Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

Greg, you mentioned some girls got touchy feely in tasks. How would they touch you if the teacher was around? What kind of tasks were these?

You said some girls were really not so nice. What did they do? Did it ever rise to harassment? Did you ever complain to your parents or would it have changed nothing?

There were several older comments that spoke of being embarrassed by the forced exposure of their nipples in PE, which they said was exacerbated by the presence of female classmates. Some even spoke of trying to cross their arms to hide their nipples.

Can more recent commenters weigh in on this? Did anyone else feel the same way?

What a great positive PE teacher story Miles, even with his cackhanded way of trying to deal with any possible nerves among you at school, which is quite amusing you have to admit. I don't think boys in school ever needed the teacher to give permission to check each other out anyway. Your teacher giving open permission is a laugh I agree. It reminded me of something I saw on TV a few years back about raw army recruits to do with national service when they lined up naked for the ball inspection routine or something like that and one of them was being all weird about how they were and got pulled out and told to take a look along the line at the lads privates to get his urge to look out of his system and then got shoved back into line. I wish I could remember what it was now.

Good story, perhaps one teacher like that was more than enough. He was well named wasn't he. Getting given choccy bars out of a PE teacher seems a bit counter intuitive, perhaps they were just freebies from the school tuck shop he never paid for!

Greg says -"School showers, now thats another discussion entirely and one that always seems to get people going doesn't it."


It does indeed Greg, and I've got something worth chipping in with from my early secondary days, like so many on here from the period of the mid 70s. Was this the very worst time to be at the mercy of your PE teachers, it often comes over that those of us taught PE (is taught even the correct word for it?) in that era had the rougher end of the deal at times.

One of my PE teachers, who I really liked, was very different in his style to any of the others who took us. A really lovely chap who actually behaved like he loved his job and those he took for his classes. He stood out a mile compared to the others at school. But he was also incredibly eccentric with it and could sometimes do things that seemed outright weird. His name was Mr Starr. I think he was probably in his upper 30s or so. Let me explain a couple of points.

Mr Starr took my first PE lesson that involved a shower after arriving at secondary school. My first 30 second impression of him was highly positive and we had a great lesson that I remember taking place on freshly mown and smelling grass on the school field in the early autumn sunlight. It's odd what you remember because it's some of the green grass staines on our white kit I can still see if I close my eyes amongst many things of that lesson. We did mostly light athletics stuff, and something that I remember feeling a bit judo like, getting thrown over, hence the grass staines on our kit. I think it might have been the first sign of his eccentric ways.

Shower time afterwards and Mr Starr must have picked up on an air of apprehension, or otherwise this was how he began the school year every time with the new intake lot. Everybody who went up to their secondary schools at that time knew full well what the set up was, that you showered at school after the age of 11 when you did PE, that should never have come as a surprise to anybody at school. We even got told that while still in primary school when one of the teachers visited us. So the memory is being told to take all our clothes off ready to shower. The PE class seemed very large to me, I'm sure it was more than 30. At this point came one of the first unorthadox aspects of Mr Starr's character because in trying to reassure us I think he actually had the opposite effect. We were all sitting on the changing room benches, nothing on, wondering when he was going to flick the shower on for us and he stood among us and told us he wanted to get any anxieties we may have out in the open and over as quick as possible, telling us all to stand up, look around at each other and actually check each other out openly down below, have a good look (at the willies) he said! It was probably less than a minute doing this but it felt like an hour and was perhaps the worst thing he could have done and didn't feel like any kind of reassurance on what we all looked like underneath or clothes. He'd have been better just letting us get on with things without creating our enforced school nudity as an even bigger deal than it needed to be. It was a very well meaning attempt to overcome any anxiety among class but just fired it up to me. Mr Starr was just trying to convince us there was nothing wrong with nudity and that none of us should feel concerned by it among each other and that we are basically much the same. One thing I will say is at least he acknowledged the fact head on with us when it's clear most PE teachers don't do so. My other PE teachers were nothing like Mr Starr and more like the mould you expect them to come out of for that job. One actually smoked openly on the playing field one afternoon when I was a bit older. Great role model he was (not).

I'm not sure that my initial PE class was any more bothered by school showers than any others around the place. As I say, a lovely PE teacher but not sure we needed him to actively invite us all to look at everything we were born with. I've told this anecdote, and the smoking one and others from my schooldays at a couple of dinner parties over the years and it always creates such a laughing reaction followed by others talking about PE and this kind of thing.

