Burnley Grammar School

I have a shirtless story from school, the one worth telling, and it doesn't revolve around a PE session at all but a weekend away in Dorset in 1981 when my second year comprehensive school teacher took us away with a couple of parent helpers including my own father to keep us all in line. On arrival we got taken along and onto Bournemouth beach Saturday lunchtime and our class teacher, a geography teacher, male aged about 40, insisted that all the boys had to be on the beach properly and this meant we had to take whatever tops and jackets we wore on the coach trip right off and sod about shirtless on the sand and water edge. Unsurprisingly the girls had no such requirement. My father on that trip even played second fiddle to my teacher there and told me to do as he, the teacher, said. I couldn't believe it when we'd settled down and began to enjoy ourselves and the teacher and one of the other dads picked me and a handful of others to go for a walk along the promenade and onto the pier which had just been renovated at the time I think, and we had to go off shirtless with them for this and were actually told to leave all our bits behind. I felt everyone was staring at me although felt better that I was among about six others who were the same.

School in 1984, I was 12 then, required that all boys in my gym classes showed out as skins while we took any type of PE lesson inside the school, either inside the school's gymnasium or its sports hall complex. I remember we used to have to get special permission to wear a PE shirt in these places and it was often refused, such as if it was cold weather outside which made the gym perishing some days. My body was ghostly white and very thin at the time with not a lot of fat to keep me warm. So many of us were the same. It wasn't so much that they forced us into PE like that but more that it was sometimes so cold doing PE this way and would have been even if we had shirts on in the school gym. It was unusual for any PE teacher to relent against boys barechested PE at school between the ages of 12 and 14 especially which to me seemed the strictest years going. The windows of the gym were often left open wide even in winter as well. I remember feeling warmer at times doing PE outside when I could actually wear a long sleeved top than I did inside stripped to the shorts alone.

I found PE teachers at my own school to be quite controlling over decisions on what boys were allowed to wear or not and always to opt for the skins rule for gym and the school uniform rules made it easy for them to do this blanket across the whole school because the school rules stated that - to ensure maximum attendance and participation, boys are not expected to wear any top in PE unless instructed otherwise, so without fail every PE teacher I had felt quite able to impose the skins way of doing PE on the lot of us almost always for the school gym.

One November morning at the age of 13 back in 1985 myself and the class got an unexpected treat of an unscheduled PE lesson because a large number of teachers had gone down sick with flu and sore throats so we got a number of lessons cancelled and packed off into the hands of the PE teachers but without anyone having kit. No matter! Wondering how that was going to work out we filed along to the changing room and it was 'strip to your pants boys' and that was it, off to gym sporting our various undergarments. Simplicity itself. I was far more conscious of my pants that morning than my bare chest.

I think one of the reasons for going skins for PE is the simplicity. I always remember seeing boys doing PE in their pants a lot if they claimed their PE shorts were in the wash or something like that. It was the same when we all went swimming, lost property had various pairs of swim shorts so if you came into school without anything with a view to not doing it then you got made to rustle around the lost property box for something and still have to go, and who would want to wear second hand swim shorts! It was a good incentive just to bring your stuff.

I came across this delightful family film from 1902, showing three children at the seaside merrily chucking water over their mother and uncle, all of them in the costumes of the day. Given this is a history site and there has been a swimming discussion, I thought the film might be worth mentioning.

Go to https://player.bfi.org.uk/ and in the website's search box search for "Children Playing in the Sea and Splashing". The paragraph underneath the video has a little additional information about the family.

What is the disgusting element of the video Alan?

I think you may be looking too hard into something that simply isn't there in that.

I shared my old gym photo's from Filton School here on 6th Feb and I think that schools like mine who made it mandatory for us to do the gym in our bare chests like my Flickr photo's showed in the mid 70s, and those that make the taking of showers mandatory for everyone regardless of who they are give rise to enhanced confidence in most cases. Why treat such things as terrible and disgusting, isn't that the way to reinforce negative self image?

Has anyone stopped to think that the reason that Swedes and people in other Scandanavian nations are so relaxed about their bodies is because they do those things in Anna's video from the moment they hit school for the first time. At that age there's nothing wrong with both genders sharing is there.

