Gonna Make You Sweat

A couple years ago, during one of the university's big cuts of faculty and staff, they chose to let go Helen Martin, a Phys. Ed. professor and longtime adjunct. With her firing, she took with her all swim classes, all fitness walking classes, and a lessened department too.

Recently though, the faculty also had another big decision to make regarding this sometimes overlooked department. There was a vote whether to keep the phys. ed requirements as part of the general education requirements. Those against it complained of its cost and how difficult it is to have tenured faculty who don't teach that many classes and aren't contributing more than two minimal courses over the length of a college career. Those in favor spoke the most stridently to its necessity as necessary a part to a liberal arts education as history or religion

Thankfully in a measure that showed both smarts and an investment down the road, they voted to keep them. What a sad world it would have been if they hadn't. Higher education is an increasingly difficult balancing act of doing what's good for the students as well as doing what's in the budget. But if we would have eliminated it, especially the lifestyle sports, they instill a sense of ways to stay in shape later in life when the football field or the basketball court may not be available. In the most Buddhist of ways, the union of mind and body is one of the tent poles of a liberal arts education. How can we preach the importance of sociology or painting if we can't also promote and praise the importance of those who train and make our bodies better and healthier too.