Burnley Grammar School

Thankyou Hugh for responding, just caught it and am happy to answer with a resounding no to my own question. Yourself? The "extra" scenes for want of a better way of putting it were not required in any educational way to serve the points the documentary was making. Wholly innocent yes, but it still looked a bit gratuitous to me.

Answering the other direct question of Ed's, not a chance would I have consented to such a thing as a parent back in 1980 or so, a year I myself had not long left school myself and not too far from becoming a father. Hand on heart would anyone on here seriously admit as a parent they'd be willing to knowingly consent to full PE showering and changing room nudity being filmed and broadcast in that scenario, even at the fresh end of the 80's, irrespective of the perceived educational value and narrow school tv remit.

We have actors paid fortunes who refuse to do certain things in front of the cameras, yet you see films like this and it feels like the boys were just thrown into it without a great deal of thought and possibly choice, and all for nothing monetary and no repeat fees that's for sure. I noticed that the other clip that was posted from another one of those shows mentioned that those kids were from a thetare group or something, so young child actors but the notes at the end of the PE edition made it clear those ones were the real boys and girls at that school.

I'm the guy who a few weeks ago had a discussion with Alan about the school doctor and circumcision where I asked him if he was a zealot. My school doctor suggested I needed to have it, persuaded my parents who then did it to me at ten years old when I didn't want to but they went with the doctor over my wish. My parents consented to that and I moaned like hell about them a few weeks ago on here. They are still alive. What about in this case if the parent had consented to their child being part of filming but the child did not wish to take part, especially on discovering the nature of some of it, what then?

I'm only bringing this up as a debating point because it is one worth having, not to come across as some kind of prissy prude who doesn't realise that times used to be different and all that, I know, I'm 61, I was there and know first hand how things seemed to be with kids in school sometimes struggling to find a voice against authority and all that.

Hugh - many thanks for your sensible and well thought out comment. There are those who find it difficult to understand just how different things were 40 or 50 years ago. I never saw a p.e. teacher shower with the boys but I can well imagine that it was normal practice in some schools and that it was not a problem. Boys generally just accepted what was required of them and got on with things without a fuss - indeed, they would not have been aware that there was anything to make a fuss about.
I was, like most boys, somewhat apprehensive about showering together but soon found out that there really wasn't a problem. As for practices which I did not experience - I would not dismiss them just because I did not experience them or because they wouldn't happen now. People may have been a little too accepting in the past but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way now.

Regards the ATV Good Health thing.

It's all so easy talking about other peoples sons dispassionatley like this when talking consent and all it entails. So let's get personal here.

Another straight question from me too.

Would anyone here be relaxed enough to consent to their own son being filmed naked in the school showers like the Good Health video showed if you knew that was the likely outcome on screen. Anyone, even in that foreign country known as 1970's/1980's Britain?

James M on 29th June 2022 at 17:35

Perhaps you should answer your own question first before asking others.

I merely talked about best interests and implied vs. informed consent. I didn't say anything was right or wrong.

Okay Hugh so that was a well written great read you put up here, thanks for taking the time with it. So I just scanned back to see what all the fuss is about and watched the full 15 minute video in question.

The general changimg room scene fair enough and we know it's all educational based, but.......

Simple question, you're back in the 80s now. Q - Is it okay to stick the camera directly into the showers and film the boys in school full frontal exposure? Yes or no.

I sound like an interviewer asking a politician there don't I. Try not to give the typical politicians answer. Many thanks.

I don't think he was applying today's standards to yesterday was he Hugh, he said he'd not have done some of those things at the time.

Spencer on 28th June 2022 at 03:00

Gender discrimination didn't exist back then!

Girls generally got away more lightly than boys, my school was a boys school, my sister went to a girls school. The worst punishment they got was a detention or lines or the like. We got the cane. They had shower cublicles, we had communal showers. It's just how things were.

At home in trouble my sister might be sent to her room or occasionally if my mother was really cross she might get a couple of slaps across her legs, my mother dealt with all discipline for my sisters. My brother and I got the cane from my father always on our bare bottoms.