It's quite something how the simple act of having a quick wash and rinse is this quite big deal from school, so much so that years and years after many of us long left where we went we still easily get taken back to our PE gyms, playing fields and showers as if we left just yesterday.

I'll stress that my own memories are mainly positive ones.

A couple more little eccentricities that made Mr Starr stand out as a very different PE teacher to all the others. He would often have a sports bag full of chocolate bars, and would dish them out near the end of various terms to those who did well in his eyes. Just before we broke for Christmas in my final PE lesson of the year I impressed him with my overall attitude so he gave me a pack of 5 chocolate bars which went home and proudly sat under the tree for a couple of days I was so grateful. That was just so different to what you expect. I was clearly going to need a couple of vigorous PE lessons just to burn the calories back off after eating them.

I also remember Mr Starr for telling us not to just sit down doing nothing on our school holidays but to get up and do something every day to remain fit, a long walk, or use our bikes a lot or to go swimming or use a leisure centre with our families. He also used to tell us to get our parents doing more to keep fit too. This was basically a PE teacher who actually gave a damn.

A lot of people at school do arm wrestling at some point and I was no exception. Mr Starr would sometimes get us doing this in little competitions which got very competitive. Something about that makes boys determined to win. But another aspect to him being different and a bit eccentric was when pairs of us had to pull out a mat onto the gym floor and lock feet in toe wrestling as he called it. Like so many others, we did gym with nothing on our feet. This toe wrestling thing he did with us was another one of those end of term things he did. We would be in divisions like boxers and their weights but paired with equal sizes against each other. Let's just say I preferred the arm wrestling but it was all done with good humour even if it was at times somewhat embarrassing stuff to end up doing.

In our normal gym activities I actually think his approach was an overall winner and got the best out of us, certainly it did with me. I actually wanted to please Mr Starr in a way I didn't feel about many of the others who took us. He even did our PE lessons without his top like us when we went skins every other lesson and most of the others never did that either.

I hope he's alive and well and still smiling. I am as I write down my thoughts about him and his style in those ever distancing days behind us.

Every school should have had a Mr Starr on the staff.

Great memory Greg, so much like my own PE experience I thought I would reply. I also reached 11 in 1976 and entered the one small local comprehensive in the rural town I was lucky to live in. There was only two classes in each year so I guess about 300 kids all told in the school.
Uniform was strictly enforced, black blazer, white shirt and grey trousers to school, white rugby top and black shorts for games and white cotton gym shorts for indoor PE. Indoor PE was always done only in shorts from the first class at age 11 to when it was no longer compulsory in the 4th year at 14. PE was done as a whole class and there was only one gym hall so indoor classes were always mixed. At 11 we also exercised a lot of the time together. The two teachers worker together and felt no need to segregate us at all most of the time. In that way it was just a continuation of junior school. As the years progressed there was more segregation of activities but it was never total. When doing gymnastics for example it was just as likely to be a girl supporting you as a boy. Such intimate contact when so sparsely dressed was quite embarrassing which I guess is how come I remember the experience so well. And the girls being more emotionally advanced at that age were definitely enjoying checking us out.
To conclude the details. No underwear allowed, at least for the first couple of years and always compulsory naked showers. Indoor classes were a mix of games, gymnastics and fitness, with the occasional indoor football. Outdoors rugby, athletics and cross country.

Nothing new about this, my own school did just the same at the tail end of the 70's. The only difference, we didn't get it covered. Good idea this. Swimming should be compulsory throughout schooling.

School sets up swimming pool in playground.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-birmingham-63117155

Hi George,

I've seen you ask that kind of question before. Not sure why it interests you quite so much, did you have an experience like it or what? Anyway, you might like to hear my recollection of such things.

When I joined my comprehensive school which I attended between 1976 and 1981 we always had at least one mixed PE lesson each week, primarily the one we took inside in the school gymnasium. Class was the usual 30 or so, in sets much of the time based on ability. Three sets and I was in the middle one.

In the first year no real notable problems I can remember being mixed class. There seemed to be a lot of girls in black tight fitting leotards but others in tight shorts and a t-shirt. Uniform wasn't too strict. Boys came in dark shorts and a t-shirt or a vest and in the first year aged 11 and 12 that's how it was.

