Burnley Grammar School

Gymnastics comes from the Greek, to exercise naked, well you learn something new every day. Never knew that, although I did know that the ancient Greek Olympics long before the modern ones were competed naked. Quite a spectacle I'm sure. To go back to that time and see just how fit and muscly these men really were at such a time would be fascinating I'm sure. Time machine anyone? But women put to death if they watched the men, is that some kind of ancient prudery or something going on. A history lesson beckons I think, going back a bit further than the few decades on here.

Just to take the year of what appears your graduation Paula, a year I was in school, and believe me here in the UK at that time PE teachers very much did make boys go shirtless whether they liked it or not as I was on the receiving end. I was lukewarm about it I suppose is the best way to describe it. I've rarely gone shirtless in company since the days of school PE, possibly a couple of holidays briefly in a quiet beach but that's it really.

Body image. That didn't matter one iota here in the UK, no matter how low your body image was, how crushingly shy or self critical or conscious you were about yourself, how scared you might even be about it, they still made you do it without a second thought to anyone's actual feelings about themselves. That was the times.

I realise that there has recently been a more up to date current teacher of PE come along on here and state he expects shirtless PE at times and asks for it but at least he did seem fully aware of possible feelings those pupils might have and sounded like a potential listener. I'm not sure that applied in my time.

Chapman, the 18 year old me had a 28 inch waist and was less than 10 stone and now I've got a 32 inch waist and am just under 12 stone, and am probably happier with the latter actually and have managed to avoid the dreaded manboob appearance or belly overhanging the belt look too. I'm happy with the way I look in middle age. I've seen some I was in school with who were very fit lean boys much like the one in the red shorts in the Grange Hill clip that someone here said they looked like and they have doubled in size and I wonder just how that happened to them. Food probably. Too much.

The recent description of being screamed at to go showering and then get out, that mentioned Lionel Jeffries was different to mine, once in we could spend a good while in if we wanted. But they made you get in, I think PE teachers must have been on a bonus system for how many boys they could get showered they seemed so keen to see we all did it, and like I just said to Paula regards the shirtless PE she spoke about, here in the UK the school shower in the year I mentioned was just about universally across the land in all places mandatory for all school children between the ages of 11 and 16, whether you liked your body image and were deeply shy and unhappy about it or not. Nobody cared much or would dream to talk about your self esteem on body image issues. But we all went through the same. There cannot be a man in the UK who is aged 40 or above who has never shared a communal shower with a group of people, primarily at school, it must be almost 100%. It seems that even the shirtless PE is likely to have been close to 100% as well, covering those who always did it to those who might have done skins games or those who did it just now and then for other reasons, leaving swimming aside which was also mentioned by you Paula.

"I was quite unconfident in PE and had to take my shirt off, so I understood Ben's points. I certainly don't object to it and having had to do so. It was just my own personality. But I always became much more confident when we swam at school. I wonder Ben if you felt similar in that regard?"

Interesting point Mark made about swimming and yes, I'd completely agree. For me it definitely felt far less a big deal to take my top off for swimming lessons than it did for PE in the gym. Firstly I suppose it seemed more normal, I'd been to swimming pools and beaches before and didn't wear more than a pair of trunks or shorts.
The other point of course was that every boy was dressed the same way for swimming. In the gym though, we didn't have any lessons with everyone bare chested, so it could feel quite unfair to be chosen for skins in that regard. I remember quite early on I'd had consecutive PE lessons bare chested and thought surely I'd get to keep my vest on next time! So my heart sank when the teacher said 'skins' yet again.
Of course some lads were a lot more confident, there was one in my class who would regularly 'forget' his PE vest and apologise rather half-heartedly. The teacher didn't seem too bothered and the end result was that he did a lot of PE bare chested. I'd guess some others here might have done the same or knew someone else who did?

Hi, I'm a B.S in Health & Education and also Physical Education at the Uni of Florida in 1977.

This from an old account I used elsewhere I'd like to share from the Stateside perspective right now. Your schools over there in the UK are known to have been very different to ours but what I say here only relates to my county and not nationally across the entire country where rules are vastly different from place to place.

Physical Education teachers don’t MAKE boys go shirtless. If they get overheated during exercise they might be allowed to remove their shirt, depending on the regulations of their school. But it is unlikely that a boy who was shy or had a poor body image would be required to take his shirt off.

Males in general do not wear shirts while swimming, but if a boy was shy and wanted to wear a shirt that was tight fitting, or wanted to wear the type of swim suit that competitive swimmers wear (with a tank top) NO ONE WOULD CARE.

Most schools have some kind of uniform or dress code for physical education classes. Where as girls participating in sports frequently wear leotards or sports bras. These don’t leave much to the imagination.

To take this a step further the word Gymnastics comes from the Greek, which means to exercise naked. Women were not allow to watch or attend these competitions on pain of death. Is that fair? Who knows?

As my husband and partner in our gymnastics school used to tell our gymnasts “Life’s not fair and then you die. Go to Heaven and learn to fly. Find out that there’s a tax on flying.”

Lack of body confidence is very common. You really shouldn't care what others think though. If you really are that anxious about it, then do something about it. Go down the gym, get yourself toned up and you're confidence will grow very quickly indeed. I know, been there and done it.

I do wish PE teachers would understand this point though. Just saying the few words above to those with confidence issues could be a big help I'm sure. Boys like this were not alone, they were everywhere. School could be unforgiving for those who had these confidence issues in the past and some PE teachers clearly just made things worse for some.