There was no comparison but no one called it discrimination!

Graham Butterfield on 28th June 2022 at 19:07

If I may say, I think you are applying today’s standards to times past.

I base my comments on my time working until retirement as a doctor. First, as I’ve recounted before here as a medic in the Royal Navy and then for many years up until I retired a couple of years back as a G.P.

You comment that while you would have welcomed the making of the film in question you would not have allowed the changing room scene under any circumstances. First, I would question whether this would have been left up to you or whether it would have been a decision made over your head for you to comply with. I suspect the latter. Second, you talk about ‘best interests’. The concept of ‘best interests’ only started to be addressed in UK law around 2005, before that it didn’t really exist as a formal concept but acting in ‘best interests’ is now enshrined in law. To talk about taking action on this score in the 1960s and 1970s is way ahead of time as the concept really didn’t exist. Even now young people do not enjoy the rights of adults but now you must be deemed to act in their interests alongside a number of other duties and responsibilities including due care and attention.

Equally, informed consent was not a concept that was paid much attention to until the mid-1990s. Even for things where people had to sign on the line there was little explanation and in many cases we dealt with what was termed implied consent. So for instance, if a child was sent to school there was implied parental consent and the school acted in loco parentis and within that they were free to do as they saw fit to educate a child. It’s quite possible the parents of the lads in the film knew nothing about it until it happened or they may have been told a film crew would be in the school, had my father been told what was happening he would have told me to get on with it as most did back then. There was no written agreement back then and in most cases I doubt there is now, it’s more likely to be the terms and conditions of business from a private school. Back when I was at school, the headmaster, acting in loco parentis was entitled to cane me when he saw fit without reference to anyone and he did on several occasions so to talk about consent being informed at that time is nonsense. That of course would be illegal now, never mind requiring consent.

When I was a medic in the navy there was barely such a thing as informed consent except perhaps for surgery when it wasn’t an emergency. By virtue of being there, men implied their consent to whatever happened and they were certainly never asked whether they minded or not and from a medic’s point of view that included things like having thirty or so men lined up, naked, for physical exams which were intrusive and certainly not personal. As a recruit I had to join the line up too on several occasions, no one ever asked me if I minded or whether I would like to be examined in private or whether I would like to keep my underpants on for 95% of it.

Things about consent began to change in the mid-1990s largely on the back of court cases where people rightly talked about outcomes they had never been advised of prior to surgery and the process became much more thorough than it had ever been and over time that has rolled into all aspects of treatment including general practice. On a personal level, I opted a while ago not to have some surgery and live with a level of debility because I thought the risks of the surgery, explained very thoroughly by a consultant, outweighed the benefits. In the past, I would probably only have been told about the benefits and the risks would have barely been mentioned if at all.

To give an example of how consent has move on that some of the men who post here might identify with (I suspect many are of my age and a bit older) you visit your G.P. and complain of ‘waterworks problems’ including slow flow, getting up at night more than once and more frequency during the day than you might have had previously. They are symptoms of an enlarged prostate, very common once you are over fifty.

I know your symptoms can be eased by prescribing a class of drug called an alpha blocker, (hands up here all who take Tamsulosin? ;-) I explain the working of the drug to you and that I think it will help, suggest you take it for four weeks and report back. I go to prescribe it and immediately before I can do that a message will pop up on the screen saying ‘rectal exam required’ when I acknowledge that it will then immediately ask have I explained what is involved and obtained informed consent to do it and again I have to click a box to say yes and then I have to click a further box on completion noting anything untoward I found before the prescription can be issued so such is now how much consent is required. None of this would have been required when I was first a G.P. and certainly not as a medic in the navy where thirty lads would be told to ‘turn around and bend over’ without even being told what to expect. So consent is now informed but it was implied.