Everyone was expected to walk into the gym in their bare feet, apparently in previous years too many had come along with dark soled trainers and scuffed the floor and they got funny about it so decided to get rid of that problem the easiest way simply forbidding any footwear, or that's how I remember the explanation given to us. Some did complain about the barefoot issue and it's nor something all children enjoy or like. I liked trainers myself. My memory of the gym floor was that it didn't exactly look the greatest in the first place and that any scuffing would barely notice.

At the end of my first year at the comprehensive a couple of the PE teachers left, one retired, the head of the department. It got announced in a big assembly a week before school ended for summer when they thanked all those who were leaving. I can't say I thought too much about them leaving, there were about 6 men on the PE roster at least that I remember the names of.

When I came back in September of 1977 for my second year I expected things all to carry on much as before as I was well bedded into the new school twelve months in and it had been an okay first year all round, even in PE which came with a bit of reputation.

Well there is a phrase about new brooms in organisations coming along and changing things to make their mark and that's just what happened to PE for me.

The upshot was that after a year of PE gym lessons, we found out at the end of our first outdoors PE lesson back that when we did our gym one next time we could leave our t-shirts at home. Like a fool I remember shouting out - 'what are we wearing then?' and getting the answer back 'you're not'. Gulp! That I think was a Thursday and next class was Tuesday. Suddenly a shirtless PE realisation. I was very anxious but I can think why precisely I was, but girls did play a factor I'm sure.

It left the weekend to contemplate the impending prospect of my first ever school PE lesson not wearing a top and going full on shirtless, bare-chested or however people like to refer to it, and of course the lessson was taken alongside about 15 or so girls which really added an extra dimension to think about.

I didn't really want to do PE without any top but could deal with it. I suppose many regular boys at that age think along similar lines.

I do remember the first class we did like that because the girls had already arrived in the gym before the boys got there from our separate changing rooms and they clearly had no idea we were going to do our lesson lacking any kind of top on our upper bodies. I remember some high pitched laughing as we walked in, whistling and general joking until things settled down and generally a memory of a lot of smiling girls faces for a while.

That was how it was from that point onwards every gym lesson. Not sure what led to that sudden change like that, I used to ask a lot of questions but that was one I didn't ask.

One thing I will definitely say is that it proved a distraction for sure, certainly. It's hardly surprising is it at that kind of developemental age around 13 or so. When I was 13 the last thing I wanted to be was completely shirtless around the girls from school I was in class with. It came with a very enhanced sense of vulnerability on the part of (some/many) boys that girls didn't face. A purely same sex lesson of PE would have had a very different feel to it if we were all the same anyway.

I heard a girl describing someone's body from our PE group one break time. Another day in the months after we began doing PE bare-chested there was a wet break time and we all had to stay inside and a discussion developed about some of our bodies they had seen in the gym earlier that day and comaprisons who looked the best, had the best this and that. Some can handle that kind of gossiping, others find it mortifying. I kind of fell halfway between the two. There is literally no hiding place if your PE teacher insists you do his mixed PE lesson like that.

When I was between 15 and 17 I did actually go out with a girl from class who not only liked me for my looks and personality but told me she fancied me from the moment she saw me in PE with no top, although it was a further couple of years before she did anything about it and plucked up courage to say anything.

You can imagine what it would be like if boys could do PE with developing girls and see their assets.

Some people might say, well you surely went swimming at school with girls didn't you, and I say yes I did, at a younger age from 10 to 13 and not later and also there were far fewer swim lessons than actual gym lessons and the whole feel of going swimming and being submerged in the water feels completely different to gym itself and of course it's natural and obvious to be dressed right down to go swimming anyway. The swim classes we did in school, with girls, brought none of the issues that the regular gym lessons did.

So it's obvious from my own first hand taking of shirtless PE in a mixed lesson that it is something of a distraction and in my case doing normal PE with my top on for a year and then being thrust into shirtless PE one year into comprehnsive school kind of added to the intensity of it.

Another thing when you do PE in a mixed class like that, some girls suddenly discover their touchy feely side a bit too much in tasks and it was a good way to discover who the genuinely nice girls were and who the really not so nice ones were.

