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Get rid of PE finals, requirements
Finals are upon us. Over the next week many
students will experience complete mental and emotional meltdown
as they push themselves to the limit of their abilities, and
then keep pushing.
For most students at Hillsdale, finals week
is truly a rigorous test because of our school's high academic
standards and our professors' general contempt for grade inflation.
It is a no-nonsense time of year, when most people are teetering
on the edge of sanity.
This is the main reason we have so little
patience when it comes to taking written finals for physical
education classes. These written exams are perhaps the perfect
example of over-taxed students getting needlessly jerked around
by frivolous and unnecessary curriculum requirements. Students
at a college like this shouldn't have to be required to take
two credits of PE in order to graduate. It's a senseless requirement
and giving a written exam on golf, for example, or tennis, only
adds insult to injury.
Although we understand why PE classes were
originally included in the liberal arts core, they have outlived
their purpose. The college should certainly offer these classes
as electives, but making them part of the core requirement is
archaic and downright silly.
That said, issuing a written final for a class
that took place entirely on the playing field or in the weight
room is an absurd and wasteful formality that should not even
be an issue in the first place.
In recent years there has been talk of changing
the core curriculum at Hillsdale College. We think there are
many positive changes that could be made to the core, like getting
rid of PE requirements. We're not in junior high or high school
anymore; if students want to be fit, they'll work out, if they
don't, fine. But don't make us take classes about sports, and
certainly don't make us take a written final for, say, a weightlifting
class. During finals week, it's just an annoying waste of time.
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