Two nights before my college graduation, I was having a beer in one of the two bars in town, and one of the Deans was at the bar, holding forth. "Do you know," he said to me and a couple of other students, "there are five people in your class who aren't going to graduate because they don't have enough PE credits?"
"Really?" I said, "Who?"
He looked at me, and said "What's your name again?"
I always think of that when somebody brings up the subject of Phys. Ed. requirements, as the Dean Dad did a little while ago. Williams had both a Phys. Ed. requirement and a mandatory swim test (that amounted to "go in the pool for two minutes, and don't drown") as requirements for graduation. And every year, a few people fail to graduate because of one or the other of those requirements.
(More rambling below the fold.)
It's kind of amazing to me that people could not graduate because of PE, given how easy it was to meet the requirement. I player rugby, which accounted for all but two of the credits I needed. To get the other two, I took Intermediate Golf. Twice. With the same guy, the head lacrosse coach, who was something of a legendary character. The second time I took it was my senior year, and when he heard I was a senior, he asked "How many credits do you need? 'Cause we can work something out if you need more than the one."
(The golf classes were the best way to go, as far as I was concerned-- the actual lessons were pretty painless, and then you got to play for free on the PGA-quality course in town. You were required to play at least 54 holes for the credit, but you could play as many as you liked.)
In order to not graduate because of PE credits, you pretty much needed to make an concerted effort to not get the credits. As the Dean noted, they nagged students about this constantly. "We sent them a letter at the beginning of the year, saying 'You need PE credits, sign up for something.' We sent them a letter at the start of the Spring semester saying 'Sign up for some PE credits.' We called them two weeks ago, saying 'You need PE credits. Come see us, we'll work something out,' and nothing. At this point, I say fuck 'em."
Of course, that's not a really good argument in favor of keeping the requirement. But I'm not sure there is a good requirement. The Dean Dad notes that:
The argument 'for' that I've heard most often is that students are increasingly obese, and phys ed is our best and most direct hope of addressing that.
but this argument is really pretty weak. Even the Phys Ed classes that involved real sports didn't require enough exertion to make anybody lose weight, and it's highly unlikely that being forced to do yoga for college credit is going to instill a deep love of physical fitness in a student whose primary physical activity is World of Warcraft. All such a requirement does is make various officials feel good that they're Doing Something about a perceived problem.
Local legend had it that the swim test requirement was a condition of a large bequest to the college, in honor of some long-ago alumnus who drowned. That's a better reason than student obesity, at least, but even if it were true, the money vanished into the endowment a long time ago, and there's nobody from that family checking up to see that the rule is still in force. The PE and swim test requirements are still there because nobody cares enough to make a concerted effort to have them removed. I'm told that they come before the faculty every now and again, and the requirements survive as much because of apathy as anything else.
Really, if you want to justify Phys. Ed. requirements, probably the best justification is that they're weirdly inflexible and arbitrary rules, and every college ought to have a few of those, just to prepare students for the rest of their lives. Why do you need to take PE? Well, why do they refuse to accept your Ph.D. thesis if the margins on page 63 aren't at least one inch wide? Why is it that a Social Security card and a birth certificate are adequate identification to obtain a New York driver's license, but a US Passport needs a second form of ID? Why do you have to wear a suit to work every day but Friday? It's just the way it is, so shut up, and play the free golf.
It's as good an explanation as any.
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"Local legend had it that the swim test requirement was a condition of a large bequest to the college, in honor of some long-ago alumnus who drowned."
That was the rumor at my college, too. And at a few others. I'm pretty sure this one is an urban legend.
The big problem with the obesity argument is that it just too late. By the time most people enter college and university, they are in late adolescence and most of their habits are set for life. Only a big personal effort on their part can change them.
So if you want phy ed courses to help obesity rates, improve elementary phy ed.
BTW, I had phy ed req'd at my old college, but no phy ed req'd at my university.
There was an article in the Chronicle a couple years ago discussing the apocryphal nature of most of these stories linking swim tests to donors with drowned relatives. Probably it is subscription only: http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/articles-41.dir/issue-07.dir…
But my favorite bit is this:
MIT has both a swim test and a physical education requirement. MIT sits right on the Charles River, and the local legend there concerning the swim test is that the distance you have to swim is half the width of the Charles. I doubt it's true, but hey, it sounds good. And the justification for taking an average of one P.E. class per year? While the official party line is always something about creating well-rounded students (which is of course exactly what a nice technical school strives for in all aspects), the story I always heard was that exercise fights depression, which, ah, may or may not be a rampant problem.