My comprehensive also gave girls optional showering choice and the boys compulsory showering. That difference always bugged the hell out of me as after PE in the follow up lesson the girls would often be sitting at the desks ready for the next lesson or even working whilst the boys like me trailed in with wet hair and late to a tutting teacher annoyed that PE was encroaching into their own lesson. My French teacher once had an open row about it with one of my PE teachers becuase boys came straight from showering after PE late into her class with damp hair all the time. She was often complaining to us ourselves but what were we supposed to do about it!

School showers, now that another discussion entirely and one that always seems to get people going doesn't it.

George, generally speaking, PE was gender segregated. However, from time to time when a teacher was absent, we might have had a lesson together with the girls. Usually this meant that the male teacher also taught the girls along side us. I cannot remember ever having been taught by a female teacher. Most probably it was considered that they might have been too lenient with us or not able to cope with a bunch of boisterous teenage lads who were used to an extremely strict regime.
What struck me as odd in the rare mixed lesson which weren’t really co-educational as the two groups never worked together but stayed at opposite ends of the gym or the playing field was the different teaching approaches. Whereas us boys were not allowed to talk at all and were used to a strict regime and to following the teacher’s whistle code (1 short blow meant ‘get started’, 1 long blow ‘stop’, short long short ‘get in line’ which btw was too be done according to our height and it was expected to stand to attention) the girls were used to be spoken to and were allowed to talk amongst them within certain limits. This usually meant the teacher stayed nearer the girls explaining various activities to them while at the same time continuing to teach us from a certain distance blowing into his whistle while us boys obeyed like sheep. Sometimes he might call up a boy to demonstrate a set of movements to the girls or just to point out the way muscles worked or were supposed to be trained through an activity. This was obviously a golden opportunity to make fun of a boy as we weren’t allowed to answer back and just stood there listening to his jokes on our expense with a bunch of giggling girls looking at you.
Generally speaking, their lesson was much more cooperative and ours much more competitive and focused on muscle building exercises. Then of course the difference of kit was striking with us boys always in white shorts only with bare chests whereas the girls wore a black leotard and black leggings inside and a black tracksuit outside. Especially outside during colder weather we would sometimes look with a bit of envy over across the playing field to the girls in their tracksuits but gradually, as we got older, we developed a certain kind of teenage male pride as the cold didn’t bother us or at least we would pretend that it didn’t.

Simon, you mentioned mixed lessons, what did girls wear in those? How did they react to your attire? Was there ever teasing or banter? How did it feel being dressed like that around girls?

For anyone interested I got through and popped up yesterday afternoon, 29th September, for a five minute chat on the phone at 2.25pm to presenter Ian Collins on TalkTV, the Talk Radio/TV hybrid that you can get both on radio and television now. There's a catch up available and it streams on You Tube if anyone wnats to hear what I said. The discussion was about the obesity crisis but I brought PE into it and would have liked to have gone further if the time had been allowed before they moved on.

Alex, you pose an interesting question about why we were treated as men when still boys.

In my case it was only our PE teacher who did it and after that first half term when I know I lived in fear of him and although I enjoyed PE/games, I felt quite sick at the prospect on one of his classes and his ever ready cane.

After that I liked the way he challenged us to do better and better and although the word was never around at the time he was definitely 'inclusive' in that no lad was left out and no lad was left behind and no lad was ever belittled by him which may have accounted for why he was so universally popular.

He always began a class once we were all changed into our shorts and plimsolls with 'right men, today it's circuit training' or whatever. In the gym, if you were struggling with something, he would come and help and show you what to do as many times as he needed to while still keeping an eye on what was going on with the rest of the class. Back in the changing room it was 'right men, into the showers for a refreshing cool down'.

So while he called us men, he guided us pretty carefully and helped us develop our skills and performance.

No other master called us men, the most usual group term used was lads from when I started and was still used when I was in the upper sixth though by then one or two had started to call us 'gentlemen' as a group which by then was fair enough.

I guess for me at eleven begining addressed as a man made me feel a bit more grown up and responsible, there was a tendancy when we were addressed in PE in a line up to all adopt the military shoulders back, chest out, stomach in - not that there was an ounce of fat on any of us back then and we were a bit puffed with pride. As a nine year old I think I would have felt different about it so not surprised you did.

I think also back in the 1960s, early 1970s there was an agenda still around of preparing us for military service, the risk of another war was real and the PE teacher in question had done National Service and I think among his generation there was an overspill of that into the rest of their lives and it coloured their outlook on whatever they did next. For a PE teacher, the link back to military fitness was obvious and perhaps to a point they treated us as they had been treated as men starting National Service even though they were usually eighteen when it happened.

