Burnley Grammar School

I went to school at a similar time to the film, and certainly Joe's comments/experience 100% apply to me.

We had very strict PE lessons, mostly circuit training type activities, positions changed on the teachers whistle. No stopping or talking was allowed and we were shouted at with surnames always used. Additionally we were punished with the slipper and even caning (which was rare but did happen in PE).

Kit inside was bare feet, no shirts, no pants; kit for cross country was shorts and plimsolls, stripped to the waist even in winter. There were no exceptions to this kit, so no matter how cold it was, thus if it was a cross country day we all ran shirtless.

Always showers afterwards, again no exceptions

Regards Birth Of A Nation - Matthew I agree on the casual use of the paddle or bat that was used to hit the boy in the PE lesson a couple of times. It was the casual use of it that really struck me (excuse the pun). Never saw anything like it at my school from anybody, and I'm sure there were some deserving provocations at times. If I had been that boy I'd have been home and told my parents the first time it happened and I can assure you they'd both have been up the school first thing next day demanding answers. Quite rightly. Why did so many decent boys quietly accept being treated so unfairly if this was, and I agree it was, a fair representation of some schools at the time.

There is a huge distinction between that kind of discipline/punishment on what in essence looked like it was given to a boy who probably was a generally decent pupil in truth and hadn't really done anything much wrong, and the other older boy who was demanding money with menaces with a knife and threatening to cut the c*ck off the younger boy before getting caught and given what for in the headmasters office, deservedly I thought in that case. Although was the way he was held down by all the stuff actually even lawful, it didn't look like it could have been even for about 1983. It was at least something good to see that there was no tolerance of bullying of that type. A small positive from an otherwise negative dramatisation.

In the PE lessson, just to say Ryan I don't think being told to take his shirt off was meant to be the punishment, that was the couple of hits he took. The shirt he had on looked like he'd shown up to PE in his normal all day school white long sleeved shirt so clearly he would not be allowed to do PE in that by most teachers you'd think. Everyone else was in a white short sleeved t-shirt type top after all.

But how demeaning is it to be bent over so casually like that in front of your class and given those hits on the backside like that, one given after his shirt was off too. This is definitely the kind of behaviour that absolutely kills some kids self esteem if they are prone to it. This drama worked very well as I immediately disliked the PE teacher. I can't say any PE teacher ever openly swore at us one to one or as a group and found the boxing gloves and w*nking comment to that other boy nothing I ever came across. I hope nobody else here did either.

The old lady in the office reminded me of the woman who was librarian in our school who didn't actually seem to like the fact that anyone who was a pupil at our school could come into the library to read, get books out or study and treated us all as an inconvenience to her despite that being her reason for employment in the school. I don't know what else she ever thought she was there for.

You described your school recently Alan and when I'd finished with the drama I thought it sounded like the kind of school you described on here. No wonder you have such bitter memories.

Thank you, Ryan, for linking this excellent film, which really took me back to my PE classes in the 80ies. The whistle, the barking, the whole environment, which you never really forget. The PE teacher in his strictness and unforgiveness quite resembled my own, in a certain way they all seemed to be similarly unpleasant and demeaning. In my comprehensive they were very strict on PE kit, which actually meant they were extremely draconian on imposing a shirtless regime on us boys without any exceptions. We were shirtless not only in the gym but also for cross-country, for athletics and sports such as badminton or table-tennis where there was absolutely no need for it. Very surprising to see the boys in the film are actually required to wear a top for PE.

The PE scenes in the "Birth of a Nation" film were strange to me

Certain at my school (state grammar - mid 70's), boys were slippered, but not chased around the gym. We certainly didn't wear full kit, in fact indoors we all had to strip to only shorts, and even cross country was always shirtless. I would be surprised that everyone has such perfect kit, even in a middle class school, let alone a working class one like this.

Ash, Tanya and Andy, You are perfectly free to scoff - perhaps you didn't have a bent PE teacher. We did.

As others have alluded to, you got some very strange characters in the teaching "profession" in the days before checks were made on the background of some of these individuals, like putting an alcoholic in charge of a distillery.

Good film that. Surprised how it concluded.

I wasn't sure whether the sex ed teacher and the spanking porn mag being produced with the head teacher was meant to be serious or a quite dark comedy moment.