MIT has both a swim test and a physical education requirement. MIT sits right on the Charles River, and the local legend there concerning the swim test is that the distance you have to swim is half the width of the Charles. I doubt it's true, but hey, it sounds good. And the justification for taking an average of one P.E. class per year? While the official party line is always something about creating well-rounded students (which is of course exactly what a nice technical school strives for in all aspects), the story I always heard was that exercise fights depression, which, ah, may or may not be a rampant problem.
Would your institution of higher learning grant a BS/Physics to Stephen Hawking? PE is required for revenue enhancement. Who will feed jocks prime rib and supply fleshly delights ad libitum post-game unless everybody chips in to pay the tab?
There should be required annual courses in every department that cannot otherwise self-fund. A qualified college graduate can recite hours of Brythonic free verse from memory. Srokna or ffroen, it is the breadth of an educated man.
Ffroen is Welsh for "nostril", srokna the Brythonic root from which the Welsh word derives. (Wikipedia.)
Some days I could almost like Uncle Al.
What Babbler said, except as a former K-12 PE teacher and high school coach (first career), if you really want to make a difference in people's perception of the benefits of physical activity, the public schools may not be the best place to do it. Worse, I think it's in elementary school where people first learn to absolutely hate organized 'sports'; choosing up teams and all that. After reading Dean Dad's blog and the accomapnying comments, I mostly agree that institutions of high ed aren't the place to try either. My own love of sports, individual and team, was a family-sponsored thing. My parents sanity defense for six kids; swim, boat, run, bike, ski -- anything to get us *out* of the house. Universal access to a decent recreation center/recreation program might be a better goal. I rather adhere to the premise that it's never too late to start, and never to late to learn. Good habits (as well as bad) can be (and are) acquired at any age.
Not only did my college not require PE, but one student managed to arrange to teach bridge as a PE course. Yes, the card game. (I think it's because they didn't have anywhere else to put it at the time; now I think they have a general category for student-taught courses on any random subject.)
Snopes on the swim test. Same take as the Chronicle, it seems.
So if you want phy ed courses to help obesity rates, improve elementary phy ed.
My recollection of PE classes in elementary school and high school doesn't really include much that would make a big difference in obesity rates. It's not like they made us run laps-- half the classes were probably spent standing around waiting, or listening to explanations of how to play whatever game we were supposed to be learning about.
And what exercise did take place was usually pretty unpleasant. If anything, gym class probably works to convince fat kids that they want nothing to do with physical activity....
The idea of fighting depression is an interesting point, but again, two or three hours a week wouldn't do much. I suspect the "well rounded student" idea is more to the point -- that is, students should have some minimal exposure to the ways in which "people in general" engage with the physical world.
In other words, it's less about "getting them into shape", and more about making sure they learn something about training physical skills, handling bodily fatigue, pacing their efforts, and so on.
At DePauw we have a 2-course PE requirement as well as a 1/2 credit health class requirement. The arguments used for this requirement (changed 2 years ago) included both mentioned above: obesity/health awareness, and well-rounded education. I like Chad's best though, the arbitrary rule requirement. I may start incorporating that in my syllabi.
The crowd I hung out with at MIT was fond of the James Bond PE curriculum: fencing, pistol, and ropes.
In retrospect, weight training would have been good - not so much to bulk up as just to have some idea what to *do* in a weight room. (I hear that some high schools do this. Then again, I hear that some high schools have swimming as part of PE, which is utterly alien to my experience).
I would expect that failing to satisfy "the other of those requirements" would preclude graduation at a college, yes. But the mental image is really funny.
I managed to satisfy the MIT phys. ed. requirements with skiing and archery (I took each twice). The argument about teaching students to accept arbitrary rules doesn't really hold up for that school, I might add: one could eliminate the PE requirements entirely, and the humanities requirements would still carry the weight.
I took racquetball, twice, and ended up enjoying it. I played recreationally and in tournaments for the remainder of my college career. It was the first sport I'd enjoyed since I more-or-less checked out of organized sports in junior high. So it ain't all bad.
I'll second Blake's backhanded swipe at humanities: the most useless courses I took, by far, were the economics courses that were part of my "humanities/social sciences" requirement.