Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

William,
Indoor PE was done shirtless and most lads by the age of 12 had stopped wearing vests underneath their school shirts. So it was simply a case of going into the changing room and changing into shorts and pumps, we weren’t going to do gym in our school shirts. Therefore we weren’t made to remove our PE shirts as we didn’t wear them anyway.

Football was sometimes played shirts vs skins if the PE teacher ran out of coloured bibs, on those occasions half of the lads had to remove their shirts. It never did us any harm.

Max, If you think it's ridiculous, violating and crude for boys to do PE without vests, what do you think they should wear for swimming? And do you truly think that the boys in the Burnley Grammar photo look crude or violated? I don't think so.

John - no offence meant & none taken (looking back to 15th Nov).

I agree that the whole topless thing was probably 'historic' - some schools did games topless - others didn't. It may not have been down to LEAs - just down to individual Headteachers and Boards of Governors, who probably had more important things to think about than whether or not boys did gym shirtless or minus underpants. (I think a lot of basic commonsense on hygiene comes into this).

Off at a tangent, places like Whitehough Camp School, an LEA outdoor education centre had their own regimes - I think I'm right in saying that Whitehough had a rule that all their boys went into shorts for all activities (including sailing, climbing, etc.) during the period of 'British Summer Time'. (Sadly Whitehough closed about five years ago)

It is not a good policy to have “lads” remove their shirts for p.e. Actually it’s down right ridiculous, violating and crude! I am strongly opposed to such a rule or even such a choice.

Chris G,
It’s great to hear that you regarded the introduction of topless PE as being a positive experience by not being made to wear a shirt or a vest. So many contributors to this forum have spoken about disliking being made to strip to the waist for PE but often seem to have found it a more comfortable way to exercise after a few lessons.

I disliked being made to go topless for PE when I was introduced to the new rule at age 9 but that was simply because it involved change. My initial dislike turned out to be an irrational fear as I quickly came to prefer doing PE shirtless because it was more comfortable than having a sweaty shirt sticking to my skin.

Coloured armbands were also commonly used to distinguish between the topless teams. They were elasticated so could not fall off or get in the way, unlike waist or shoulder sashes.
The coloured armbands were also commonly used in nude swimming competitions or galas to distinguish between the teams, unless swimcaps were worn.

John, when we used sashes to distinguish teams, we either tucked them into the waistbands of our shorts or tied them round our waists.

Ross,
Whilst I think that your school had a sensible policy of all lads remaining shirtless for PE, did you not find that the sashes kept slipping off your shoulder?.

I think I must have been about 12 when my school introduced topless PE, and I don't remember anyone in my class having any qualms about appearing in the gym minus a vest. In fact, I think we all enjoyed the liberating experience, and as I've said before, it quickly led to me and most of my class stopping wearing underwear vests altogether,

A few messages here about shirts v skins and reminded me of my own PE lessons where we all went topless but were given a red or green narrow sash to identify the two teams.

Mike C, sounds as if you enjoyed the vests and skins experience at school! Do you think it made a difference being used to it when you were that much younger? I was 14 the first time I did PE in skins and it seemed like a big deal at first, maybe because by that age boys are more likely to be self conscious about body image.
Interesting that they made the more sporty boys take their tops off outdoors, I wonder what the logic was to that?
For indoor PE, was that the official kit for every boy at the school, ie: just shorts? Or was it just the teacher's decision for your class?

Dr Wallace, There is much online about nude swimming in American schools. Pastor Frank Senn wrote about it at length last year in his blog Frank Answers. There was a lot of comment from those who experienced it.

You are right about different stages of development. I was 11 (mid '60s) the first time I went naked into the communal showers at school. Many of us stared in disbelief at the bush of pubic hair on a 12 year old who had been held back a year. No-one had told us about that. One or two boys from more relaxed homes said they had seen hair like that on their parents.

Hi Ben & John, At my first school skins vs vests were all done in the gym though the teachers who picked the teams definitely made some lads strip off more than others. I moved school when I was 11 and the difference was immediate. My new teacher insisted the whole class went topless inside and, though we were told a shirt or vest would be worn outside, teams of skins and vests were preferred. If like me you showed sporting ability you were expected to strip off outside regardless. Quite why no-one knew but it did form a basis for a team of skins and others were simply picked out, dropped their vests and bingo 2 teams. Happy days.