"but we are a spanking school, why not show them, avail them of some of the fringe benefits".

I wish I'd had him for sex education.


No showers after PE at this school, or at least they didn't show them. Kind of surprising because so many of these kind of gripping dramas would finish off those PE scenes with the almost obligatory communal shower moments and as it was forty years ago likely have shown everything without fear.

I don't remember 1983 feeling quite so grim though and I was there.

Thank you for sharing that link Ryan. I'd never seen it before but viewing it made me realise how lucky I must have been to be at school just a few years below you!
I was open mouthed at the PE teacher whacking lads across the backside with his plimsoll. That kind of thing just didn't happen in my school. Which is not to say PE teachers couldn't be strict and bark orders at us, they certainly did. But the more violent aspect of the discipline they used must have been phased out during the 1980s, I suppose.
Although it surprised you, the main aspect of that clip that rang true for me was the boy being made to do the class without a top! Our regular PE uniform was also white T-shirt and shorts but it wasn't unusual for boys to be ordered to do the lesson with a bare chest. That would always happen if you forgot your T-shirt but sometimes also as a punishment. I'd agree that was about control and discipline, it happened to me when I was about 14 and I do remember feeling quite small and self conscious being the only boy in the class without my top on.

What a monumental hypocrite your teacher was Harrison (see what I did there), hating the sound of his own name.

I got away with mostly Jimbo in gym and around school. Highly unoriginal I know.

I will watch the school drama Birth Of A Nation, an interesting find. I dipped in quickly at a few points only. Like others, I have never seen or heard of it before myself either.

Ryan. Thankyou very much for posting the film. At first it looks like a fly-on-the-wall documentary doesn't it. I have never heard of it before and like you I was also at school in the year it says it comes from and must be about your age too.

I think I'm now suffering from PTSD having listened to the whistle and shouty echoey sounds of the school gym again bringing those days back so vividly on a Sunday night forty years later.

I wanted to take that paddle and stick it right across the backside of the PE teacher there and for good measure across his jaw too. How easily we forget that as recently as 1983 teachers were still allowed to do that whenever they fancied in school.

My school wasn't so poor at the one dramatised here despite so much to relate with. For starters we had no fat boys like the one in this and like you alluded to, this school looks like the type that would go without the full white PE kit doesn't it. My own gym was trainers with white soles, shorts and absolutely no chance of being allowed shirt tops in the gym among the boys, we were always skins unless there was a team game and some bibs got dished out, which wasn't often anyway.

I often think of schooldays being the best days of my life and then I get a rude awakening again to make me think again about that. They aren't really are they for most of us.

I shared the same surname as a PE teacher whose pupil I was.

Guess what.....I was also the only lad in his class who he called by christian first name because he obviously didn't want to shout out his own surname anytime. Funny that.

Lads in school all called each other by surnames, or nicknames based on surnames almost always in secondary school. None ever used each others christian first names. Was that something for others here I wonder? When I left school and kept in touch with a couple of lads we quickly started using first names to address each other outside of the school environment. Again, funny that.

Does anyone remember the TV screening of ‘Birth of a nation’ and the PE master featured in it? I must have been about 13 and I remember quite clearly watching it with my parents. It all related in many aspects to my own PE lesson, being called by our surname, having orders shouted at you, being given the plimsoll for punishment. However, I remember being quite surprised by the PE uniform shown in the film, T-shirts and trainers. I was astounded that in one scene the punishment given to one of the boys who had the wrong PE top was to be made to take it off as at our school boys always had to strip to the waist for any sports activity and also had to be barefoot in indoor PE. It suddenly occurred to me that making us boys strip to the waist was about control and discipline and that in other schools PE masters where more easy-going. In any case, I left school in 1988 without ever having had the privilege to wear a PE top.
https://youtu.be/L39HdCCdnl0?t=939

Comment by: Tanya on 2nd April 2023 at 15:48
You are wildly sexualising a normal situation Alan with that comment. You clearly see the body without clothing only in a sexual way. I think this is because you must have been a child in school who discovered same sex attraction. Are you gay Alan and is this the root cause of your issue here?



^VERY MUCH THIS ABOVE YES^

You are wildly sexualising a normal situation Alan with that comment. You clearly see the body without clothing only in a sexual way. I think this is because you must have been a child in school who discovered same sex attraction. Are you gay Alan and is this the root cause of your issue here?

