My PE class was very sensitive today. Today was the day we make comments about the class apparently. There were the usual normal comments like we should have more speakers with first hand experience and maybe have someone speak on anorexia. However, concerning the political sensitivity of the class, there were a lot of interesting comments.


According to my classmates, the lecture should be more sensitive to heterosexuals, blacks, women, people of college age and the non religious. The complaints ranged from very perceptive ones like noticing that in all the negative health outcomes pictures, the people were black, and that calling rape non consensual sex is soft peddling the brutality a bit, to things as pervasive as the shock value tone of some lectures, especially the one on STDS, and the overall pro religious tone of the text book.

I have secretly had some beefs with some of these issues myself. For example, young people of college age are a bit too old to use the shock value gruesome pictures on. Many people in college have seen this sort of lecture before, and would like to move forward in more detail. Also, people in college tend to be a bit smarter than people in high school. College weeds out the people on the bottom by requiring certain grades and test scores, and thus the level of discourse can increase, I believe.

I also hated the tone of the text book "An Invitation to Health". It's got that smug perky tone that makes you believe it was written by some prig who thinks that you should just keep smiling if your roof fell in. Couple that with a lack of factual information about health, and you have the makings of a painful book to read.