Foreword

Of all of the strange, no, frankly weird things said to occur in schools, surely the idea of forcing kids to attend school while naked has got to be right up there with the strangest. Actually, such a strange occurrence isn’t a fantasy; it’s truly a historical fact that kids have been required to be naked while attending certain school classes. During the mid-20^th century in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and the United States, hundreds of high schools had a mandatory policy which required kids to be naked in their P.E. swimming classes (some schools in continental European countries had naked swimming, too). In the U.S., until about 1962, the influential American Public Health Association asserted their recommendation that boys and men swim naked in public pools, such as those of the YMCA and high schools, and the nudity requirement lingered into the early 1980s in many places.

Often during those swimming times during the 1950s to 1980s, family members—including kids’ moms and sisters—could watch their naked family members—almost only boys—practice or compete in races. And in some male-dominated bastions, such as the U.S. Senate, their pool remained men-only until 2008 since several male senators preferred to swim nude, according to a 2015 Politico Magazine report.

So if you attended a high school (or secondary school) in any of those countries mentioned above prior to about 1982, and swimming lessons were part of your P.E. program (and if you were a boy), then mandatory naked swimming was likely a fact of your teen-aged life. I know this, because my high school—actually all the high schools in my city—did have that requirement in the 1950s and 1960s and that policy was rigorously enforced. For girls, required nudity wasn’t typically the case, but in some localities, girls were also included in the rule. Also, in some schools during the 1950 to 1965 period, boys’ and-or girls’ gym classes and certain gym sports were conducted with the teens being naked as well and reports exist that these classes were co-ed.

Swimming classes were virtually always single-sex, although there were schools where co-ed naked swimming did occur, if personal experiences reported on internet forum groups are to be believed. Did school outsiders see the nudity? Yes, they did. As far as public exposure of teen nudity is concerned, high school swimming competitions at most of those schools were typically held with the teams swimming naked, as evidenced by articles and photographs in the local press of those towns. High schools weren’t the only places where official policies mandated naked swimming; many colleges also followed the practice. Obviously the nudity involved in those swimming classes, or even gym classes, was limited to the gym and pool areas. Thus this mandatory nudity is certainly far more limited than the nudity required in the fictional “Naked in School” stories, but it unquestionably happened; Naked in School is a historical reality.