Maybe PE teachers should supervise wearing a blindfold in the changing room if showers are going on.

Lance, Robbie and Dean - at least by the sound of these easy-going schools you didn't have a dirty old PE teacher "supervising" in the shower room and getting free entertainment whilst so doing

Yes Lance and Robbie, that goes without saying doesn't it.

So many schools in the 1970's have a bad rap and image.

I look around at what other people say and my school feels like it compared quite favourably marked up against others and was generally fine and easy going in a whole range of areas. But it most definitely did not let us off the showering bit, oh no. Fine teachers but strict as hell on school showering hygiene discipline for all.

You mean showers don't you Lance.

Almost certainly true. There's no such thing as a 1970's school for anyone over the age of eleven that didn't require and strictly insist on communal showers for everyone is there. They all did.

There was I'll bet the house on, one obvious thing you didn't get any choice on after the lesson Dean even in your school in the 70s.

Sometimes schools do seem to get hung up on rules, many of them silly, petty, pointless or just there to be a rule for the sake of it. That applies to schools right now and back within the living memory of most here who were young too who are now getting on. It's one thing that never changes and might even have got worse than in the 50's to 90's period nearly all on here were schooled.

Dean - reading your time back then, it sounds quite relaxed and yet you say the teacher didn't conform to type. That is interesting. I wonder if your own description meant you had an overall more contented class because of it. I note Alan would have approved.

Dean on 24th March 2023 at 18:39



That is how it should have always been in all schools, Dean and clearly your school was modern in outlook to be so relaxed that early. Wherever it was, I wish I had been there .

One or two on here might have preferred to attend my senior school during the years I was there from 1972-78 where the gymnasium PE lessons were basically a come as you wish so much of the time.

I don't remember any kind of set kit in colours or style that we had to wear. Boys all wore shorts of their, or parents choice. The same with the footwear, mainly old style black or white plimsoll types, and varying tops or not.

It was a right old mixed bag come to think of it. You were completely at liberty to go to PE in an acceptable short sleeved top of any kind or just go with none on at all. Although you were not allowed more than the one layer if you wore your top.

I reckon most of my gym lessons were roughly half and half. I can't visualise many PE lessons where we all had shirts on at the same time or either all were shirtless at the same time. The same applied on footwear rather a lot too. I always wore plimsolls no socks and the majority did so but there was always about a quarter of boys in PE who opted the barefoot style and I did used to wonder why they liked that choice.

I used to chop and change a lot depending on the time of year even though we were inside.

My favoured option was always white plimsolls, no socks, white shorts and I was easy either way on a top or not, shirtlessness was not a major anxiety for me personally but I get why it is for others.

My PE teachers were all good guys and nothing like the typical stereotypes.

Okay guys so you might want to hear my somewhat memorable introduction to the whole skins against shirts thing in school. It was a game of basketball within the first month of starting secondary school and I was 12 years of age. We go back 44 years for this. Our basic gym kit was red and white short sleeved t-shirts, all our PE tutor said was - okay boys we'll do a bit of basketball now, sort yourselves out into a couple of teams - and as he went off to sort the nets out our whole class organically just seemed to split easily in half and without that teacher telling anyone about being a skin, many of the boys just instinctively took their PE t-shirts right off on one side and others followed their lead. I was a shirt that day and had never heard of two teams doing a shirts and skins game like that but obviously some others knew in some way already and acted quite keen. The term skins and shirts was not something I heard used though. Whenever we did team games we just got told to sort our teams out ourselves nearly everytime and before you knew it one side was already casting the t-shirts off. I think the teams often split along similar lines.

Nobody seemed to be forcing anyone to do anything like taking their shirts off in PE, it kind of just happened with no fuss pots among boys in our year group. I did my fair share I think but I never had my teacher for gym actually tell me to remove my top in gym in those circumstances. It would not have bothered me if he had told me directly to, and why would it have done, as soon as we finished up we'd be straight into the showers and he definitely told us all to do that! 1979 in school meant you never missed the showers whoever you were.

I think the skins in PE is a fuss about nothing really.