I was thinking about what Yorkshire Dad said about how even older primary children don't sweat much during PE, and it must be even less for the first school children and their PE lesson didn't look like it would raise much of a sweat to be honest so the effective value of a shower for them seems quite limited but maybe it's just about having a bit of fun for them, or more likely instilling in them good hygiene awareness from a very young age and fostering a healthy attitude to their own and others bodies they can see.

I rather wish I'd been able to do that from the start of school. I would have been in my element and treated it as part of the fun of PE at that age I'm sure.

One thing it was not was disgusting. That is something of an overreaction. I'm sure they were all treated very well.

For any parents or grandparents here, would you be alright about your own first school ones taking PE showers, even mixed, under the age of seven? It would not concern me too much. I agree, there are far more healthy benefits to be had long term I'm sure.

Has anyone stooped to think that the reason that Swedes and people in other Scandanavian nations are so relaxed about their bodies is because they do those things in Anna's video from the moment they hit school for the first time. At that age there's nothing wrong with both genders sharing is there.

I was thinking about what Yorkshire Dad said about how even older primary children don't sweat much during PE, and it must be even less for the first school children and their PE lesson didn't look like it would raise much of a sweat to be honest so the effective value of a shower for them seems quite limited but maybe it's just about having a bit of fun for them, or more likely instilling in them good hygiene awareness from a very young age and fostering a healthy attitude to their own and others bodies they can see.

I rather wish I'd been able to do that from the start of school. I would have been in my element and treated it as part of the fun of PE at that age I'm sure.

One thing it was not was disgusting. That is something of an overreaction. I'm sure they were all treated very well.

For any parents or grandparents here, would you be alright about your own first school ones taking PE showers, even mixed, under the age of seven? It would not concern me too much. I agree, there are far more healthy benefits to be had long term I'm sure.

How can such unabashed young innocence be described as "disgusting". The lens through which some people see the world is quite different to mine.

Anna's clip.

I just saw a group of children looking like they were enjoying themselves really. It's a foreign country, a completely different cultural attitude, and a different time.

The PE lesson looked very relaxed. I noticed they all seemed to be wearing something of their own choice there, a complete mixture, some boys shirtless, others in their t-shirts, some wearing plimsolls, others not. Various colours and types of clothing. No obvious branding! So all were doing their lesson how best they felt comfortable by the look of it. I'm surprised you didn't pick up on this obvious fact actually Alan.

Alan, Your comment yesterday at 1726. The ex-teacher was convicted of indecent assault. Everyone knows that the overwhelming majority of boys who experience some communal nudity at school are not indecently assaulted. Thus it is illogical to conflate nudity with abuse. I can see from the discussion that your views are fixed and will not be changed by comments I or anyone else might make. I will say no more on the subject.
Anna, Thanks for confirming the more relaxed culture in Scandinavia. I agree that it is healthier. As you can see from other comments, those who get very hot and bothered about nudity usually sound cross rather than happy.

Comment by: Anna on 17th April 2024 at 22:22


The film you included contains scenes of full frontal nudity of prepubescent girls. We can only hope that such material doesn't get into the hands of wrong-ungs. This is almost as gross as the ITV programme that has been posted on here, in that case boys being shown in similar circumstances.

There seems to be no respect for children from the directors of such material. Disgusting.

Comment by Geoffrey on 16th April 2024 - **It would be interesting to know whether there are folk in Scandinavia, northern Europe, France and so on, who read this discussion and chuckle at how hot and bothered the British get over nudity.**




Very much so. I'm from Malmo originally, married to an Englishman but grew up in the 1960's there. You are correct about Scandanavian culture. We started young in Sweden and I have a film to give you to show this clearly to understand this. Here we have an example from the late end of the 1970's with a little PE lesson for some of the younger school ones about seven years or so. We see that they all take part together, they even change and shower together. This was common from the earliest start at school, I was familiar to this myself at such the age here. Scandanavian countries have some of the most healthy and happy peoples in the world. I think this is very healthy ways to be. Happy days.