Hello, Martin!
Hello, any other Shears Green alumni!

I understand that you folks had quite a discussion on Friends United.
I looked you up on Facebook and found you, but I got a message saying that Friends United has been taken down.
Can you tell me what was in that discussion?
I am fascinated with Shears Green because I would have liked to be a student there.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2009
Shrinkage? We INVENTED shrinkage!
Every now and then I'll wind up in a conversation with someone regarding the horrors of junior high school gym class. This chat will invariably lead to me saying,

"... and the worst part is, the boys all had to swim naked,"

to which the recipient of that comment will stare blankly at me in disbelief as if I had just told them I was really a convicted murderer but am pretty sure I'm through with that phase of my life now.

I find the response to my gym class confession both amusing and disturbing. Amusing, because of the way it stops people dead in their tracks, which causes me to imagine how their minds are trying to process the image of thirty 12 year old boys running around naked in the public school's pool center. And disturbing, because to date, I've never met anyone else (besides the kids who went to that school) who has ever said, "oh yeah, me too," which forces me to question the practice of that particular Phy-Ed policy in the first place.

The oddest thing about swimming nude at our junior high school was that we never questioned it, as if it was a right of passage included in the advancement from grade school. You're a man now. This is how the MEN swim! Men don't wear swimming suits.

My guess is, the whole decision to swim nude was nothing more than a cost-saving measure. No suits to buy, no laundry to do, no unauthorized swim wear screwing up the PH balance of the water. In retrospect I suppose they could have allowed us to bring our own suits, but again... no one seemed to question this arrangement at the time.

The only thing we really seem to care about was how damn cold it was. Not only was the pool water kept at a mere 70 degrees (freezing by recreational pool standards) but the entire pool facility itself was cold as well. Add to that the fact that the bench where we had to sit (on our naked butts) and listen to our coach lecture (for several minutes) was made of ceramic tile, and you have yourself a shivering herd of blue-lipped tweens.

Another area of, how shall I say... "interest" at this time was the issue of physical development. In our school district, junior high ran from 7th - 9th grade, or ages 12-15. Being as how this is also the age span at which young boys may or may not experience puberty, you don't have to stretch your imagination very far to realize that some boys looked different than others. In 7th grade it wasn't that big of a deal... we basically all looked like we were growing a small mushroom on barren ground. But by 9th grade, some of the more muscular jocks were already growing beards and sideburns... and had the shrubbery to match. This was especially evident with the aptly-named Peter, who after being held back, expelled and truant countless times, was 18 years old by the time he was finally able to leave 9th grade. Let's just say we never had to wonder who we wanted to grow up to be like.

So that's my story. Just one of many skinny, naked, freezing boys, dutifully doing their time every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30 - 3:30 p.m., hoping some smart-ass didn't put tape over the latch on the door that opened to the hallway so someone could fling it open while we were in mid-march to the poolside, causing everyone to dive into the freezing water before every girl within 100 feet could run up and sneak a peak. No big deal. Literally.

But what I really want to know is... was my school the only one who had naked swimming for the boys? (the girls got to wear suits btw) Was this standard policy in the mid 70s or was our coach a little "different" than the rest?

At my traditional grammar school in the sixties our cross country route was entirely along pavements on the edge of town, so we probably returned no more muddy than when we set off. This was long before the popularity of road running as a hobby. I suspect the school at Clitheroe must have done something similar despite the caption.

John,
It wasn't a case of boys volunteering to play in skins, our teacher decided who would play for which team at the start of the lesson. Initially I think the majority of us hoped we wouldn't be chosen to take our tops off.
In theory the teams were always random but some boys were definitely assigned to skins more often than others - and I was among the former group. However, it's probably no bad thing that we weren't given a choice - otherwise I suppose only the most confident boys would have volunteered and the rest would have remained lacking in confidence.
For outdoor football, we usually wore reversible jerseys but sometimes in warmer weather one of the teams would be skins.

Ben,
Did you volunteer to be on the skins team?, our PE teachers had no shortage of lads wanting to take their tops off for football outdoors.