Justin B: I wasn't especially gifted academically, but the school felt it had to have a hard reputation because of where it was. Middle class Radio 4 listeners (they must love it more than ever these days with all their pseudo-intellectuals posing as experts) seemed to think if you came from a "problem area" you were a problem child, or at least likely to join Fagin's gang. and that was the mindset of ILEAs and I guess LEAs in general. That sadly is still the pathetic idea these fossils had. Remedial treatment and punishment before you did anything seemed to be the idea of such people, and of course they loved their authority.. You were guilty even if you proved yourself innocent, and the lack of trust never deserted them. Everyone was treated like dirt - the really clever kids the worst of the lot. Luckily for me I was just an "average"

I pity really clever and intelligent youngsters who end up in the kind of places you describe Alan.

School for me wasn't so bad but PE was hellish at times. Our school did rigorous PE twice weekly, forced football or rugby outside in all weathers throughout winter, forced cross country at any time of year. Lack of ability not allowed. For gym it was come along shorts only, even the odd chance to wear trainers seemed like a privilege. Not a PE top in sight in the gym all year round, just a collection of boys forced to be bare chested, which really wasn't a look that suited me at all anywhere. There was a collection of guys in school who were nerdy, wore glasses (which also had to come off), were quite tall and thin and just looked so out of place in the gym like that as if it was always the last place on earth they wanted to be. I was one of them and I'd much rather have been in the science lab with some of them. But despite that I did get some good write ups from my PE teachers who seemed to like putting some of us types into shape.

Stuart K" It was a rough dump in East London. coming to the end of it's existence so the only teachers were old men hanging on for their pension and a few bargain basement younger teachers who wanted to impress the old timers, for some reason, so they behaved in the same way. Once it was knocked down they built a supermarket on the site, which I am sure is of much more benefit to those who lived there.

Thanks for reply Alan. Is your comment of 21st March 2023 at 17:55 meant to be more or less a defacto description of your regular 1980's style PE lesson at school there then, you make it sound more like a young offenders boot camp if so. How much PE did you take shirt free and did that play any part. I myself never saw any boys mocking anyone else about their physical appearance in PE lessons and changing areas.

I'm sure that the kind of humiliation Harper was talking about was not quite the kind of humiliation Alan you might be thinking of. I think Harper was meaning (and please tell me if I am wrong) the kind of humiliation of not doing a sport well enough or making a fool of yourself doing something in PE, because he followed on with the feeling quietly proud alternative when you maybe did do something well by trying at it. That's my interpretation anyway.

For the record I was also completely unfazed either way, shirts or not. But there are some who find the simple mandating of a PE bare chest to be humiliating in itself. Rather sad to be so overly sensitive and self conscious about oneself I think but I'll never denigrate someone else for those inner personal feelings. We are all different and many of us with big differences were thrown together in one class with a same size fits all approach, I get that.

John 20 March. I was beginning to think perhaps I was the only one who enjoyed barechested exercise. Okay it could be hard outdoors and I wasn't "good" at most things (basketball was the exception due to my height) but I joined in and put in the effort to try and make up. Though the official kit included a vest and t-shirt it was made crystal clear vests would only be worn outdoors and even then we'd usually be told to "drop our vests" at some point. I'd do it all over again if I could.

Stuart K: Yes I read it, and I am afraid I don't agree with much of it. Nobody should ever be humiliated and for teachers to behave in the 1980s as if they were 1940s drill sargeants was appalling. I have recently seen some reruns of a terrible old comedy series from the 1970s called Get Some In, which was about a group of RAF recruits undergoing National Service in the mid 50s, and their pig of corporal played by the late Tony Selby. He used bullying, demeaning tactics, not for any reason of character building or improvement, but just because he was an unpleasant, insignificant little. man, belittled by his wife and despised by his superiors , and he knew it . It made him feel better to make others feel worse. That applied I think to many teachers, and probably still does, especially now they don't have the threat of corporal punishment to back them up.

Alan, did you read that excellent comment on 13th March 2023 at 03.13am by Harper last week by any chance, because after I read it for some reason many of your previous comments came to mind. I wonder if you think there is anything in what he said that you could agree with and use for your own evaluation of your time in school by any chance?

The section - "sometimes find yourself completely humiliated and sometimes feel proud of yourself quietly in a little way" was a lovely well written line in my opinion many of us will have related to quite easily.