Första klass (1978) - Watch from 22m 36s - 26m 52s for the PE lesson piece.

https://vk.com/video/@public208081991?z=video-208081991_456239022%2Fclub208081991%2Fpl_-208081991_-2

In July last year a very large group of boys at the primary school in Portsmouth that my grandson goes to were seen at the family sports afternoon not wearing something above the waist, in their bare chests. I've no idea if they'd been asked to do so or not but there was absolutely no comment from anyone about it within earshot of me and I thought those that presented like that looked fine and there were lots of phone pictures being taken at this.

Geoffrey. In my opinion, forcing anybody to do something against their will is abuser. In the case of a teacher forcing boys to swim naked, is most definitely an abuse of power. Clearly in the case I mentioned,the judge and jury thought so, too.

If you've had poor experiences at school on this whole subject, had some bad teachers, thought of yourself as having a poor body and lack of ability at anything physical, then I can understand why this would colour anyone's judgement quite significantly.

I do agree with you Geoffrey that neither abuse nor sex should automatically be associated with regular situations such as those that get described here surrounding a lack of clothing to whatever degree through a physical education class of some sort.

Alan, You've made my point for me by continuously linking nudity to abuse as if they were the same, when we all know they're not.

Comment by: Geoffrey on 16th April 2024 at 20:13


...."It would be interesting to know whether there are folk in Scandinavia, northern Europe, France and so on, who read this discussion and chuckle at how hot and bothered the British get over nudity."

Geoffrey there is a world of difference between those adults who CHOOSE to adopt a naturist lifestyle (though, there again, I don't like the way so many of them force their own offspring into it), and enjoy doing everything in the raw, and FORCING schoolchildren into it.

Nude swimming should never have been tolerated in the second half of the twentieth century, and if you read the evidence in chief on the Royal Liberty case, you will see that forced nude swimming in school was still going on in the 1990s and early 2000s, though the man who instigated it, was quite rightly sent to prison initially. I hope nobody would not be "chuckling" about that.

I still find it amazing that in the 1970s parents,other teachers, educationalists or even MPs (when they are working that is, which isn't often) were not questioning this very suspect, and certainly outdated practice.

I'd like to yak about my own thoughts and feelings from memories of school PE where the shirtless issue is concerned and how it was used.

Our secondary school actually had a boys vests for gym uniform. No t-shirts were allowed, only vests.

Our school, the timeframe I'm speaking of here is early eighties, had a couple of teachers who used the removal of our vests as a disciplinary measure and I was on the receiving end of this a number of times. When I say disciplinary measure I don't really mean in a naughty way but for lack of performance as determined by a given PE teacher in most instances.

Certain boys in our PE could find themselves the only ones in PE with no vest on sometimes. If our PE teacher told you to take your vest off in PE he would actually take it from you, roll it up and stick it in a bag and zip it up and only give it back when we returned to the changing rooms.

If you got picked on and had to hand your PE vest over it was often followed by an instruction to lap the gym a couple of times as fast as possible, or climb a rope, or the favourite which happened to me a number of times in my youth was being made to hang off the wall frame bars and raise my legs up five times in quick succession and after doing this remain hanging until it was no longer possible to stay there under the body weight. This often happened when being accused of lack of effort as decided by the teacher.

The amount of times I was in a whole class without any vests on during PE was quite rare actually. Often it was the skins and shirts when most boys in PE were not wearing tops and we were left to choose the teams and who was going to be shirtless in those situations.

I knew full well that two of my teachers were using the ability they had to remove our vests and hand them over to them as a form of humiliating punishment in their own minds.

Now I was never shy about being shirtless in a PE lesson if I was told to be when we did the skins and shirts games or on those rarer whole class situations but I did feel differently about it when I spent some lessons standing out alone like that among the others. Standing out by yourself makes you instinctively insecure for certain.

Comment by: Zack on 16th April 2024 at 20:52
Naked swims at school.
Can you just imagine in such a swim class being the one big fat overweight boy among a set of fitter slimmer and regular shaped boys. That would be so unkind wouldn't it.




Not necessarily so, not if he also had a big willy to go with it.

Allow me one juvenile comment please. Actually I agree, but not all fat kids are automatically unhappy being big and different.

Naked swims at school.

Can you just imagine in such a swim class being the one big fat overweight boy among a set of fitter slimmer and regular shaped boys. That would be so unkind wouldn't it.