I would also add in response to what you wrote that I found the earlier posts of the men concerned credibly and they rang true with what I remember and I can certainly remember our P.E. teachers did shower with us, there was no other facility for them to use and particularly if you had the last lesson of the day as P.E., they would be getting cleaned up ready to leave too. I didn’t think it was abnormal in any way. There were usually about sixty boys and three or four the P.E. teachers in the showers, no harm was done.

There was a whole list of things we were not allowed at school and cameras was one of them but who had a camera back then? Many of the things you couldn’t have were relatively innocent. I remember hearing on the radio one morning about a competition in a newspaper called ‘The Sun’ which I thought was interesting. It wasn’t a paper we ever had at home so on the way to school I bought a copy. Another lad who was older saw me and asked to borrow it, I hadn’t even opened it but passed it on, intending only to look at it when I got home that night. He was caught with it and it was traced back to me. Having bought it was the cause of one of my visits to the headmaster for the cane! I never got my paper back and equally never bought another copy but the six stripes across my bottom made me the class hero in the showers later that day.

I would have been absolutely delighted if a television company had made an approach and wished to document health issues at any of the schools while I worked at them doing Phys.Ed. I would have seen it as a very positive idea and welcomed them. I would have been more than happy to have been a part of the on screen discussion and explanations and there would have been no obvious concern about observing a class going about the normal daily activity of a Phys.Ed lesson in whichever indoor or outdoor activity they wished to observe, or some of the demonstrations given in the way they were. But I would not have allowed the changing room shower to be filmed in that way under any circumstances and cannot quite understand how that happened in the way it did because I do not think doing so was in the best interests of the participants of that school and would not have been in any other one either. To me it makes no difference that they were primary school under twelves pre-puberty. All children deserve respect and adult care. As others have previously pointed out, it would not just have happened like that, it would have taken the agreement of rather a lot of people beforehand. Infact everybody except the participants themselves who probably did do just as the were asked to do I'm afraid to say. It is quite possible the school did not offer the children involved the opportunity to give full informed consent, even when adults did on their behalf.

Long before the iPhone and instant photos and videos on demand which are now so prevalent I recall a small instamatic style camera being found beside a sports bag in one of our school changing rooms and having to report it as we had no idea why the pupil had come into school with the camera that day and needed to find out. It turned out to be legitimate but no chances were taken that the camera might be used inappropriately.

The only time photography was allowed was with parents coming into the summer Phys.Ed sports competitions. From the nineties onwards you would see the occasional camcorder brought along by a father maybe but these were not openly encouraged, or specifically discouraged either.

If I can just go back a few weeks ago to something else I read surrounding teacher training from someone who said they had done so back in the 1960's and pointed to some earlier comments they made. Mine was in the first half of the 1970's and things must have changed somewhat to put it mildly. It was stated that in training Phys.Ed teachers were sometimes encouraged to use school showers alongside their pupils in order to keep tabs on them. This is completely false and a packet of total nonsense, no such methods would ever have been instilled for trainee Phys.Ed teaching. I still know old colleagues even older than me who were trained in the 1960's.

Some quite good discoveries there Lance. I'm keen to see some more of those if they are around. Generally speaking programmes, even for children, were quite hard hitting at times in the past. They chose to present genuine matter of fact reality as it was without dressing it up in some kind of palatable fashion to avoid whatever sensibilities might be out there with the viewer, children or adults alike.

Greg2;

My sister and I attended the same school from the age of twelve upwards. I was only a year and a bit younger than her. She once told me she and girls never showered in the school, they were available but untouched. Yet at the same establishment I got no say in the matter and I showered almost all PE classes because I had to mandated until I was fifteen. Why. Gender discrimination surely?

Comment by: Tom F on 26th June 2022
The short 'Good Health' documentary showcases a very stark reality from school back then which was that boys privacy was more or less irrelevant and of no consequence whatsoever to anybody at all. It literally lays that philosophy bare for all to see.

