Does this picture bring back any memories? Was your school PE like this, or were you forced into shirts, socks and trainers the whole time however hot and sweaty you were? There used to be a blog called 'Shirtless Freedom' - sadly long gone. As a boy, I can remember PE class where we were told to play team games 'shirts v skins'. Some boys (like us!) threw off their shirts straight away, anxious to be 'in their skin', while others shuffled behind others desperate to keep theirs on and not o be picked for 'skins' - and they were usually the non-sporting boys - aka 'nerds' I'm afraid - but often only anxious because they felt that their bodies were underdeveloped and would be 'laughed at'. Tey never seemed to learn that if they joined the shirtless pack, they would become part of that community... The other class of boys seem to throw off their shirts at every opportunity: 'When the boys get together, the shirts come off!' And

Here is a collection of boys school PE classes, mostly from the fifties or earlier, showing how things used to be done. Boys classes were mostly shirtless, some barefoot, and there was an interesting reason for this: post-war, schools had a responsiblity for checking on their pupils hygeine, nutrition, evidence of diseases like rickets, and checking on general physical development. Official nurses or doctors occasionally attended the line up to push and prod and occasionally send pupils to clinics. This happened even with mixed classes, and in primary schools too. My father says that, at that time, a lot of houses in UK didn't have bathrooms and, in some families washing was infrequent: changing rooms always had a lingering odour of cheesy feet. Perhaps forcing everyone to strip was a subtle way of embarrassing them into better hygeine practice. Most of the pics are from UK but you will see the famous LaSierra High School in the US, and some examples of other (army) mass training.