Perhaps a light hearted question for the forum men here.

What was your own schooldays body like at say the age of 14, or maybe 18 just after school, and how does that PE or younger body compare to the man and shape you are in now? I'm one of those who has remained the same weight and size almost all my adult life remarkably without having had to try very hard other than regular but not excessive exercise. But I overcame the lack of body confidence I had at school mainly regarding the use of the nude showering rules quite fast. Being forced into a situation like that made me face my fears and overcome them rather effectively I thought.

Comment by: Chris G on 14th February 2024 at 15:50
"It's getting very difficult to follow the thread of many of the recent "he said, she said" type of conversations, where previous postings are dissected and analysed at length and to death. If you are quoting what a previous poster has written, I wonder if you could try to indicate this, either by enclosing quoted material in "quotation marks", beginning and end, or by indicating the start of a quote by showing the author, as in a theatrical script."


I like your timing Chris G and the latest post that came through from Stephen in the batch of three comments along with yours does exactly as you ask to perfection!


I actually think it's a shame that posts are not individually numbered, not just by IP address, but in chronological order like many forums. We know there have currently been 6043 posts here but not what number they are. Dates are checkable back but a numbered comment has benefits too.


I am pleased that some liked the Flickr photos of my own school gym I was able to provide on 6th February from Filton High in the mid 70's, I got as much bare chested PE in gym as it was possible to get at that time. I noted the points others made about why the photo may have been taken at the time.

Alan you said,

'what I couldn't stand was being surrounded by others (I was an only child which probably explains a lot), and being screamed and shouted at like Lionel Jeffries in Two Way Stretch (as Prison Officer Crout) - they wanted you under the bloody things then gave you two minutes before he was screeching at you to get out.'


You should have had a teacher who timed you, like I said two weeks ago,

'our teacher would get his stopwatch out and time what I think was something like 2 minutes 30 seconds after we went in before anyone was let back out again to dry and dress. Watched constantly and often told to shut up while we did so because of the noise. Sometimes the water went almost completely cold on us, meaning more noise, but we were not let out until the stopwatch said so according to our teacher. A bit over the top I agree, nothing wrong with just letting everyone come and go and get on with it but that's how it was for me in 1974'

Can I just say what a beautifully written comment that was from Ethan that you picked out TimH. Classy from both of you. It took me back to seeing a photo artist a few years ago who would gather large groups of people together in public spaces and take pictures. I always disliked it, simply for the association those large numbers had with the things you both describe.

Tim, you picked up Tony on a comment about some gym photos. While I agree that Flickr is indeed a historical record I think the point was missed there maybe, as Flickr didn't exist in the time they were taken, so the pictures must have been used for another purpose. Possibly a school magazine or something at the time. I'm sure it was all above board though, the photos a good snapshot of what was an ordinary day's gym lesson.

I was quite unconfident in PE and had to take my shirt off, so I understood Ben's points. I certainly don't object to it and having had to do so. It was just my own personality. But I always became much more confident when we swam at school. I wonder Ben if you felt similar in that regard?

It's nice to get answers to questions that get posed. Such as the one from the Mumsnet forum about the 15 year old son who didn't want to swim shirtless that never received a final conclusion after the initial question was asked, which I wrote about on 1st Feb here. Also Yorkshire Dad and the change in rules at his school would be a nice one to get more about as others have said.

There was a comment or two about pampering parents. No teenage boy wants his mum and dad interfering in things much on anything. I saw that Nathan's last post said he'd had some parents approach him about PE matters to do with showers but not any of the children. Did anyone have any parents like that who caused a fuss over things while you were in school about PE then or were questioning things? I think I once gave a note to a PE teacher when I fell off my bike on the way home from school the night before and bruised myself badly and was let off not just that lesson but the one after it too, not at my parents request but my actual PE teacher insisted on it.

It's getting very difficult to follow the thread of many of the recent "he said, she said" type of conversations, where previous postings are dissected and analysed at length and to death. If you are quoting what a previous poster has written, I wonder if you could try to indicate this, either by enclosing quoted material in "quotation marks", beginning and end, or by indicating the start of a quote by showing the author, as in a theatrical script.

Ben,

Thanks for that answer. I think I can well remember boys like you in school PE lessons Ben. In some ways it's quite endearing. I have to admit that although scribbling a number on your upper body in biro was a bit naff, I didn't enjoy wearing scratchy yellow bibs when it was my turn and just preferred the no shirt look because it was more comfortable than an awkward bib just to separate teams. I just don't know why they didn't ask us to bring vests or tea-shirts when we needed to do that. They made team selections a bigger deal than they needed to be sometimes, but that is what happens in a school where all boys go shirtless automatically on arrival for PE at the gym. It makes doing team games a bit difficult among a couple of dozen plain white skinned regular looking boys, but I do recall as we got older some size differences became more apparent and also build. Some had a growth spurt in months, others stayed stick thin and others seemed to become generally a bit bigger later on. Heights started to become more different among us. Watching others the same age change over a four year period can be interesting to compare with, I found it so. Few ever dare admit it, even on here I see, but tell me a boy who didn't secretly like to compare himself to the others as well where it mattered most. That little glance down and back up again, pretending not to notice the obvious in the shower for instance when we were all doing it really. Why deny it. That was an education in itself to me. I don't know about you or others. Everyone has always got a story to tell about school and showering I've found, if they are over forty. Literally nobody forgets them or how it happened to them. Although I thought the Grange Hill scenes of PE and changing rooms and showers were very mild really, nothing too terrible.

