go to (and finding a job is a grown up adventure in itself), thanks to the dreadful economic policies of so many governments of the past few decades - really reaching a crescendo today with an inept Chancellor.

On this never ending question of communal showers and minimal kit - when you are at school the teachers (God help us!) were acting in "loco parentis", but I am willing to believe that no parent of a 16 year old stands over him when he is in the shower to ensure he washes properly, then or now. If they did they would be regarded with deep suspicion by both their son and the neighbours. As people keep bringing up physicality, lets be frank about it - they mature much earlier and these days a lad of 12 looks not much different to how we did at 15/16.

I am honestly glad that Phil's son can't imagine the sort of stuff we went through, and I hope that many, many more are treated with dignity and respect now. Teachers demanded "respect", but it is never to be demanded - only earned.

David Borthwick makes some excellent points - what PRACTICAL use was football to most of us?. - except the very few who might have had a chance of carving a career out of it, and I believe in natural talent. If a lad has a gift it will develop naturally - you can;t instill it in everybody, and for those really proficient, an hours lesson will be neither here nor there, and, like David, our changing room and shower often smelt worse than a zoo-keepers boots.

Comment by: David Borthwick on 12th May 2025 at 22:31


Great comments! Quite accurate and humorous David.

I spent many miserable mornings in PE over autumn and winter continually being told to and having to demonstrate how to dribble a football between my legs across the grass. WHY? This is not a skill that has served me any purpose in life whatsoever, but week after week on wet grass the PE teacher was on our backs about learning this vital skill as he saw it. The only thing I ever really wanted to do with the ball was boot it right over the fences and into the nearby back gardens.

Rope climbing. We were made to reach the top, I got rope burns coming back down too quickly, sliding rather than climbing back down. I couldn't get back down quick enough. What practical use is rope climbing unless you want to be a sailor climbing the rigging. If I want to climb up to something I will get a ladder.

The school showers - 30 boys all pretending they are fine being told to do this in a stripped naked state with each other but at least three quarters just wanting to get the hell out of there as quick as possible, dry and cover up and pretend we haven't been clocking all the ample selection of willy's on display when we have. The great lie of the school showers. Never mention another classmate's penis even though we're all there with them out up close. The great silence. I first noticed at school how much they wiggle when you walk with nothing on. You cannot walk and keep one still. I wish I'd had a brother.

Being a skin in PE and always feeling victimised by it. Skins again. Discovering there are two ways boys take their tops off, are you a grab the back of the neck and pull off over the head forward in one go, or the arms across your chest and pull up from the bottom and off inside out type. If there was a third way I didn't see it. I was the first.

The entire PE staff who had a total phobia about using anyone's christian name. How rude was that! Did they even know our christian names? Was it a sign of weakness to slip up and use a christian name. How they liked emphasising Borthwick. They were Sir of course, or Mister.

Bare feet. Don't dare mark the sports hall floor with your wrong trainers. Bare feet were common. I was drawn to looking at other bare feet, was anyone else? I thought they were looking at mine. Feet could be ugly, the boy with huge size 12s, or really nice. I noticed the nice ones, just like a shiny pair of new shoes. Our bare feet stayed only in the gym class. Outside, never! I'd have to use the nail brush on my feet as well as my fingers if that was the case. Obsessions about fungal foot infections, the dreaded V word.

I had an aversion to dirt and germs and sharing them with others. The changing room was an overused, damp odd smelling flea pit. A place of hygiene, a place of speading anything going around more like.

Sudden unannounced press ups. When the teacher had a spare moment, more press ups, just for the hell of it. Keep going until you fall flat on your face on the verge of an asthma attack. Feel unwell, the PE teacher suddenly becoming your qualified GP and pronouncing you're alright while gasping for every breath or struggling with a pulled muscle or tendon. Suspected fractured bone, it can wait until we finish. Now do the parallel bars with your broken wrist.

My rather attractive nips are 231mm Greg, I'm nothing but precise, that appears to be the magic 9 inches, you needed to know that I think you'll agree, am I perfect then?

It must be a year since I last looked in on this thread. Plenty of reading to catch up on.

Without wanting to single out Phil's young son, I'll speak in more general terms. It seems to me that the average twenty something year old nowadays acts like anything that happened before they were born was unlikely to have really happened if it wasn't exactly the same as they live their lives now.

I did the same Phil as you.

Some people consider the imposition of shirtless PE or mandatory showering as abusive acts, especially when demanded of those who were unhappy about it or shy, sensitive or unconfident. I disagree, that is a poor argument to make. Making boys like many of us on here run cross country in our skins against the elements or do general PE shirtless was not abusive it was more about self discipline and moving us out of a place where we might have felt more comfortable to remain in, and there's nothing wrong with that. Pushing the limits of our endurance maybe. That's how I saw it and still do.

Over the past day or two I've heard a 101 VE Day veteran say he doesn't think the young of today have what it takes to defend our country or hold the same values he did when he was 20. You sit up and listen to men like that when they say that. It was one of the saddest things I've heard anyone say all year. I do hope he's wrong. Some of the things we went through at school as youngsters are nothing compared to what men his age did as youngsters.