Alex.

There was a discussion on the other Burnley forum a couple of months ago about those who were introduced to school showering earlier than most in primary or middle schools rather than how most people remember with upper school at 11 plus. I don't know if you saw it.

Quite an interesting take on your own introduction to such things.

Joe, why did so many teachers keep on at us in school about being adults? We were children. In my case I was still at primary school when I took my first ever school shower completely out of the blue without any warning at all. I'm talking 1978 here. We were all just 9 years old and the man who took us for our PE kept on about treating us as adults, at just 9 years old. Why were people like this trying to steal our childhood away from us well before time like that. Taking a shower in school was considered "adult" it seemed. This was disconcerting because I'd never even done a PE lesson where I had my top off up to that point and suddenly we were presented with an instruction to get rid of everything we were wearing and wash together. No soap at first, just the hot water. It did not make me feel like an adult. I heard him say the comment "be brave" as we prepared to shower. We dried off on paper towels from a dispenser and binned them all. They did a good job actually. It wasn't even the start of the school year or anything, it was many months into it around about spring. We had been outside doing a baton relay and other similar activities on the grass. It was quite the surprise. The shower was always partitioned off and not in view when we used our changing room. Nobody had ever suggested we would use it, then suddenly one random day we did and it became a thing we did for the remainder of primary. Because we were only 9 and thrown into a highly personal and different situation and were a class of generally friendly boys in that year the memory remains of our collective curiosity with each other and there was no pretending not to look at each other. The shocked snesation of a churning stomach remains with me that first time and a few afterwards. I think one or two of us needed a bit of encouragement to get on with it. Being told we were being treated as adults when none of us were even close to puberty yet, so at least we were all much the same. When we finished it was always the job of one nominated boy, a different one each week to get the mop from a cupboard and wipeany wet from the floor were we had walked, a quick job but a bit of a liberty but I guess that was also an early lesson in adult repsonsibility. But at 9, I ask you!

Boys London Grammar School beginning in 1970. I remember our first PE lesson very well, we were collected from the classroom by a man who was enormous but who also looked extremely fit and led to the changing room.

Once inside he started to talk about PE, gym work, rugby, cross country and then on to cricket, athletics and so on that we could expect to do in our first year, he made it sound like fun.

Then he started to lay the law down about behaviour beginning with 'your men now and that's how you will behave' and he reeled off a list of requirements which included a cold shower after every lesson, take off your vest and underpants when changing, keep kit clean and well presented, always obey instructions, they are for your safety, when I say jump, jump and so on and then from the row of pegs above our heads he produced a cane and warned that any lad not obeying the letter and spirit of the rules would get a bare bottom caning of at least four strokes. The cane looked nasty and he warned that he was not bluffing, he could guarantee its use.

Over that first half term I reckon most of us fell foul of the rules at some point, in my case, I had failed to apply that whitener stuff to my plimsolls and they were scuffed and dirty. 'Shorts down and over for four lad' was the response and I got four absolute stingers but it turned out not with the cane he had showed us, with a much lighter one that really did sting but the marks were gone in 2-3 days although at the time it lit the fire of hell in my bottom.

Having established who was boss by half term he became a much more reasonable man and the cane very rarely made an appearance and after the end of the second year I only saw him use it once more after a lad in my class threw a javelin in anger at another lad and caused injury. With the agreement of the lad's father we were assembled in the gym and the lad in question got a bare bottom twelve over the horse, we were there to see what the consequence of his stupidity was lest we ever feel inclined to try it. I remember how he howled.

The PE teacher in question though was a popular man among the lads, I and many others stayed in touch with him and when he died back in 2018, there was standing room only in a very big church for his funeral so he must have done something right.

Quoting Craig - "Communal group nudity like that felt a bit like it was meant to be a full part of the learning process to me."


Good line this, and pleased to see someone articulate this rarely spoken view that I share.

What with PE lessons being forced to go bare chested without your top, often for no obvious reason, (outside cross country - why?) I concluded that a lot of the time this was some misguided attempt to force confidence into us which didn't really work and in many cases did the reverse.

That was a real interesting comment Simon and what made it so was the completely unexpected last line you signed it off with.