There was one thing that Alan said, and it was about being hassled to hurry up and get out of your PE kit and run into the showers quickly, yes, that was my experience too, and as soon as you'd done it, as soon as you'd managed to actually get wet you were being hassled and hurried to get back out again and dressed before you'd even had a proper shower with some teachers, who seemed to just want you to be put through the situation of doing it rather than actually genuinely showering properly. I got that sometimes and it's very relatable.

I did enjoy your line Sean, "I consented to showers and shirtless PE at school. I consented to them being mandatory!" That was funny. That's the kind of line you could just hear coming out of the mouth of an exasperated PE teacher at some point isn't it.

But I still don't think anyone in school in our time, or now like Nathan, should actually have to feel they should justify themselves if they wish to take a class without shirts or make them shower. I just don't. I saw somebody on that Mumsnet chat that got linked on here a couple of weeks ago and someone wrote "My body, my choice". That is meaningless sloganising. In school as a child you do as you are told. Call me old fashioned. We have got far too many young and overly entitled young people around nowadays who think they can dictate everything and can't be told anything.

Comment by: David on 13th February 2024 at 18:23


I was using my work computer when I wrote my last reply, which for some reason always makes my name more "formal" Windows 11, worse than Windows 10, which I use "indoors".

I think what I was saying was quite clear. If I may so say so you have decided I was "pampered" as a kid (far from the truth, but I let that pass) and that I regard myself as having victim status. Again not true, but even amateur psychology can be interesting - to those providing it.

I an not making "excuses for anything".

If there is a genuine point about anything you feel that I have not been clear on, then by all means say what it is. Frankly, I sense some antipathy in your response to my posting, and I am not inclined , to subject the readers on here to the sort of slanging matches we had towards the end of 2023, But please do not presume to think you know anything about my background. You have made a couple of assumptions which are erroneous.

Going back to PE for 16 y.o. boys - personal experiences from the 6th Form of a Boys Technical Grammar in the East Midlands - 1965-67.
'Games' was still on the timetable but numbers of us avoided it because we were involved in 'Activities' (Societies) for the younger boys (some of us were also 'lab boys' in the chemistry labs). This didn't get us out of the annual school cross-country championship, which I found I quite enjoyed.
'Gym' was on the timetable and most of us attended. It seemed to have 'matured' rather and was aimed more at 'personal fitness' - circuit training & the like and extensive games of basketball - I think we chose who would be 'skins' & 'shirts' ourselves. Gym kit was white shorts and, if you wanted it, a white top - I recall people wearing either a T-shirt or a singlet (or, on one occasion , a string vest - to cries of: 'That won't keep you very warm'), or topless. This was the mid 60s so shorts were moving from the longer, baggy variety to the shorter type - think 1966 World Cup, but still in cotton - not nylon. This was an age where Mum bought your sports kit for you - larger than needed, but 'you'll grow into it'. I've a horrible feeling I still hadn't grown into my shorts by 6th Form, but I (& three or four more) went to the sports department of the local outfitters one lunchtime and bought some new ones - there were mutters from assorted Mothers that they were 'too short', but we just smiled. None of our experiences seemed to harm us and, to be honest, I'm not aware of the 'physical punishment' that took place in other schools, although I know of one occasion when it almost certainly did happen (& deservedly so).
Laurence says: 'Expectation were very high at that time. Very few boys seemed incapable of the tasks given them. While they were generally friendly PE teachers they were also tolerant of no fooling around or dangerous antics' & 'In 1962 grammar nobody was interested in things like your own personal body space or your personal privacy. The concept simply did not really exist. Whether we were fully dressed in our school uniform and blazers or whether we were completely naked before or after PE was almost irrelevant, to our teachers anyway, and many of us boys at least on the surface'. I agree with him.

Ethan says: 'School showering reminded me of that at first when I did it, seeing so many others wearing nothing together being controlled into a location. Even though it was innocent I felt a connection and to this day feel a sense come over me when I have ever seen even innocent pictures of large groups of people wearing nothing. Even in the holocaust they didn't even spare the youngest children so I'd never wish to feel sorry for myself in school being asked to take my own clothes off and face a short lived taunt for how I looked in PE while having a shower. Compelling me to shower in school as a child was nothing compared to what others of my faith must have gone through at young ages long ago. I weep for them all'.
Thank You for saying this ... I suppose I was in the First Form at Secondary School when the Adolf Eichmann trial took place. I have an indelible memory of a group of us little boys in the 'playground' talking about 'The Camps' and how ... 'they made them take all their clothes off' ... 'and lined them up' - it wasn't in the 'distant past' back in 1961.

Tony - you say about the Filton photographs: 'no permission was probably sought for those, whilst today I'm sure you absolutely would have to do so and account for the reason for taking them'. How do you know this? Did you look at the rest of the Flickr album. I'd say someone was keeping a good 'historic' record of the school.

Grange Hill - never watched it - but a school teacher friend reckoned everyone in his staff room did - just to keep up with what might happen at school the next day.

And the cricket bat - yes - in America its called 'paddling', I believe.

Enough from me for tonight.

I consented to showers and shirtless PE at school. I consented to them being mandatory!

