Oh, dear, more junk science.
More than half of secondary school boys and two-thirds of girls never shower after PE, a study suggests.
The paper, in the European Journal of Sports Sciences, concludes pupils who do not shower are less active.
Cockwaffle. Once again, we have so-called academics confusing correlation with causation. As a child I never showered after PE. Not because I was a dirty little bugger and it had nothing to do with the fact that I did not exert myself (unless you count avoiding taking part – that took some exertion). It was because I would never take part in communal showering. Ablutions for me are a private matter and remain so.
As for being active; at the time I was a judoki, cyclist and archer. I was fitter than my peers who ran out of puff poncing about after a pig’s bladder.
So, I’m calling bullshit on this one. It’s the usual hard-of-thinking justification for enforced team sports.
Not 5 hours ago I was in a communal shower, pretty much unavoidable in modern coal mining. No more walking home from t”pit in underground clothes and bathing in the tin bath in front of the shower.
As an 18 year old on my first day underground, I was approached in the shower by an old miner, black from head to toe. I quickly surmised that he wanted me to use the soapy sponge in his hand to wash his back. Makes perfect sense, quite a culture shock for a grammar school boy from Surrey, but it didn’t bother me then and doesn’t bother me now, it’s just a practical way of making sure you go home to the mrs nice and clean.
Each to their own, but anyone thinking of mining as a career should realise that private shower cubicles are not part of the deal.
Mining was never on my list of career options 😉
Reminds me of the old TV series “Brass”, with Timothy West playing 1920’s pit-owner Bradley Hardacre (some clips on Youtube). Praised for his pioneering introduction of pithead showers, he enthusiastically explains that it allows annual recovery of several hundredweight of valuable coal-dust from his thieving employees…
Thanks for that, Lucy, he could have got a few hundredweight more if he’d got his employees to cough up the coal dust in their lungs. We control airborne dust a lot better these days but a lung x-ray is still a requirement of the five yearly medical.
Obviously above, I meant in front of the fire not shower.
At school I was (and still am) short and stick thin (not so much now). Not the shortest child, so never referred as Titch, but weedy looking enough that I was a frequent target for bullying.
My school showering consisted of running through as quickly as possible before my clothes or towel were stolen. Always managed to avoid this, although I occasionally saw it happen to other boys.
“Team Games” SHUDDER.
That reminds me – can we start a campaign to have the unspeakable Coe, hung alongside Blair?
Tempting…