Quote:
Originally Posted by Kappamd
Also, I was under the impression that most/all universities required some sort of physical education class. Am I grossly misinformed?
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When I first started school, I was under this impression, also... until I started talking to my friends who attended other schools.
Penn State has a PE requirement. When I started school in 2002, every student had to earn 3 credits, and all PE classes were worth 1 credit (and usually only lasted for part of the semester). It was either in my sophomore or junior year when they changed the classes to 1.5 credits, but the curriculum was expanded (although not by much).
At Penn State Behrend, we were able to take everything from Golf, to Ice Skating, to First Aid/Personal Safety/CPR, Ballroom Dancing, Scuba Diving, Certified Lifeguarding, Personal Defense, Aerobic Dance, Jogging, Strenth Training, Skiing, Snowboarding... plus, a variety of health courses. You name it, they had it.
I took swimming one semester (and they added the requirement of writing a paper to bump it up the half of a credit), and a health course.
And if you played on a varsity team for the school, I believe you earned 2 credits. So you'd still have to take another PE class like everyone else.
It was a good way to spend a few hours of the week. I swam for 10 years before I got to college, but I just kind of stopped. After taking that swimming class, I was actually motivated to go to open lap swim on my own. If I didn't take that class, I probably never would have found my way to the campus pool.
I think this is a good idea as long as everyone is required to do it. Will it change everyone's life? Probably not. But sometimes, other kinds of classes don't do that, either.