Thanks for your answers Alan. We are complete opposites though.

Alan/ALAN GILES - I presume these are the same person, I noticed a somewhat different IP number so I hope you have not been mimicked as it looks like you don't usually use your surname or write in block capitals and I can see there were issues a few weeks ago I read through.

Anyway, back so soon, noticed my post up, didn't intend to add more but one thing caught my eye about what you have said and I just want to ask about it.

You said - not only have a very good sense of recall, but I remember the sights, smells and feelings, whatever the event might be which are evoked, of how I felt at the time, and a great disinclination to revisit them.


I'm quite surprised given the above statement that you feel so inclined to revisit this type of discussion so much in that case, as this must also cause you to trigger memories you would rather not revisit, yes/no, and you were the person who provided the information about the children's show that you have never watched.

I am confused a touch and would just like to ask you rather politely what exactly you see your aims being here?

I would certainly like to draw your close attention to the final few sentences of my second post which has just been published this evening here. That's my lot here anyway. I've said all that I want to say.

Comment by: Sean on 13th February 2024 at 02:34


No Sean, I am lucky - I don't think I would have PTSD over anything, but it is just I not only have a very good sense of recall, but I remember the sights, smells and feelings, whatever the event might be which are evoked, of how I felt at the time, and a great disinclination to revisit them. For example I can never smell "Brut" ("splash it on", Henry Cooper), without feeling nausea because the first bandroom I ever went in reeked of the stuff and I remember how scared I was feeling. Brut equalled nausea - though I guess it did for many men - horrible stuff.

Like you - and I know this will come as a surprise to many on here, I loved showers, because at home we had a bath and I never liked the idea of bathing in my own dirt. I got very hot very easily so I welcomed them, but what I couldn't stand was being surrounded by others (I was an only child which probably explains a lot), and being screamed and shouted at like Lionel Jeffries in Two Way Stretch (as Prison Officer Crout) - they wanted you under the bloody things then gave you two minutes before he was screeching at you to get out. These days I start off my day with a shower, and often another if it has been a dirty dusty day, or hot, after work. I haven't had a bath in years.

I'm sorry you had rotten employers - I was the opposite, and I had some really patient and kind ones, who made me realize that not every adult in authority were the total b****ards I had experienced at school. They called you by your first name, asked how you were, did you enjoy your weekend, were you happy with everything at work?. Even in my first very junior job it was always "would you mind....." (posting a letter or the like). When did a teacher ever ask you anything like that?. In retrospect my happiest years were between 18 and 28.

Comment by: Jeff on 13th February 2024 at 14:00


"Just a quick clarification though Alan on this shirtless/showering thing, do you consider that to be a form of abuse if asked to do in school nowadays? Because I most certainly do not, but you give the impression to me that you do think so."

Not if it is consensual, Jeff, that is, if the lads are happy to be shirtless and they are not gawped at and barked at, as we were, in the showers. Since Nathan told us last week that over 16s are not forced to
take part in PE that has reassured me a bit. I know with terrible acne, even on my chest, when I was 17 or so, I would have dreaded showering in a group, but I suppose there is an argument that if a 17/18 year does want to take part, it is only fair he takes part in all of the lesson, including the shower. Me I would have run like a stag from it. I still feel, however, that there is nothing wrong with a standard tee shirt as part of the uniform, at all ages 11 upwards, they are lightweight, and for lads like my mate with a very noticeable scar, it would have saved him years of embarrassment. Anyway, to answer your question, Jeff: abuse? - no, insensitive? - yes, in cases like that.

There is absolutely nothing abusive about shirtless PE or showering, even if you are being made to do so, such as at school. That is a stretch too far even in these days, most definitely on the shirtless PE aspect for sure. I said as much in my first post here on 28th January actually.

I did these things long in the past, never felt aggrieved, and I've had five children, four of them boys, all now grown adults and all of them did these things quite a while back and it would never cross my mind to think they were being abused simply for being told to do these things in a PE class. It was all compulsory, and the boys I had started showers regularly with PE at the age of only 8 in the primary school which was less common. I did things later than they all did. It might have helped them earlier, who can possibly know.

We might have discussed the issue at some point, I'm sure we did, like many school things with parents, but I have no recollection of any desires from any of them not to do these things or feeling sorry for themselves about it and me and their mother would not have been remotely concerned either at such requirements.

If you had parents that did over pamper like that they might actually cause hang ups that the child would never have had in the first place.

I wouldn't even consider a couple of my children as extroverts, far from it, they are sensitive, quiet and possibly a bit shy but I'd also say were and are sensible and pragmatic.

Doing some sport, any sport or activity that gets you going, either alone or with others makes you more confident even if you are a sensitive person. The gentleman who has gained a group of barechest adult runners has been making some of these points I can see on here, and he's right.

If you are one of those here who had these problems, or maybe still does in adulthood I'd say push yourself out of the comfort zone you've been in and break out of the cycle of pointless fear holding you back.

Unconfident, shy and retiring children at school do not automatically have to grow up into the same as adults. One thing I learnt from doing some youth work for a short while was that some boys who thought they were unconfident and shy or useless were not as much as they thought when put to the test, and that includes a couple of my own sons in that.

Some people do feel safe remaining within the victim status they have created for themselves in their lives. This is just terribly poisonous.

You're entitled to be sensitive to things, anxious, nervous, of course. But they should not be used as an excuse in themselves.