Comment by Geoffrey.

A good point and I think this site might just illustrate quite effectively that British attitude to our bodies being on display.

Tony, You make a good point about comparing attitudes in different countries. It would be interesting to know whether there are folk in Scandinavia, northern Europe, France and so on, who read this discussion and chuckle at how hot and bothered the British get over nudity.

If someone from elsewhere or who went to school elsewhere has something worthwhile to say I don't see why they should be put off from commenting about those experiences. For example, didn't the PE teacher Graham who hasn't posted here for a while actually say that he had also worked as a teacher in both Canada and France or something like that, as well as back here at home. I think so. It's quite interesting to compare our own country to others I feel. Often it's so similar actually.

When you look at what Paula said, mentioning less than a thousand schools, that's not many across a country as large as the USA is it.

Comment by: Chris G on 15th April 2024 at 21:39


"I'm not sure where the Catholic School swimming connection comes from, but I think our trans-Atlantic cousins should be aware that this site is dedicated to British history and, that to a certain extent, what happens (or might have happened in someone's imagination) in America stays in America....."

Could I just point out, Chris, in Paula's defence, that in the past, though this is a British site, people have posted film clips from Russia, Poland, even the Middle East to justify bare chested P.E.

Your school sounds the sort of place that I would have been happier in, though as I am not a Catholic it would have been a bit difficult for me to get into it..

I think in the past generalised non sexual group naked bodies were far more common than people nowadays appear to realise and this was not looked on as remarkable as it now is. The 1990's are not really that long ago at all and all my three sons were at school at some point during that decade and all of them experienced routine and weekly school group nudity which didn't present many problems and I saw no problem with it. I agree with the previous comment that said there are significant differences in the kind of activities one does, and although I have no issue with my own sons having been told to shower properly after school PE lessons, just like I did at both my middle and upper school, I would certainly have questioned any hint that they were swimming naked in school if I'd found out such a thing was taking place, even if they didn't mind it. I'd not have accepted a teacher demanding it for a minute, but I suppose if individual choice was given and my own sons had decided they liked to do so I'd not have stood in their way over it if they felt confident enough to do so. Is it remotely possible that demanding such things can actually make some boys more confident than they would otherwise be, whilst acknowledging that some others might be simultaneously adversely affected by it.

Trying to work out how I might have reacted at school at the age of about 12 or 13 to being told by the swimming teacher that I was taking a dip without swim kit on is not easy and I'm very unsure how I would really have reacted to that one.

The best thing I can think of saying about naked swimming is that as long as you are in the water you have what amounts to some kind of coverage. This might explain why those with bare chest anxiety had a better tolerance of being that way when they were swimming in the water rather than standing up and about in the gym more visually obvious because going shirtless in the school gym seems to have been a far bigger deal to some than doing the same for swimming.

Quite what top notch American universities were up to back in the 1960s only they know, what with these peculiar naked swim tests for the newcomers on campus and such other oddities as doing surveys on posture requiring front, back and profile photography while naked, all forced into doing so.

Actually if you went to some of these places in that time you might have had to not only be made to do a mandated naked swim test but then go along for another mandated photo session to check your posture out too. It all seems quite demeaning actually, and these are not even children but young adults by anyones standard.

I'm not sure where the Catholic School swimming connection comes from, but I think our trans-Atlantic cousins should be aware that this site is dedicated to British history and, that to a certain extent, what happens (or might have happened in someone's imagination) in America stays in America. I attended two secondary boarding schools in England in the middle of the last century, both run by Catholic priests. At neither of these was there any hint of impropriety on the part of the staff. At the second school we did actually have a swimming pool. Not only was access and use carefully monitored, but the walls at each end bore large painted signs saying in no uncertain terms "Swimming Costumes must be worn at all times". There were rare occasions when this rule was infringed, generally when the sixth form, assumed to be responsible individuals, had their allotted swimming session last thing in the evening before lights out.

Interestingly, although we never managed to persuade the powers that be to permit even voluntary topless PE, nobody in authority batted an eyelid at the sight of a dormitory room housing a couple of dozen bare-chested teenage boys retiring for the night with not PJ top to be seen anywhere.