Comment by: Phil M on 12th May 2025 at 14:54


"I have got a 22 year old son with quite a bit of streetwise about him, university educated, has travelled about a lot in his young life, who does not believe me when I tell him that when I was at school back in the 1970s the PE teachers made boys like me run three or four mile cross country runs barechested and even barefoot, and not always in the best of weather.

He will not believe this......."

Phil I am sure he doesn't believe that you are lying. I think it is great that somebody in their early 20s was at school at a time when PE teachers were human beings and didn't demoralise them, use physical punishment on them, or demean them. He sounds, in fact, a bit like Simon W a few weeks ago who is a modern PE teacher that doesn't force lads to do things against their will.

It must sound draconian to younger men what some of us went through, not even that many years ago - our dump used corporal punishment up to the last day.

I hope more and more lads get treated better as time goes on, especially as they have to endure school for longer, so that the old farts of the past really are consigned to the dustbin of history, where they belong.

My primary school didn't have showers but there was definitely one end of the changing room that could have been adapted into them and looked like that sort of an area. Until I came onto this site and read other people mentioning it, and also saw the well remarked showers clip from the primary school that was filmed that got a lot of attention, I would never have imagined any primary/middle schools would have bothered with such things and that it only applied to the eleven plus age group as a starting point.

Greg, I'm intrigued by your 'student' visitor doing his anatomical research and find it all a bit strange that one. How can anyone say to a young person they are well proportioned while they are still growing? Who decides these things anyway? Human beings are not all meant to be the same shapes and sizes, lengths and whatever else. I couldn't resist the nipple measure and came out at 9 inches on a 40 inch chest. I guess that's good? What does it matter. I looked this up a bit myself this afternoon, there is even meant to be a perfect triangle from navel to nipples, who knew! The worst thing you can start doing is start measuring every aspect of yourself and deciding you are not exactly as someone somewhere has decided you should be. I always thought I was going to grow up to be well over six feet tall, I was five nine at about 13 or 14, but I remember when I was about 16 suddenly noticing I had not grown in the previous year or more and seemed to have hit my adult height, which I had, I didn't grow taller after 14 years old. I was quite disappointed by that at the time.

BMI is another thing, Body Mass Index. Working your own one out can be quite misleading and tell normal height and weight people they are fat.

Just what did this person measure on you Greg, and did anyone actually tell any of you why they were there doing what they did? From what you say Greg you sound like quite the adonis, tall, handsome and well shaped, but did this give you good self esteem in general or when faced with getting your kit off? Someone has already mentioned whether it is only the unsporty kids that have excessive body shyness issues, what's your view, I think it makes no difference myself, anyone can, even the best lookers, otherwise why do we see so many ugly naturists!

I have got a 22 year old son with quite a bit of streetwise about him, university educated, has travelled about a lot in his young life, who does not believe me when I tell him that when I was at school back in the 1970s the PE teachers made boys like me run three or four mile cross country runs barechested and even barefoot, and not always in the best of weather.

He will not believe this, yet I did this at least 20 or 30 times just like that, told in the changing room to go outside like we went to gym itself. The reason for doing it barefoot was I think down to a combination of practical and a bit of toughening up that some PE teachers seemed to favour. Cross country was a lot of soft, earthy ground we ran on which would wreck trainers but also it was often waterlogged in large areas and we had a couple of actual water features including a shallow brook we ran along for about 50 metres up to our ankles in water too.

Our tender and young bare feet proved to be surprisingly resilient to running on this type of terrain, but I remember how ludicrous it sounded when we first went out like that and felt upset about it. What a thing to inflict on 12 and 13 year olds. Girls would never be asked to run this way. The barechested part of cross country running was something that became strangely enjoyable in a way it's hard to describe these days but just being outside, feeling the weather on you, even if it was not warm and you were wet, with others the same, even if we hadn't chosen it, did seem to foster that cliched old lads bonding sensation without any doubt.

There was a water trough thing outside the PE block that we jumped our feet into to get rid of a bit of the dirt before going in and taking a proper shower to clean up fully.

Not one bit of this does my own son believe, and that's why pictoral evidence is so important. I wish I had some to prove it in my case, but I can't even find anything anywhere that clearly shows this method of PE, perhaps not surprising, who took cameras out on school runs in the 70s thinking of future history archiving and changes in how society views behaviour. If anyone knows of any pictoral evidence of any such PE that I've described I'd like to see it.

I did tougher things as a child in school PE like that style of cross country than I've ever been asked to do as an adult by anyone. Makes you think doesn't it. I don't know whether it was acceptable or not, but we seemed to get through it and learn to tolerate and adapt to such ways.

They even used to plimsoll whack boys caught not showering at school. I always remember one man just standing around with a plimsoll always in hand as if looking for an opportunity to use it. If he had to come up to you to tell you to shower you could get a whack on the backside, or even one for just being too slow. One lesson there was a bit of rowdy nonsense going on as we finished showering but I was minding my own business and a teacher ran in fully dressed with water still going and clouted the heads of everyone in sight with the plimsoll quite hard, including mine, making us run out, and I'd done nothing wrong and was just getting on with things. Again, something I've told my son in the past but he thinks it couldn't have been like I said it was, but it was and I know it was.