A couple of good posts since last night.

Wasn't padding something they used to do a lot in American schools back in those days, with something not too different in shape to a cricket bat?

Of course it's quite objectionable now to read about, but that was over 60 years ago now. It's always impossible to detach yourself from the time you live in and remember the past entirely as it once was, even if it was within your own living memory. There have been massive changes in thinking in just the past 10 years.

But someone has already said it, and I'd like to add, that we must do our best to avoid making this thread an obsessed discussion focusing too much on abusive practices as we now see them, and these things no longer happen as policy, that's a good thing everyone will agree I hope.

Just a quick clarification though Alan on this shirtless/showering thing, do you consider that to be a form of abuse if asked to do in school nowadays? Because I most certainly do not, but you give the impression to me that you do think so.

Comment by: Laurence on 12th February 2024 at 23:38

"I remember there was a cricket bat in the gym propped up. It was always there and I always wondered why, it had no use in the gym to anyone, until the day there was some tomfoolery and the cricket bat was picked up by my PE teacher who dragged two boys to the horse, pulled their shorts down and batted both their behinds twice very hard before putting the bat back exactly as it was. One boy cried his eyes out, through pain and I think the humiliation of it...... We were only boys of 12 & 13."

I'm sorry, Lawrence, you might not agree with me - perhaps many others on the site won;t agree with me, but I think that is disgusting behaviour. Even in 1962, I am sure, if you substituted the word "boy" for "dog" in that sentence, the RSPCA would have, very rightly, prosecuted that "man" for cruelty. The same standards should have been in place for children.

There is a very fine line between where sadism ends and perversion begins, and in my opinion, he got very close to that line. The best you can say for him was that he had what would be called today "anger management" issues. Though it was years later, even my teacher would not have dared to behave like that in semi-public.

Was using a cricket bat like that legal in the early sixties? The cane probably hurt much more though. Given a choice, and I don't know how either feels, I would have opted to take a bat. There must have been teachers who used these things and would strike with them harder than others. This kind of instant justice without any further say does not come over well now when we can always appeal decisions. In my view only the head should have ever had the ability to agree to such punishments. There was a film on here last year that showed something that was a shower punishment ordered by a head, somewhere quite a few pages back.

But I'm another child of the 80s I'm afraid and nobody was getting treated like that in my time as a teenager then in school. I left in 1985.

My claim to fame I can make is that when I started at the big one I was rather keen on physical sports and team games and ended up being the very first boy darting into the showers on our first day, I had them to myself, I couldn't wait to get in and give them a try out. I was always eager and fearless like that. Nothing and nobody intimidated me that easily. A school shower was never going to do that and I can't believe it did for so many, or that PE did in general. You are allowed to be useless at something as long as you try. My teacher once said that to me, never forgot it. Remember that guys and pass it to any young ones you know now in school. Life is not always about succeeding, it's about trying.

I loved Grange Hill. I think I watched it from the start and for the next 8 to 10 years, even after I'd left school and was in my first job being exploited by an employer wanting a supply of young cheap labour on YTS as an alleged trainee office tea boy doing a full working week for literally nothing, and even some half day Saturdays the cheek of it. I might as well have been back at school, I enjoyed it more than my first two or three out of it. A bit of less recent modern day slavery for you there.

How well were PE teachers paid compared to the other staff anyway? Is it a well paid job now. They get another week off next week already and we're just back from Christmas holidays, and they have no marking books to do.

You are a bit wet not wanting to watch Grange Hill Alan. It must be your school down to a tee. It's actually quite tame stuff when you look at it now. Are you saying it gives you PTSD then? Try some of the later ones from the first half of the 80s then, they were great. You must have been one of those boys who never watched all the things that the others would talk about in the playground at break time from TV in those days. Almost everyone I knew watched Grange Hill and loved it at the time. I just looked up Todd Carty's age and he's SIXTY for christ's sake. How did that happen so quickly? Those first kids all must be now, how quick life goes, kids to almost pensionable in the blink of an eye. I'm now quite depressed to think about it. What is it they say - life happens to you while you're thinking about making plans, or something similar.

Sigh. Give me back those schooldays, warts and all.

There are a lot of 70s & 80s schooldays memories here at the moment but mine goes right back to 1962 at a time not far removed from the pictoral representation above this discussion and my PE lesson at grammar school looked very similar to the above image. I remember it all in vivid colour however.

Expectation were very high at that time. Very few boys seemed incapable of the tasks given them. While they were generally friendly PE teachers they were also tolerant of no fooling around or dangerous antics.

I remember there was a cricket bat in the gym propped up. It was always there and I always wondered why, it had no use in the gym to anyone, until the day there was some tomfoolery and the cricket bat was picked up by my PE teacher who dragged two boys to the horse, pulled their shorts down and batted both their behinds twice very hard before putting the bat back exactly as it was. One boy cried his eyes out, through pain and I think the humiliation of it. He was rubbing away but had to carry on as if nothing had happened after it. The whole thing happened so fast and then it was done. No recovery time was allowed, or time to feel sorry for yourself about it. I never looked at the cricket bat in the same way again. When we showered I saw they had a very red bottom each and the teacher made us take note of this fact. We were only boys of 12 & 13.

Although corporal punishment was rife in that time I rarely saw a beating like that. I received the plimsoll on my own bottom a year earlier, again in PE for something too trivial, forgetting something I think it was.