The above is so true isn't it.^

School governors, the head teacher, the PE teachers, the adults in the production and broadcaster, and all the parents, the whole lot thought nothing of full on filming of boys, their pupils, their sons, in the school showers that would then be transmitted widely on a probable repeat for a few years ahead. It's also worth remembering that there were only the three TV channels in the UK at the time so even daytime shows for schools probably got a decent sized non school audience looking in on them.

That PSHE infodoc style show had a familiar habit of doing this with boys. Here is another example from the same time when they followed a youngster with spina bifida fly-on-the-wall style in an edition called Still One Of The Family. Close the start the cameras are in the bathroom filming him struggle to get in the bath.

https://youtu.be/i9EeVC2T1Vo

Here is another in the same series, this one a handful of years later in the same decade. This one is all about cleaning, again, and ends up with uncensored boys in the showers again and even a mixed bathtub of boys and girls too. All under the light hearted guise of good fun and education. Amazing what you could get away with in the name of education in a way.

https://youtu.be/FnDycs_9cg4

There seems to have been a bit of a pattern here. The producer on all three was Philip Grosset. Interesting.

I've had one of those "never realised that" moments reading this at the age of 52.

I was a Ravensdale Juniors kid from 78-82 and from the very moment I began there it was regular showering as part of our P.E set up, so that's long before my 9th birthday. It's never crossed my mind that was unusual at that age. It was a quick - 2mins I reckon - in and out job, no clothing at all, starkers as the day wer were all born. All quite small really with room for about 8 at most so some would have to wait. I cannot for the life of me remember being bothered by it at that age but I can certainly note the anxieties doing the same when I went up to the next school when I hit the change and hormones and all that goes with that time of life.

Tony on 25th June 2022 at 02:04

I'm not sure you can have a decent shower unless you are naked! For me and we are all different, it didn't bother me after the first couple of times after all, by then we had all seen each other naked and there was nothing to learn and nothing to hide. Others may have been more uncomfortable but I really wasn't bothered. That it was compulsory didn't really rate either, lots of things were compulsory at school and I'd much rather have had a communal shower with other lads than eaten some of the school dinner slop that we had to eat every day whether we liked it or not.

As for the gym now, yes, other men of all ages use the showers. I don't take that much notice of who does and who doesn't and I'm not there at the busiest times in the evenings but during the day it's unusual if there are not 10-12 guys showering.

That is a brilliant technical explanation you have given Greg.

I hope that the contentious changing room, showers part was effectively filmed as live after a real lesson and not staged artificially. It looked like it might have been the former. The thought of a film crew demanding retakes of that sort of thing doesn't feel right does it.

A couple of others here have said it makes them feel angry. I get that. Looking at it I felt it was a liberty too far. When they made the finished programme the film makers very likely gave the school a copy to watch back, as you say that's highly probable, can you imagine the classes sitting down to watch it and the girls getting that "treat". Knowing some of the girls I shared school with even at that age it would have taken a lot of living down. Even if they didn't get a pre-broadcast preview they likely saw it when it went out a few months later on TV anyway.

I certainly didn't think there was anything especially wrong with the parts showing the actual mixed PE lesson itself in the gym with the leotard girls and the boys without tops in bare chested just shorts kit. That was PE back then, it didn't seem unreasoable to film them doing that. But I suspect that even that nowadays would be seen as too much.

Good to see the subject being discussed thoughtfully on here.

The short 'Good Health' documentary showcases a very stark reality from school back then which was that boys privacy was more or less irrelevant and of no consequence whatsoever to anybody at all. It literally lays that philosophy bare for all to see.

Richard, thanks for your comment, and you’re absolutely right, most of those boys probably just did it because they were told to. Thinking back to that age, you mostly just did as you were directed and expected to, by the adults in charge. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts some time back, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having to use the communal showers, that we’d all heard about at junior school. But, I just had to do it, as we all did, because it was the way it was. I was just naturally bodily shy, even though a slim and sporty kid… also, I had one or two childish ‘girl friends’ around that time, (who seemed far more advanced than me) and to have been made to show myself during changing and showering on film for them to have their own curiosity satisfied, would have been really awful and embarrassing for me. It’s just my nature, and I do understand that others might think differently.