One aspect of my own PE lessons (1980-84) that stays with me was how we would sometimes have a lesson wearing the usual regulation school issue top, just a red and white vest in my case, but in the final 10 minutes of the lesson we would all be ordered to strip off our tops rapidly and cast them aside and given a skipping rope task to all start skipping individually, getting faster and faster. This would often happen if our teachers, and more than one did this to us, thought we had not made much effort. So we would skip away ever faster, shirtless and with our PE teacher walking among us and he's not be happy until he could see plenty of sweat dripping down our bodies as we started to overheat and get breathless with it and quite possibly rather red. It definitely felt like a punishment.

When we finished we had to walk the school English block corridor from our gym to our changing room as for some reason it was designed this strange way separately. We'd be told not to waste time putting our tops back on and just pick them up and get back for showers. This meant sweaty lads being seen in one of the main school corridors. I remember being sniggered at a couple of times on this walk back by some girls in that corridor. Our PE teacher knew just what he was doing.

As you say, I never saw any of my PE teachers without a top on. I'm sure a couple of them were not much more than ten or twelve years older than us, although another one seemed old enough to be my grandad at the time!

One of my PE teachers had the dreadfully annoying habit of watching us change and taking us down to the gym and immediatly we all entered the gym telling us to remove our tops for the entire lesson. I wondered why he made us put them on in the first place. It wasn't because he was concerned about us walking down the English block corridor being seen as we had to walk back shirtless at the end.

Footwear was always strictly prohibited in our gym PE lesson even though we did officially have white soled plimsolls on our kit list. None of our PE teachers allowed us anything other than our bare feet. Yet the teachers themselves had socks and trainers every time. I got so fed up bringing plimsolls I was never allowed to put on.

Every six months or so we would sit along the edge of the gym before a lesson and there would be a PE teacher and the school nurse/matron as she was called and we would all have them go along the line checking our feet out and we'd have to lift them off the floor to be seen underneath too. It lasted a couple of minutes. I often wondered just waht they were looking for. One from my PE class got accused of having turned up without admitting to an infection, a verucca I think, which drew a shocking amount of anger from our PE teacher who grabbed a nearby bat and whacked the bottom of the offending foot very hard indeed before he was instantly dismissed from class to follow the school nurse to the medical room.

School showering was compulsory for everyone. Our school PE had something known as a shower register and we would all get ticked in on our PE teacher's clip board. We already had a general PE register for the beginning of the lesson to make sure everyone who should be at PE was there. Not everyone could fit in the school showers at the same time. They could manage about 20 in one go. Often this left another 5 or 10 boys waiting their turn. It was all done under very close supervision. We only came out when we were told to. You could never escape the school showers and it was as if this was the most important part of the whole PE lesson for my PE teachers. Communal group nudity like that felt a bit like it was meant to be a full part of the learning process to me. You didn't dare dissent openly on that part of things. 80's schools didn't go big on privacy concerns that's for sure. It seemed like a complete irrelevance, introvert, extravert, shy, outgoing, thin, fat, short, tall, developed, undeveloped, you did all these things and were not expected to show any hesistancy about it.

I have conflicting feelings looking back to my own PE lessons and some of the treatment dished out and manner of how it was done.

I completely agree with Luke, shirtless PE is about power and punishment. I went to a Northern comprehensive school from 1983 to 1989 where all PE, athletics and sports apart from cricket and rugby was done in shorts only. At no moment was there a boy with a shirt or a vest to be seen, strictly bare chests for all boys, skinny or fat, inside or outside, winter or summer.
It was of course about control; the power teachers were given over us who themselves were obviously never shirtless whereas us boys were near naked with only white shorts allowed inside plus plimsoles outside. This was part of a whole set of rules for teachers to lay down their law with and to command over us, like the gauntlet punishment for the poor two last boys to emerge from the changing rooms, like completely forbidding us from talking during PE, like using the whistle to convey orders instead of talking to us, like hanging from the wall bars for slacking, like the always cold showers, like the cruelling PE detentions, like mocking the least physically able pupil which was especially effectful in a mixed lesson, like having us run cross country during a hail storm, etc, etc
It was truly an experience from hell which did indeed forge your character just because you needed to get through the PE lesson without being noticed, without complaining, without being seen to be weak, cold or exhausted. We were conditioned to be treated like cattle and came to accept it but the weird thing is that to this day I find some strange and possibly misplaced pride in having been given a physical education that did treat us like the men we were about to become and not the boys we actually were

I don't believe a word of what that blogger says Gary.