When I think of my school grammar PE gym lessons I only ever think of them as being done without any tops on, in the stripped to the waist look, without vests or t-shirts on of any type. I have no memory of ever having done a shirts and skins game at school, most team games took place outside, but we must have done some in our gym but how we could tell each other apart is vague at this distance.

In 1962 grammar nobody was interested in things like your own personal body space or your personal privacy. The concept simply did not really exist. Whether we were fully dressed in our school uniform and blazers or whether we were completely naked before or after PE was almost irrelevant, to our teachers anyway, and many of us boys at least on the surface. We had punishment showers at our school, you could get that for insolence to a senior teacher of any subject and be sent off to cool down, literally.

When I've read about Gordonstoun where the King went and hated I've often thought it sounded like my own place quite a lot.

I know some of you will think I am stupid or over-sensitive, (and in a way I would agree with you) but I just cannot watch those episodes of Grange Hill, especially series one episode 2, which I posted myself, because they are so real they take me back to the smell of chalk, sweat and soup etc, and I am eleven again.

In 1999, in a rare earlyish attempt at standing up myself, I had a terrific row with the leader of our band, when he announced he wanted to give up playing contemporary music and wanted to cash in on the nostalgia market (he hinted that a little commercial success would not come amiss, not that there was that much in Ruislip where we mostly worked) and wanted us to play Glenn Miller. Syd Lawrence was not long dead, and he was the Miller expert in the UK. Harsh words were spoken (by me) and I told him there was no way that my trumpet would be sullied by Little Brown Jug and other horrible things from the 30s and 40s. Expletives were not deleted. Five of my bandmates followed me out of that rehearsal. The six of us spent a couple of happy years in Maida Vale.

All that said, if it were a choice of going into the Grange Hill gym or playing String of Pearls or Pennsylvania 6-5000, then Major Miller would win.

It is strange how an old TV programme can take you back to places you wouldn't want to go. I suppose it is a sign of how well the scripts were written.

Stuart B, I'm not sure whether you meant what I thought about the basketball episode in Grange Hill, or real life PE lessons in my own school! But I'll try to answer both.
I wasn't one of those confident boys who tended to take their tops off at every opportunity, so watching the Grange Hill episode made me nervous that I'd also have to be bare chested in PE when I went to senior school. I remember my surprise when the boy you mentioned,  who'd been wearing a vest in the warm-up, suddenly appeared in the next scene in just shorts.
Sure enough, once we were lined up in the gym for our first PE class the teacher selected several boys, me included, and instructed us to take our vests off. I felt very self conscious and awkward but I didn't dare protest and none of the other bare chested lads did either, even though I'm sure many of them felt the same as me.
We did have some coloured bibs too, but those only came out when we were divided into smaller groups (four teams instead of two). And there were only two colours in the box so that meant one group still had to be skins. We never had to have numbers drawn on our chests or backs though!

A shame that the Yorkshire Dad poster who came here in late January who was the teacher who remarked on his head changing the kit rules hasn't yet decided to respond further, that was genuinely of interest to a few on here how a head suddenly wanted boys going shirtless this and last summer having never previously required it, and a teacher sounding baffled by it enough to say so.

I'd also urge that other teacher Graham to rethink his decision to abandon the discussion as well.

At Christmas and New Year I though that this thread had finally been killed off by stupidity but that was clearly not the case and it's obvious to me like was said that IP tagging is working well so far. There were a couple of posts within a few minutes of each other just before 6am the other day and although that was unusually early it was clear they came from different people and were not both from Alan, a simple check could see that. So at least we have finally put to bed any suggestion that Alan has been multi posting on here, which I never believed actually, and that any who broadly are sympathetic to his points are not simply shill posts under the different names from the same name.

The Flickr photos from Richard's own middle seventies gym were really quite well taken. I wonder like others asked, what reason they might have been taken for at the time. One thing is for sure, no permission was probably sought for those, whilst today I'm sure you absolutely would have to do so and account for the reason for taking them. Mind you it's not exactly on a par with that Good Health School TV film previously left on here filming straight into the showers in full view which was about the same period I think which generated much chat about whether they had consent.

Would any teachers on here have any idea why such photo's as Richard's from that PE class would have been taken like that and what for in those days?

Ben, what was your attitude to this yourself?

I was the spitting image of the slim boy in that clip playing basketball in the red shorts getting told to get up and raise his hand. I was at school a few years earlier than this though if that looks like late 1980's.

That was how I was told to be for many of the gymnasium PE lessons and I never felt that any PE teacher should have to justify himself to me why I was being told to do that like some suggest.

When we did team sport in gym before they bought bibs we were given a blue biro to write a number on our chest and get someone to write it on our back, can you believe that, plus our surname. Then later we did get bibs, a bit more sensible. As soon as the team game was over the bib was straight off and back into being bare chested we went.

In reply to David M: this is the Grange Hill episode I posted about recently, including a shirts v skins basketball game. Hopefully the link works! If not, it's episode 23 of series 9, the PE section starts from around 7:45.
Interesting that the teacher asks the boys if they've sorted out the teams, ie: chosen among themselves. Certainly wasn't the case at my school, where the PE teacher always decided which boys were shirts or skins! Was that the same for you?

https://youtu.be/bBGQ9annWrQ?feature=shared

I've done PE in my pants only - once.

I agree with the comment about no kit meaning you could still do PE, that happened to me once and I deliberately left it at home in an effort to sit a lesson out. I was not given the sent away treatment and you can't do PE like the black child in the children's TV programme on here.