I’ve worked with tv film crews, and I know how they can take over a location when filming. I expect a smaller unit would have done these school outside broadcasts, but you’d be surprised the crew that would turn up. There’d certainly be a broadcasting truck parked in the school grounds all day, and with its production staff milling about. The camera operators would have a sound boom partner, even though ambient sound might later be reduced beneath the silly ‘Benny Hill’ type music; an obvious attempt to deflect from the visual information by encouraging a light hearted, humorous bias. A lighting technician would be bouncing up light with a reflector adjacent to a camera, and all while the boys would be made to do several takes by the director, as he/she developed ideas for composition as the shoot progressed. Likewise, all ‘cut-ins’ would then be filmed, with reshoots as required, for the edited in close-ups, of picking up soap etc. Certainly far more footage would be shot than used in the final cut. And all while production office staff might be in and out with the producer’s info from the receiving truck…no mobile phones back then. It would all be a new experience for all concerned and I’m sure the boys were all glad when it was all over.

All children would have known the filming date in advance, so no doubt would have talked about it amongst themselves, with a letter given to take home to their parents. I think it’s possible that details of what would be filmed might not have been included with the information, as things were certainly different back then. It’s even possible that the boys wouldn’t have known that a shower scene would be required until the last minute, which makes it even worse. I think it’s probable that none of them would have been shown any storyboards. I wonder how they thought of it at the time, and since?

I’m sorry for the loss of your friend Richard. I also know someone who had a very troubled upbringing and also tried to take his own life, some years ago now, but thankfully he was saved. We’re all different, and all able to deal with our confrontations in varied ways. It’s just very sad that some find themselves unable to cope during their last moments. RIP.

I saw that very Good Health edition while I was off school sick one day. I so remember it. If I was ever off but well enough to sit up rather than stay in bed I'd enjoy spending the morning watching all the programmes for schools and colleges and the little dots in a circle vanishing before they began. I remember a few I saw and absolutely remember watching this one mid morning and suddenly seeing all the boys naked in the showers and walking out with it all on show and it getting my attention. It was certainly an education. It was no sooner on then it was gone, no chance for another curious look but I definitely replayed that in my mind. Whether I ever saw it in school as well I don't know, they got many repeats I think. I was still in primary middle at the time but that was getting on for the mid 80s by then.

Do, or did kids ever need to be told how to wash on a TV show, I don't think they needed to tell me, nor show me.

Greg you're right about the boy/girl thing. While I'm sure those who filmed were all men, I doubt as many as six, perhaps no more than three or four, but it's a guess on my part. I don't get why at that age there is this difference in attitude and it seemed fine by 1980's standards to show the boys like that in a broadcast yet a complete no go area to do likewise with girls the same age. The boys seem like they are fair game and that old rhyme comes to mind where little girls are made of "sugar and spice and all things nice" while the boys are "frogs and snails and puppy dogs tails".

Like you Greg, I'd not have wanted to take part in that, although you said it looked like the boys didn't seem too bothered being filmed without their clothes. Don't be so sure and the reason I say that is we all have the ability to hide our true feeling very well in certain circumstances and put on a brave or even happy face while behind it we are anything but. A year ago a friend going back to my schooldays took his life during lockdown, I heard about it, not seen him in a year or two but I saw a recent image of him. I then looked at sites and there is one called CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and on it there are final pictures of people who sadly chose to to exit their lives, all look rather happy, many are very good looking, and project themselves completely at odds with their internal reality that others couldn't see. Basically this is my longwinded way of saying just because the lads on the film looked as if they didn't give a toss doesn't mean that was the case, they might have done. Sorry to get a little bit heavy with the analogy there.

Daran Greave, at the end of your comment, do you mean it makes you ‘kind of angry’ because, as usual, it would be boys to be shown ‘cleaning up’ but not girls? I do remember that somehow I just happened to see this programme on tv one afternoon many years ago, and I was surprised by the unexpected shower scene. But I remember thinking that it was just typical that the boys would have to be shown and not the girls.