Simon Cates on 21st September 2022 at 03:07

Interesting what you say about your PE teachers Simon. I went to a boys grammar school, starting in 1961 until 1968. PE kit for us was white shorts and plimsolls, no vests were included on the list, for rugby there was the standard boots, socks, shorts and school jersey but you only needed them if you were picked, the school had it's own pool and swimming was naked.

The huge difference to your account is that the three masters who took PE didn't wear shirts either, they wore shorts and plimsolls just like we did and you only saw them with a shirt on if they were around the school, never outside or in the gym. They wore the same shorts while we swam though I did see one of them take them off to get in the water to help a lad in trouble.

Each lunch time a group of lads could use the pool. That was supervised by a range of masters as part of the rota they did for lunch times. Some of them wore their suits on the poolside, they were mostly the older men, some wore shorts and some got in the water naked as we were - usually the younger ones. In about 1966 trunks were added to the uniform list and it was noticeable that only the younger lads started to wear them, after naked swimming for years, it didn't bother the older lads and most of us never wore trunks at school though I had a pair for going to the public pool.

Take a look at this blog from a couple of years back that I stumbled over. I don't know if this is meant to be genuinely serious and authentic or something else motivated the blogger, you judge. This apparent family man uses clothing loss against his children for his own ends. If this blogger is genuine then his behaviour crosses a big line into outright abuse.

I've cut and pasted one of the comments, but here's the link to the rest of it.

http://shirtlessbarefoot.blogspot.com/


Some of you may still have sons who are resistant to being barefoot and shirtless beyond what is normal for a kid. A situation like this is not good because their avoidance can cause low self esteem and even potentially later cause body issues. To try to get rid of it, one thing to do is to say to your sons that, barring special circumstances, that during the summer they have to be barefoot and shirtless under threat of punishment. You should take most of their clothes, leaving the bare minimum of a few shorts and put the rest into a locked place so that your boys can’t wear more than shorts without your explicit approval, meaning you have full control over when and where they can wear shirts or shoes. If they continually resist, you may even need to take extreme measures, such as taking all of your sons’ shirts and footwear, then donating them all. Most kids have grown out of their old clothes by the start of the school year anyway, so it to apply this regiment of being barefoot and shirtless. Luckily I never needed to use this on my boys, and my younger son even wanted to donate most of his shirts and shoes. Conveniently, he is growing so quick that we pretty much need to buy him new clothes at the start of each school year, so it works out. This approach isn’t something you should just jump to immediatly however, as it can cause a decent amount of negative tension. One great way to lessen the chance of it though is to avoid seeming like a hypocrite and stay barefoot and shirtless at home as well. This will help show your sons that what you’re doing is in their best interests. If they feel that you don’t need a shirt or shoes, they are more likely to feel they don’t either.


Another thing that you can do to really push this is to get your sons to take summer jobs that are commonly done barefoot and shirtless. While my older son during the summer works at McDonalds (although in the hottest part of the summer, his boss lets the cashiers work shirtless because the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule is completely ignored by pretty much everyone that goes there), my younger son is in training to be a lifeguard and plans to start as soon as he’s old enough. This means that he can continue his lifestyle of staying barefoot and shirtless for sometimes up to two straight weeks at a time during the summer. This is really important, as your boys getting a job like being a lifeguard means that they can often spend their entire day barefoot and shirtless, which will make them increasingly more comfortable.

My last piece of advice is that during the warmer half of the year, you should outright ban your sons from wearing socks. There are many reasons why you should do this. For one, the socks are pointless. If some kind of footwear is needed, shoes alone can do the job perfectly fine. The socks will only make your sons’ feet hotter, which will make their shoes smell more. Your sons’ feet not being as warm will also make them feel more comfortable, which a big part of the barefoot and shirtless lifestyle. As well, no socks means cutting down on laundry, which is always a good thing. Both of these reasons are good to use as reasons to tell your children when you make it mandatory. But drawing from my knowledge on boys, you will have no problem convincing them to not wear socks anyway.

With these measures, and anything else you might think is good to do, you will hopefully get the results you want.

Most shirtless PE at school has two points to it, power and punishment.

Most boys secretly hated being told to do it at school because 10 to 18 is probably the most self conscious age in our lives.