That was in the first few weeks of being at school still finding my feet and being wet behind the ears. I remember deliberately leaving all my PE kit at home one day fully confident that in doing so I would be able to just sit out a lesson I knew was coming up that I didn't fancy much and thought I would either just watch or more likely be sent off to the library to read or something like that, which I'd heard, in error as it turned out.

I was a stick thin twelve and a half year old at the time, and all that happened was I stood there like an idiot while everyone else changed and went and was left alone with my PE teacher with some serious explaining to to as he strutted around the changing room demanding answers why I didn't know the school timetable and where my kit was. I offered the usual unoriginal excuses, embarrassing to think back to now really. I really expected to get sent to the library or sit along a bench and watch, or even just left to sit the hour out in the changing room even.

How wrong was I.

Just as I was feeling confident I'd offered up a good enough explanation and was going to get away with it he said, get your stuff off, to me and I said, but I've got no PE kit and he just said, you don't need it for today. I remember absolutely panicking inside and wondering how much he wanted me to take off and feeling instantly disorientated and confused until he made it clear by telling me to hurry up and remove everything I had on down to only my underpants, horrible parental bought Y-fronts. Then I was told to lead the way out in front of him and along to the sports hall where I was met with amusement and spent an hour looking like a real fish out of water and feeling an absolute wally and dreadfully self conscious.

It was a lesson well learned. I remember feeling cold and very vulnerable and at one point physically shaking briefly, not with cold but with nervousness as I did it.

They portrayed that young black child very confidently striding in just his pants into that gym wanting to be part of the lesson and being disappointed he couldn't like that. That was not my memory at all and it did happen to a couple of others even after they saw what happened to me.

The PE teacher shown on Grange Hill in 1978 was definitely a good representation of your typical authoritarian late 70's PE teacher.

Agree on the PE kits, that looked more like an advert for Persil Automatic or something and the whiteness they used to go on about in those days on ads for various powders.

Does anyone know if Grange Hill ever actually showed a skins versus shirts PE lesson at any point?

My primary was permanent PE bare chests and feet inside on PE days. My comprehensive was less so but with regular skins v shirts and other just random shirtless days. I think about half the class disliked being shirtless at a guess, often the half that was asked to be skins come to think of it. At one point aged fourteen I got a really blotchy upper chest and shoulders and got asked why I had been picking my skin so much. I hadn't. Teenage spots didn't just happen on your face. I hated being shirtless at that point because it meant I couldn't avoid looking down and seeing my spotty chest and used to get some big spots come up on my actual biceps too which looked angry at times. My upper back was the same but I couldn't see that, just feel it. I wasn't allowed to keep a top on to hide it and had to be a skin like everyone else when told. Although that had nothing to do with bad hygiene it always felt like it did.

There was a shower in the changing room at my primary school but it wasn't used until we got into our top year there, our pre-comprehensive year, so showers began for me at eleven and then at twelve I was off to comprehensive and it continued. I'm rather pleased to read that Nathan is at a school that continues the required shower tradition like I remember. There is nothing wrong with teaching and maintaining the disciplines of good hygiene and no boys should ever feel embarrassed sharing such a situation with each other, it's a shame when some do so. We all shared the same situation together with each other after all and many of us with our good friends. The only time I hated showering was through my skin breakout phase that lasted a few months at the worst but luckily we were not made to use any products they provided and we showered at that time using just water.

I believe in that kind of thing bonding people. I think that is why Craig has had such success with his bareskin running he has written of on here, because to do so bonds them and I believe it's true at any age. Craig what have you been up to lately, any more takers for it since you last checked in a while back, and do you agree with my sentiment here?

I looked at a couple of episodes of that from that first series tonight. The teachers seem to look permanently short tempered but the worst was that dreadful caretaker who got quite a look in, yet I can't even remember seeing a school caretaker anywhere around my comprehensive school, I suppose he existed somewhere but he must have kept a very low profile. He sure wasn't hounding the kids and teachers like in Grange Hill.

I'd like to answer your question Mark Maynard that was,

(Did anyone else have anything similar to this, or have any directly personal comments about their appearance or physical make up from a PE teacher that was designed to be deliberately negative? I think we all had the sarcasm didn't we, it goes with the job I think for quite a few of them.)


As I said a few days ago as a Jewish youngster I was the only boy to begin showers at school to look different to the rest, as you can guess. It must have taken a couple of weeks to stop getting the jokes about what I looked like having no foreskin like others did and why I was like that. Questions like why do you look like that, or what's that meant to be or even just calling my bits ugly. I don't think the religious aspect sank in at first with many of them. My teacher said it's religion one day. But they only had the one person at first to look at, me, until this other one came along later having had the same done. But I equally found looking at so many other so called normal looking boys quite interesting and remember my curiosity as I looked around at them. The first time I remember looking around and thinking there must be another one like me and there wasn't anyone else.

But on this whole religious thing I saw someone mention muslim boys causing issues nowadays about how schools do things. There were a couple of muslims boys at my school, and a hindu I think. It was quite interestingly diverse among the mainly christian boys. None of the other religions were given special treatment at school and we all went in the pot together without sensibilities. If we had to take our shirts off for PE, we all took them off, whatever faith. It didn't seem to matter. It was a diverse multi faith class at one point and a multi faith gym and multi faith everything, right down to everything including showering and PE kit expectations. No special privileges given.