It did appear that most of the boys didn’t seem too bothered about being filmed without their clothes, which was also surprising, especially as their girl class mates would be no doubt be watching the film sometime later. You can just imagine the ridicule the boys would have received! Also, don’t forget there would be a film crew in there at the time, usually consisting of at least five or six people, and usually more. It wouldn't have been unusual for a female or two to be amongst the film crew as well, who would all be in there. It’s probably one of the reasons boys would be chosen, because having predominately men in the crew, they just wouldn’t really expect, or even want, to go in the shower room with the girls. Well, I, being a boy, certainly wouldn’t have wanted myself to be filmed in the shower at that age, and then shown to all and sundry.

Like you Daran, this filmed environment looked almost exactly like the changing/shower rooms I remember from my Secondary School. I think I might have feigned an illness on that filming day!

Six inches of hot water, that sounds like a bath not a shower to me!

Football shirts blocking the drains, the mind boggles.

It's always good to give the class bully, or 'psycho' his come uppance and that was a good one.

Replying to Paul J.

Nowaday schools seem far more concerned in the actual mental wellbeing of their pupils over and above their actual physical wellbeing. But for me both go hand in glove. I would imagine a modern version of that programme being titled Good Mental Health. It's rather a shame a little more wasn't done regards mental health back then and likewise that physical health and fitness in school is not perhaps the priority it once was. A proper balance between the two is best. Psychology and fitness and sport are well worth teaching too. A good head leads to a good body.

It would be very odd looking back forty years later at yourself in a video like that of your PE class I must say. The lack of a discreet edit from the producers to respect those boys privacy was somewhat galling even in the early 80s.

Daran you said; " It kind of makes me angry looking at that and reminding me of doing that but I don't really know why exactly."

I think I understand where you're coming from, sort of had a samish feeling here too, for those lads and what it reminded me of myself in school like that at a fairly similar time in those days. I bet those boys had left school and had started adult jobs while school's TV was still parading them across TV screens. As much as the unavoidable full scale nakedness of that class being displayed it was actually the music playing to it that got to me, as if the whole thing was actually quite fun and amusing to look at. You can just tell from it that there was probably very little care given to anyone's thoughts.

Having a shower after football was compulsory at my school but it was a great set-up for bullying. The usual trick was to wait until somebody had just stepped out of the communal shower back into the changing rooms, then smear them with mud from the bottoms of your football boots. Most targeted were those who had a bus to catch. One day, some of the older kids got hold of our class psycho and pushed him naked through the double doors into the girls' cloakroom, which was just outside. We sometimes got told off for lingering in the showers after shool, with the drains bunged up with football shirts. For some reason it seemed quite novel to sit in a few hundred gallons of six-inch-deep hot water.

Brendan - it's not about a reluctance to shower and hygiene in itself is it, that misses the point completely from where I'm looking at it. It's about the method of doing it. You know, the getting naked bit.

You say you use a gym with a communal shower, is it well used? But there's the difference, you're an adult, your decision. Not comparable to being in school shoved like cattle to be cleaned up en masse.

I was on a Facebook chat group set up for my school years back in the eighties what must have been five years ago now with a group of old school chums of both sexes now just about hitting fifty. As soon as someone brought up the names of some PE teachers the conversation literally caught fire and before you knew it it was onto school showers and everyone had strong views about them and how we were treated and what we felt like doing them. It seemed like they were quite a big deal to rather a lot of people. Of all the subjects talked about on my old school Facebook chat this one was by far the busiest by a long way even after many years.

I've actually placed a link to this History World discussion on Facebook so it may just generate some further interest.

