Did you go to CHS in the 50's? archived

I've heard this about a lot of high schools in the 1950s and earlier. Google it. Seems to have been common.

There are posters on the Columbia High School Facebook group who state that boys did swim naked. It may have been discussed here as well.

At gym class/swimming session at Newark Rutgers in the mid 60's we swam in an unheated
pool au naturale.

My brother reported that the boys swam naked at our Chicago high school pool in the late 60's.

Worse, girls wore green cotton tank suits (think a heavyish knit t-shirt material) for swim class. If you got your correct size sometimes they were shrunk and uncomfortable, so most settled for one a size of two larger. Naked would have been better. :-(

I didn't grow up here, but friends of mine who did have told me the same story - the girls have said that there was a big basket of bathing suits in the girls' locker room and you grabbed one and put it on and none of them ever seemed to be the right size for whomever was wearing it! And no suits for the boys. So I've been told. ;-)

Mrs. C was in the CHS '62 class. Boys swam naked and girls wore scratchy gray tank suits.

CHS '72, blue cotton suits for girls, never the right size, bathing caps for boys and girls, boys naked sophomore year (back then CHS started with 10th grade).

It's pretty well established that this man was being honest with you, but I'll confirm that my father (class of 66) has mentioned this before.

I graduated CHS in 1960. Yes, the boys swim classes were sans bathing suits. We didn't think there was anything wrong with it at the time. Hard to imagine, no?

waxwings said:

I graduated CHS in 1960. Yes, the boys swim classes were sans bathing suits. We didn't think there was anything wrong with it at the time. Hard to imagine, no?

After @shoshannah suggested i google it, I did. While you may have found nothing wrong with it there were apparently a great many boys who did have a real problem with being forced to swim in the nude.

spontaneous said:

waxwings said:

I graduated CHS in 1960. Yes, the boys swim classes were sans bathing suits. We didn't think there was anything wrong with it at the time. Hard to imagine, no?

After @shoshannah suggested i google it, I did. While you may have found nothing wrong with it there were apparently a great many boys who did have a real problem with being forced to swim in the nude.

Yes, I phrased that poorly, spontaneous. Perhaps I ought to have said that as far as we kids were concerned, it was just the way it was and always had been as far as we knew. Things were very different back in those days. The fact that the boys had to swim nude in the gym swim class was not a secret. After all how could it have been? Every parent knew this, ( and I'm certain, in retrospect, there were strong objections by some of them ) but I don't recall ever hearing any kind of objections from anyone anywhere at any time. From time to time, I've thought about this over all the many years since and wondered why this was an established policy. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps some thought it was a necessary 'preparation' (I can't think of a better word) for the draft induction to military service. I was drafted into the Army directly after graduating college. One thing I can assure you, there was NO PRIVACY of any kind in basic training.

I would have been mortified if I had to swim in the nude in front of other kids.

Mrs. C didn't know that the boys had to swim nude. Her sister, who is a few years younger, did.

This is from Wikipedia:

"Indoor pools[edit]
The Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) was set up in 1842 with a mission to provide an education programme and healthy sports to young men. The YMCA was responsible for providing swimming classes to countless numbers of American boys and teenagers. This included swimming in indoor pools. Swimming trunks were not permitted in their pools.[21] In Lincoln, Nebraska in 1958, for example, learners were told just to bring a towel and not to bring trunks. In 1942 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin the Recreation Department reported that 404 youngsters had attended an 11 day swimming course where the boys were unhampered by bathing suits.[22] When the YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, the wearing of bathing suits became a requirement.

In 1915 in Portland, Ohio all boys and girls wore torso swimming costumes and the pool was drained every 10 days. The problem was that woollen bathing suits were unhealthy and harboured the cholera bacteria and typhus bacteria which infected the water in the pool. Both the cholera and the typhus diseases could be fatal. As a precaution, the pool was completely drained every 10 days. In 1910 Sand filtration was introduced which reduced the number of bacteria present, but the safest way was not to wear woollen suits, and this approach was endorsed by the American Public Health Association (APHA). American high school and junior high school swimming in many states had policies that followed APHA guidelines. The guideline were published every three years, and from 1926 until 1962 every edition recommended nude swimming. In other states all boys and girls bathed in clothes. The 1937 Administration of Health and Physical Recreation training manual stated:

Nude bathing for boys is practiced universally, in a few schools girls may swim nude and this is the most sanitary method.
Girls were encouraged not to be athletic and were assumed to be more body conscious and allowed a simple unadorned undyed tank suit.

Chlorination was effective and difficult as the pH of the water had to be managed, and wrongly administered could cause burning of the skin. A simple test was devised in 1939 which made chlorination practical. World War 2 delayed its introduction until the early 1950s. Life magazine in 1951 had a large illustration of boys swimming together in the indoor pool of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, and the caption didn't mention they were naked. The practice continued in the states that had a tradition of nude swimming.

In some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s. It was discontinued when it started admitting girls.[23] This was also the case for some American high schools.[24] and junior high schools.[25] and in some summer camps. John Towney in his 1937 article on Swimming and Lifesaving progams for summer camps wrote that boys and girls enjoy the thrill of swimming nude and costumes can be discarded for a night swim.[26] A 2006 Roper poll showed that 25% of all American adults had been skinny dipping at least once, and that 74% believed nude swimming should be tolerated at accepted locations.[27]"

So, it appears that there were several reasons for the men swimming naked.

Oldstone said:

I would have been mortified if I had to swim in the nude in front of other kids.

Seriously. I've gone skinny dipping but it was by choice and among friends.

Event those who go to nude beaches do so by choice. That is the part that gets to me, forcing adolescents to get naked in front of each other.

I was in that generation and never was comfortable with the nude part. But in retrospect there was one good thing about it - no wet bathing suit to mildew inside your locker.

My son had swimming this past quarter, and one of the reasons that many of the kids were late to their next class is because they waited to change in one of the few bathroom stalls rather than be seen naked by their peers.