School of rocks
It's an interesting questions, and one that teacher Bonnie Dreger has been asked several times since she began teaching a full credit high school course on curling.
"people ask, 'can you actually fail curling?'" says Dreger.
"the answer is, 'certainly, you can fail curling.' there's a lot more to this course than people think."
Indeed, the curriculum for Dreger's curling course runs a full 591 pages.
Dreger herself had to take a seminar taught by experts flown in from as far away as Calgary prior to being approved to teach the course.
Students are expected to learn everything from the roots of the game to the composition of the stones, the rules of etiquette to the art of the tap-back. And they must do it in a course that has a strong academmic component in the classroom to go along with all the brushing and sliding on the ice.
The course, developed by the Canadian and Manitoba curling associations, was approved earlier this year by the Manitoba Department of Education and is currently in place in two high schools as part of a national pilot project.
The course counts toward a student's high school diploma no differently than an optional course in band, drama or home economics would.
The results so fat have overwhelmed organizers, with over a dozen schools in Manitoba already lined up to offer the course next year and dozens more across Canada expressing the same interest
