I don't know what makes you think that all CS programs are like this. My operating systems course did not require me to write a kernel. In fact, there was only one class that required you to work in a language that required manual memory management (using c++). Granted, my department, at least at the time, had a relatively strong functional bent: before you graduated, you would have worked in scheme and haskell. Most people ended up taking other classes that forced them to use C or more c++, but wasn't required. I'm a vassar college alum, for the record.
