We watched this in our English lesson, and it struck me that the PE teacher was a bit of a perve, what with him watching young boys stark naked in the showers. I mean, he even FORCED Billy to have a shower. Pupils beware, the evil paedophile PE teacher of doom is on the loose!
----------
"I shall need to operate."
"Operate? She's dead."
You need only look at the caning scene to realize how much the times and perspectives have changed. The boys didn't even think of refusing to hold their hands out. No threatened lawsuits, or irate parents demanding the Headmaster (if they still use such an archaic term) be imprisoned. In those days, if you were punished at school, you kept your mouth shut at home or you would be for it-double! And the PE teacher would have been considered lax if he didn't supervise a proper soap shower for all students. The High School I went to had a glass window from the coaches' office into the showers so that he could make sure all boys showered and discourage any horseplay. And he would shower with us after swim practice, which would *never* be allowed today.
shareIt was the same at my Secondary Modern School in the late 1950s, the male P.E. teacher would shower with the boys after a gruelling P.E. lesson or football game out on the school playing field and we thought nothing of it back then. Today, such a thing would be regarded as something terrible and he'd be arrested for being naked with young boys. How times have changed. The idea back then would have been 'Of course he was naked with us in the showers. You don't expect him to have a shower with his clothes on, do you?'
shareIt was like this in 1980's in Finland when I went to school. Finns are used to nakedness much more anyway because of public saunas and families going to sauna in nude.
Now that the number of immigrants has grown so rapidly I don't know what it is in school.
Oh yeah?
shareCloset homosexual, are you? The naked male body (when in a lean condition) is beautiful. Would you put underwear on Michaelangelo's David because you think it is obscene? Sounds like you are offended by what you hate, but the question is why do you hate the appearance of the male body naked? Offended by the turgid emotions it stirs in your loins, thus prompting the need to complain about it? Trust me, we all see you for what you are. You are fooling no one but yourself. Kisses!
shareI remember when I was at secondary modern school in 1959, after a P.E. lesson in the gym or a game of football on the field, the P.E. teacher would have a shower with the boys (whose average age was 12) and no one thought anything of it at the time. That's the way things were done back then. I don't think that made him a paedophile. In any case, that Greek word, which means child lover in English, was unheard of back then, but has since been hijacked by the media to horrify readers and sell papers. Notice how they always say paedophile instead of child lover, as the former sounds more horrific, like Dracula or Frankenstein. Of course, there were men who fancied young boys in those days as there still are today, but back then we would have called them 'dirty old men' or something similar. The widespread use of the word 'paedophile' didn't really come in until the 1980s at the earliest.
I doubt very much that the character played by Brian Glover was sexually attracted to Billy in any way whatsoever, but just regarded him as a pain in the neck.
It's strange and disturbing to think that a grown man showering with 12-year-old boys was ever considered normal. I honestly believe some "dirty old men" became PE teachers for the purpose of being able to do that.
I agree that the Glover character did not come off as a pedophile.
He was a big mouthed bully. That's all there was to it.
shareSchool with a towel budget must have been a posh school. In my school you brought in your own towel.
shareOur teacher (in junior school) used to get in the showers with us.
share