I agree with you Paul. Never seen it before but that video was a revelation wasn't it and without knowing it, it really says a lot more in a historical perspective than it at first seems. That was an almost identical film to my own school (comp not primary) and how we did things, the way they lined up showering so close to each other was how I had to do it in a shower just like that and even the way they all ran into it at the same time together, and definitely how like I remember everyone being quite slim and nobody overweight. But one thing I noticed missing was the teacher, no sign of one keeping an eye out, I wonder why that was. Christ only knows what those lads must have been thinking that day when they had a camera filming them the whole way through the post PE school showers ritual. What would people on here have been thinking if you were those lads at that age? Would you have been fine with that as a parent of one of them then? The thought that my own parents would get to see me like that in the school showers would literally have killed me it would be so mortifying. Notice how the girls featured in that but it was the boys they showed cleaning up at the end. It kind of makes me angry looking at that and reminding me of doing that but I don't really know why exactly.

I'm not sure about the reluctance to shower. As an adult do you not know it's wise to wash after exercise? It keeps you smelling acceptable to people you mix with.

Youngsters are often reluctant to do the obviously right thing and some compulsion is necessary to get them to do it. How may would do their homework voluntarily or in some cases go to school at all?

A shower after PE class is no different, it's compulsory for a reason. I went on to play rugby and I doubt I would have lasted long on the team if I hadn't washed after training or a game and now, past rugby playing I go to the gym most days where certainly the men I mix with shower after a session too, it really is just common sense.

As a lad at school, it took a couple of times to get used to communal showers with a group of other lads, playing rugby, showers were always communal and at my probably out of date gym they are too. I never think about it, I just have a shower and I suspect other men are on the same wave length.

I've just watched the Good Health video which I remember from years ago, I'm amazed it's still around.

https://youtu.be/NRRw-k7cGJs

One of the things that struck me immediately was that among the lads they were all of healthy size and more importantly weight for their age, there didn't seem to be an inch of fat to be seen.

Compare that to a similar group of lads coming out of school today and I'm pretty certain there would be a significant percentage of rather 'lardy' lads who would no doubt benefit greatly from the sort of PE classes the video shows and a generally more healthy life style.

Top post there Rick.

I remember getting taught in a couple of prefab style classrooms that one day just vanished without being replaced.

Parents rarely seemed to intervene with school decisions did they. Imagine them now in the scenario you outlined, half of them would be in the head's office within hours wouldn't they after a change like that.

I've just seen the question that was asked about anyone who took school showers before they reached senior high secondary/comprehensive level. I can vouch for that one in my case. I'll come to that at the end of what I'd like to say after I give a rough outline of my own school times.

This is going back to a middle school I started at in Sep '72 very shortly after my eighth birthday which was late August making me one of the youngest in class. I think the school roll was about 200 at the time with 8 classes, two per year group. I was there for four school years leaving in July '76.

In P.E we did lots of different stuff from football, swimming, running, long jumping high jumping and all kinds of athletics in a relaxed and not too competitive way. I remember rounders was always quite a populat choice as well. A few weeks ago a lot of people mentioned the Maypole and that's also something our school had and used from time to time also but I never relate to it as anything connected directly to P.E as such.

In the school hall we wore a plain t-shirt and shorts for P.E and our bare feet. The classes were always mixed. Outside we wore similar kit and plimsolls. Nobody seemed to wear what you would define as trainers nowadays. If the weather was good we would sometimes be allowed or even actually told to do our lesson without our tops on but this only ever happened when we had a man take us for it, not with any of the lady teachers. Normally this would happen when we were running circuits of our track.

Middle school was also where I was first introduced to the oh so familiar shirts and skins team games division of boys right from the age of eight, most often in our school hall indoors rather than outside. But it was never called shirts/skins or referred to like that and I didn't hear that term used until I reached comprehensive in the later 70's. It was always known as on's and off's.

The first time we did an on's and off's team game, I think it was something like volleyball or like that, we were allowed by our teacher to choose who was going to be what ourselves and it seemed to work out without much aggro. Unfortunately I remember the second time we did it and it didn't work out well at all and arguing broke out because some who had been off's last time were going to be again and didn't want to be, so that was the end of deciding for ourselves. That teacher blew her stack and from then on we simply got told who did which team, mostly by lining us up and going along pointing on and off at every other one of us.