I vaguely recall the Jeffrey comment you are mentioning here Greg and would like to re-read that one so if anyone recalls when it was posted it would be handy to indicate on here to refer back to.

That comment you made about girls costumes being made of the same fabric but much more of it is very well made. Just looking up this specific subject provides plenty of what looks like genuine information in written form but also looks to provide a collection of rather suspicious looking photography also from other sources.

Taking this naked swimming to it's ultimate conclusion I was thinking this during the past hour when also reading about the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony in an item. Just suppose for a minute that a top level male swimmer knew for fact that he could set world record times, nit with drugs and other illicit substances but simply through swimming naked through the water, and that his swimwear reduced his potential times, they still wouldn't allow that swimmer, or any others who might go faster or fastest like that, to do so. Yet at school it was once fine and mandatory for all the boys to have to do so. There must have been quiet fear among so many at that rule. Let those who have a desire for that type of swimming do so and others who don't not I say. Why is it so hard for minor choices like that not to be the norm ever.

Naked swimming, hell yeah! The last time I did this was on a young guys week in Corfu a number of years ago when me and three guys the same age found a quiet inlet along a deserted off the track beach area and did the skinny dip thing for a short time. I've also done this as a child once or twice with friends away from general eyes. It was good fun and I enjoyed it a lot.

But that aside, and my own slightly overconfident exhibitionist tendancies in abeyance, there is an obvious difference about doing what I've done and doing it in school. I myself think I'd have found it relatively easy to go naked swimming in school but fully understand the big difference in going on your holidays with young guys and deciding to give it a go, or being a youngster deciding to do it somewhere for a bit of fun, and actually being instructed to do so and that decision being taken out of your own hands. That's a bit rough for many I agree and I know I'm on the more confident end of the scale compared to others.

There probably wasn't much of a high truancy rate from most of these naked swimming classes at the time.

A certain madness seemed to reign in the USA over all those years. I did do a little research on this subject some years ago as I was intrigued. But it seems there is no known reason for this country’s obsession of routinely making (only) males swim around at every invented opportunity completely naked. Adult men in charge seemed to want it; many females interviewed on the subject wanted to retain it. Geoffrey, there was a fabric blocking pool filters nonsense that was a well known feeble attempt to come up with a reason to support this enforced, peculiarity. This was so obviously untrue because all females, who were never required to swim nude, often using the same pools on alternate days, would wear huge, ungainly costumes of identical material, and with these costumes requiring at least four times the amount of it.

It seemed for some reason that an attempt was made to obliterate any form of bodily self-awareness or even self-respect that is naturally present in any healthy growing young lad. Why, I don’t know; possibly to produce willing, faceless, cannon fodder for future conflicts? I’ve always hated any gendered double standards, and in fact any form of disrespect for others, but it seems that the good old US of A had adopted both these failings with the volume turned right up to 11 for all the young males of its country over all those years.

There was someone, I think called Jeffrey, who wrote on here some time ago a very detailed and personal account of growing up within this mad culture, only this time he was taking part in a public swimming gala. It seemed all the local girls were invited, together with friends, families, lunch boxes and flasks. They all came to enjoy watching the boys they all knew from school, which seemed to include lots of naked parading around outside the pool area in front of them. His ’short essay’ concluded with him winning his event, going on to give a detailed bodily description of himself and his feelings while suffering the indignity of standing before them all on the winning podium. He might take this opportunity to reappear if he’s been waiting for this tired subject to reappear.

Despite all Jeffrey said, there is no actual written evidence in any reported publication that anything like this ever took place with invited public to attend. There’s probably still the many badly photoshopped photos on line to try to support this though.

Neil, You ask about the history of nude swimming. There is much historical material confirming that until modern fabrics made swimming costumes a practical option, nude swimming for men and boys was the norm. The practice was commonplace until the outbreak of WW1 and continued in single sex boys' schools with their own pools until roughly the 1970s. As you say, nothing to do with power or perversion, and certainly not confined to Catholic schools.
This was discussed in this thread a couple of years ago by a number of contributors who swam nude at school, may not have been keen at first, but, as with showers, quickly got used to it. My parents told me that as we were all boys together there was nothing to fuss about. Attitudes have changed but that was good advice and I was never stressed by nudity at school.