John's description of the PE teachers running out of coloured bibs was rather like what happened at my school in the early 90s. Up to age 14 we wore different coloured bibs for basketball and 6-a-side football, the next year they put us into bigger groups for PE - something to do with the timetable, I think. Suddenly that meant there weren't enough bibs to go around and the teacher's solution, of course, was one group of boys playing in vests, one group in skins. Some of us, including myself, were quite taken aback when we were instructed to take our tops off, it wasn't something we'd been used to. For the next two years, however, vests against skins became the standard arrangement in our PE lessons and I got to understand the logic. First, it was so much easier to pick out a team mate, and also at times in a hot stuffy gym, it felt more comfortable to have sweat evaporate off your bare skin than clinging to a damp vest. Now I wonder why we didn't do vests and skins at an earlier age!

Andrew C,

Sometimes we played football outdoors shirts vs skins, occasionally this happened in winter too when a whole year were having a PE lesson and the PE teachers ran out of coloured bibs. Indoor PE was shirtless and if we played basketball or 5 a side football one team were given coloured bibs or armbands to wear. The age range was 11 to 18

Hi John, I too did X country barechested or stripped down, as the teachers called it. It wasn't fun but sometimes it made a change from stuffy classroom. Were you split into vests and skins anytime and what was the age range at your school.

Tim H,
Please accept my apologies for the last post, it was supposed to be addressed to you but from me.

I think that the topless PE rule for boys was dependent upon which Local Authority Grammar Schools came under. In the Northwest of England and many parts of Yorkshire topless PE seemed to be the norm for Grammar and Secondary Modern schools and the rule continued into the 1970s and 1980s when many of these schools became Comprehensives.

Cross country was also normally done shirtless by these schools.

I have to 'disagree' with John about topless cross-country. I went to grammar school in 1960 - we didn't do it 'topless' and, as far as I can recall, neither did the other boy's grammar school.

For the record, gym was white shorts either with or without a T-shirt, plus plimsolls. Many of us started off wearing the T-shirt, but as we grew and became more 'confident' we tended to discard it.

Ahh yes Tim you are right! Sorry. I guess it must be posed then for an article.

There definitely does seem to be a split among lads that ran shirtless and barefoot to those that were allowed shirts and footwear.

Ross - we've been through this before. If you look at the gates they're opened inwards, and it looks very much like a public street outside. A posed picture, perhaps?

When I went on a cross-country run I certainly got very muddy.
We all ran stripped to the waist as well as barefoot!

Ross,
I agree that it is odd that they appear to be so clean, in winter you would expect the lads to be spattered with mud. Perhaps it was during a dry spell and the ground wasn’t muddy.

What I find really unusual for Grammar School lads of 1959 is that they are not stripped to the waist, from people I know who were at Senior School back then cross country kit was shorts only. Some schools allowed footwear and some had a barefoot rule.

The caption says that they are returning but I thought they were all heading out. These boys aren't nowhere near as muddy as I got on my cross country runs.

We ran in a white shirt and shorts but we all ran in bare feet which was good as you learnt to grip in the mud with your toes and we didn't have any mud soaked pumps to clean afterwards.

http://www.bb-hs.co.uk/uniform/

In line with the National Curriculum requirements a note from parents is required if students are unable to actively participate in the PE lesson. ALL students MUST bring PE KIT as they will be expected to officiate/coach in accordance with the National Curriculum.
All kit should be clearly labelled
Forgotten kit – kit may be borrowed but this will be recorded with a kit mark in the staff register.
NO valuables to be worn, all watches, money and jewellery, will be collected before the lesson and locked away. Pierced ears must be plastered over if recently pierced. Any valuables left in the changing rooms are left at your own risk.
Long hair must be securely tied back.

A towel should be brought to all lessons as showering is necessary on occasions.

In swimming, anyone with a medical complaint e.g. epilepsy, asthma, heart condition must wear a differently coloured cap to the rest of the class. Minor medical conditions – WHITE. Major medical conditions – RED.

Blythe Swim School Hats of all colours are available for purchase from school

Boys will need to bring swimming trunks or spare underpants to wear under shorts for all activities, both for personal hygiene and comfort.