John, my reaction was just one of exasperation and annoyance that such behaviour is being justified in that classroom. It's worth remembering that most schools have dress and appearance codes, some stricter than others, and yet the teacher in this story seems able to break them and any sense of common decency and respect for those he/she/they are there to teach. The school students in this instance probably have to obey many dress/appearance rules that clearly don't apply to their own teacher. Just the very tight hotpants alone were bad enough before you get to the rest. Imagine what would get said to any of the girls in that school if they wore those to school. Just two weeks ago my neighbour was forced to get her eleven year old son's long hair cut very short before his first day at his new school. That school is indulging that person in a quite misguided and deeply inappropriate way.

Why did that teacher need such big fake breasts and why the need to make them with nipples so prominent. Just pervy.

I had an interesting reaction to that video. Initial disbelief, then bemusement, then laughter followed by anger.

Last night on this news channel here Jason, six minutes in.

If nothing else, how can this teacher be taken seriously and respected. I'll keep further thoughts to myself.

https://youtu.be/cPC8Am83WXQ?t=356

I think the correct acronym for this is WTAF.

We hear a lot on this site about bare chests in school. Nobody ever saw anything like this.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11235121/Canadian-high-school-says-ILLEGAL-criticize-trans-teacher-huge-prosthetic-breasts.html

This relates to my time at my comprehensive school in years 1975 to 1977 at ages 14 to 16.

I had no problem being in the gym at school without a top on if I was told to do so, which was much of the time, but I did have a massive problem with a pair of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do male PE staff who made us older school years run cross country together and always made us get outside to do it barechested even throughout some of the winter months of January and February while tagging alongside us all in long jogging bottoms while we had bare legs, multi layered tops and jackets while we were bare on top, sometimes in freezing cold rain and wind on runs lasting a minimum of half an hour and often longer, amounting to somewhere between 3 and possibly 5 miles around the school locality. It's amazing none of us ever came back suffering hypothermia on some of these days and even more amazing they ever got away with sending us out like that, sometimes up to 40 or even 50 shirt free boys from across multiple forms. One of the PE staff said to us it discouraged dawdling slowly along and made us run faster, what an idiot. On one of these runs our head joined us for some inexplicable reason that was never explained and he seemed nonchalent at the sight of us all having been denied our tops to go running for PE. When he showed up I hoped and almost expected he'd say something but he didn't.

It was often noticeable that there would be one or two boys absent from school off sick on PE days that had a cross country especially over winter time and I remember going down with a couple of nasty colds with bad sore throats within two or three days of a couple of these freezing barechested cross country runs I was put through over the colder months. Yet we were assured we were all being very healthy.

But haven't so many teachers always been massive hypocrites with their own classes and PE like that shows a great example of it. What teacher would ever get away with conducting his class like that nowadays.

During the couple of years before topless PE was introduced throughout the school, I can only recall one or two occasions when we had vests and skins, rather than the customary coloured sashes, for team games, both being when we were outside in warm sunshine. I have no memory of anyone in either team feeling picked-on, and in fact I think the vests were rather jealous of the skins. Not long afterwards, of course, we were all skins together anyway, and I don't remember anyone complaining about the new arrangement. On the contrary, I think we all enjoyed the sense of freedom that accompanied not wearing a vest. That being said, there were still occasions when I would have preferred to be anywhere else but in the gym, my pet hates being forward circles on the beam, and "tightrope" walking along the flat side of the beam at head-height or higher.

To answer Jason - yes you're right, getting out of one PE lesson by faking sickness didn't actually achieve much!
What made me nervous was basically that I'd never experienced group sports with my shirt off until that point (I was actually 14 at the time). I'm sure if I'd been used to it from a younger age it would have seemed less of an issue.
Perhaps I'd also have felt different if it had been standard for every boy to do PE with a bare top. It seemed quite unfair that the teacher could just pick out certain boys and make them skins but not others.

Glenn - I once read a story about a boy and his father walking across a field to go to a fun-fair. The boy was walking along quite happily carrying his shirt. As they approached the crowds the father told his son to "put your shirt on - no-one wants to see that." I don't think the boy had anything other than a normal body for his age but a comment like that can leave a lasting impression even after the actual words have been forgotten. Unfortunate remarks can lead to a boy being shy about taking his shirt off in front of others even if he has a perfectly normal body. Parents can do a lot of damage if they say silly things without thinking.