Through my time at middle school I shared all my P.E lessons about half and half between a man and lady teacher. When we did class outside even though we were mixed lessons the boys and the girls would peel off and do separate things to themselves, almost like two classes within the one but being overseen by just one teacher most of the time.

The school had a very small pair of changing rooms for boys and girls separately of course. But the boys one was a real odd design because it had a couple of large ceiling to floor windows which were not even frosted in any way so anybody outside could look through and see who was in them and doing what without any effort. They must have been designed by a blind man or something. The other side was an open yard where anyone in school passed by. Absolutely no privacy, yet this room had clearly been designed as a school changing room without any doubt about it and had not had some kind of change of use.

So for my first couple of years we used these facilities and came and went as you'd expect. Then I remember us getting told that our school had been given a budget to make some big improvements, one was a complete new classroom to replace a prefab temporary thing, other minor alterations and also some new changing places. All this was going to take place while school was out across the summer hols, the ones in '74 I think it was. Infact before we went off for summer there was some work already starting.

By our return after six weeks or so in September it was all done, new classroom, no old prefab anymore, numerous other changes and we had some brand new changing rooms too, the old ones had been demolished and new ones built and extended. They were bright and clean, had lots of new sinks and water fountains and were completely private with no more unfrosted big window, just some higher up ones you'd need a step ladder to gaze into. It needed to be like that, because our new changing room also had a new inbuilt shower area inside it too, behind a tiled barrier about 5ft high. I remember we all looked at it but didn't think much or say anything about it.

I certainly didn't think we were going to use it and our teacher although mentioning our new build didn't draw attention to that part of it. Infact I thought it might just be some after school activities by other people or something. We did our usual lessons for a couple of weeks as we always had done and settled down into our new school year, not a lot different to the previous one really.

Later in the month on one of our P.E afternoons we sat down and before going home got given a note to take home for our parents with information about the forthcoming school academic year and within this it was telling our parents to start sending us to school with a towel on P.E days during the week. Bringing a towel wasn't a first as we'd done so on the very few days we went swimming anyway. I didn't even read the note, just folded it up and handed it over when I got home.

So I actually found out about school showers from my own parent when she read the note and told me about the towel/shower change. I'm sure I'd told her about our new buildings at school but probably never even mentioned the changing room had a shower in it. After all, at that age I didn't know anything about that kind of thing and didn't know you could do that inside school.

We didn't start immediately after knowing all this and so it gave time to get anxious. It was a couiple of weeks before I was packed off to school with a very small hand towel in my bag on P.E day and began middle school group class showers at the age of 10 and one of the clearest things that comes to me from it is one of my friends asking who was going to be brave enough to be the first to do so and a really quiet and unassuming lad called Toby who never made a fuss about anything being the first to do so as we all watched before we quickly followed and did so too.

Half the time was a man and the other half was a lady teacher and it may seem remarkable now but back in middle school in the mid 70's she would be in our changing room making sure we were doing what we should be even as we took a shower, although she didn't stay watching like the man and when we were in the shower she couldn't actually see us directly, she just knew we were doing it. Different times indeed.

I worried about it, of course I did and boys I expected to worry a lot didn't seem to and some, friends among them who I thought wouldn't care much did seem to. That's just down to the normal range of personality type.

After that we always used the new shower after we'd been outside and most times inside too but if our teacher had given us a particularly light lesson inside then we left it out here and there. It ended up not bothering me one way ot the other and the adjustment didn't take too long for most of us I don't think. My other siblings would have used them from the age of eight, a brother and a sister.

Some might say I was lucky to be given such facilities that soon. My parents had nothing to say about it that I know of and the biggest deal with them was making sure I took the right towel and didn't lose it in school at that age, there was certainly not the slightest inclination that I know of where those kind of requirements at that age worried our parents.

I take an interest generally in mindfulness and people who've had or have PTSD if anyone's interested.