Being Jewish I was taught about things like the holocaust from a quite young age, not especially at school but from within the family itself and read books and saw pictures. School showering reminded me of that at first when I did it, seeing so many others wearing nothing together being controlled into a location. Even though it was innocent I felt a connection and to this day feel a sense come over me when I have ever seen even innocent pictures of large groups of people wearing nothing. Even in the holocaust they didn't even spare the youngest children so I'd never wish to feel sorry for myself in school being asked to take my own clothes off and face a short lived taunt for how I looked in PE while having a shower. Compelling me to shower in school as a child was nothing compared to what others of my faith must have gone through at young ages long ago. I weep for them all.

I was never really that shy or self conscious and was at least really good at a number of things in PE like long distance running and also basketball became quite good when I was a six foot youngster by fifteen, and I played in goal for the school team a lot later on too.

My PE teachers were encouraging and firm, and always had high expectations of us all and made us all try and reach them.

In my reply to Anthony in the final line I said "Justin Collins" - don't know where Collins came from. I am starting to become Joe Biden (who will take on Richard Nixon in the winter and beat him)

Comment by: Gary on 11th February 2024 at 05:44


A piece I read about the making of Carry On Constable might explain the tops on Grange Hill. Apparently there was a scene in Constable where Charlie Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams Kenneth Connor and Leslie Phillips have to get into a shower naked to be seen by Joan Sims, as a very straightlaced WPC. Apparently all the bare flesh caused the cameras to blare, so all the men had to have their backsides made-up. The story in the book was that the makeup bloke apparently said in disgust "I've done em 'all - all the beauties like Margaret Lockwood, now I'm making up men's bums."

It might be with the strong lighting they used for colour TV that they would have had to make the lads up with body makeup if they hadn't have got tops on, and I daresay the budget was tight, as well as the filming time, for Childrens TV - on non-drama productions where they could use documentary type cameras which needed lower lighting levels they would have got away with it.

All that said, I still see nothing wrong with tops - particularly in February, when the programme was shown, or, if they were depicting the time of year terms starts, September. I should imagine it was recorded fairly close to transmission. I felt sorry for the little black lad whose mum couldn't afford to buy him his full kit, and the lad whose top was a bit grubby. Insensitive of the teacher to point it out.

Anthony you add a great point about your dowdy changing room just the same as I mentioned my own rather dull designed school gym a few days ago on here.

I thought the boys in gym in the Grange Hill episode that was highlighted looked somewhat overdressed by my own historical standards. The boy who forgot his kit looked more representative of how I turned up in the place. But that whole scene seemed to turn upside down all that I remember from PE. If you forgot your kit in most schools they would have made you do PE like Green came along as, possibly against your wishes, hardly sent you packing to get off PE because you didn't have a shirt and trainers to put on. That seemed genuinely unlikely to me. You didn't get out of PE that easily, I'm surprised hardened Grange Hill played that like that otherwise all the PE haters at school would just forget kit and get an instant way out of doing it. I agree the whites they were all wearing, from the tops, the shorts and trainers all identical looked too contrived. The teacher was dressed just like I remember many of them though.

Even the showers scene looked a bit quiet, but the way that teacher made sure they all went in was very true to life and all the hustling about getting on with it and the reluctance of some boys to shower cannot be underestimated, more were reluctant than we probably either remember or think and this from '78 points out that factual truth. Maybe the boys of the 50s and 60s were more pliable on that but as we went towards the 80s attitudes were beginning to change slowly to those kind of expectations. No point denying that more boys are shy than let on. Why were they trying to avoid the school showers there otherwise, not because they were scared of water or getting wet bodies or hair as the teacher insisted they get wet.

You've all got the same, so get on with it as one of my teachers once said.

Comment by: Anthony on 10th February 2024 at 22:18


I have to admit , Anthony I never watched Grange Hill, so I have no idea who "Justin Bennett" is. That episode I put up here yesterday is the only time I have seen an episode of it all the way through. I didn't wan't to see it before I experienced the real thing (a bit like Wpody Allen - "I'm not afraid of death, I just don't wan't to be there when it happens"), and the only serial I watched was "Crossroads" (there was a character in that, "Mrs. Brownlow", who was very much like our Mrs Fennemore who I mentioned the other day - a friendly character who had a smile and a kind word for everyone, and called everyone "luv", and saw the best in everyone.).

I have to say, seeing that one episode, I am glad I didn't watch it - the bullying, the rubbing into the poorer kids they WERE poor (luckily that was not a stage of the cross I was at), by the teacher., just making them feel even more worthless. It happened, and I can promise you, Anthony, there was a lot of slaps and canings and slipperings, at my school, because the staff probably guessed it would be on it's way out, and they were making hay while the sun shone.

I was always a square peg in a round hole, a fish out of water, and I don't know if it would have made any difference whatever school I went to. The best schools I ever heard of were the Technical Colleges that sprung up in the 1950s where less academic lads were trained in more practical ways, and I worked with a bloke who went to one when I first started work, and he used to tell me how good it was.

That said, how well was that programme written, directed and acted, and the production values and VT editing puts many modern productions to shame.. I believe there is a modern equivalent called "Waterloo Road" but I have never seen that either.

What happened to "Justin Collins"?

I have to say, I am enjoying this site much more now we have the IP safeguard, there are some really interesting conversations.