I don’t remember if it was the case in middle school but in high school we had to take written exams on the rules of the sports we were studying. So there was a “intelligence” part to our grade.
I was and am a fatty and have never done the mile in anything less than 15 minutes, but I always got an A in PE because I always tried very hard and it showed.
I graduated in 72 and this is the first I ever heard of actually grading P.E. I assume you could get in trouble if you actually ditched it, but I didn’t do that.
Quite honestly, I don’t remember what my grades were in HS PE. But I do remember being forced to do things that were beyond what was healthy for me at the time. For example, I typically run a very low blood pressure. The lowest I’ve had recorded was 70-something over 40-something. Yesterday the doctor measured it as 90-something over 70-something. So pretty low. I remember being required to run four laps around the track (1 mile) and this was in Arizona heat, so think 105+ temperatures. I started getting faint and dizzy halfway through. I started falling over and having to get back up. I stopped and asked the coach if she would let me stop. At that point not only was I dizzy and such, but my lips were cracked and bleeding from the heat/dry. I could barely stand up. She said I had to finish the mile.
I can only assume that stuff like that was entered into my grades. I’m sure I didn’t get good grades in HS since I wasn’t good at sports, either.
I think HS PE should be on a Pass/Fail basis, like it is at my son’s school. Kids shouldn’t be punished for not being athletic. Some kids are, some kids aren’t. It shouldn’t drag down your GPA if you’re not.
We had to do PE at school but I never received a mark/grade for it.
Parochial high school, class of '89. We were graded on performance. I was never athletic and was a bit overweight in HS (I’m much worse now, actually). I used to get shin splints every freaking year when we did the running unit. PE class absolutely blew my GPA.
We were never taught the rules of any sport. I guess they just assumed we’d learn them from each other . . . which some of us didn’t, because it was something we didn’t care to learn. As a person who is bored by sports in general, I graduated from high school without learning that a batter doesn’t have to swing at every ball that’s pitched.
I did make one hit, though. It was a grand slam.
IIRC, which after all these years I may not, my high school PE was graded on a system of demerits, not by performance. You would basically get an A, no matter how bad you were at anything, as long as you were actually trying to do it. But if you screwed around, tried to get out of stuff, continually forgot your gym clothes, or did anything else that the gym teacher noticed and displeased him, he recorded those “demerits” which eventually dropped your grade.
I had PE every grade from 1 to 10 and in 12th grade (11th grade we had Health instead) in the same school district. We never had real grades (or real instruction in HS either). You either got an S (for Satisfactory) or a U (for Unsatisfactory). Nothing was factored into your GPA. It took real effort to get a U. Elementary school is kinda a blur, but in middle and high school it took effort to get a U for the quarter. You had fail to change clothes for more than half of the classes and completely refuse to even pretend to participate for more than half the classes (or be dressed so you couldn’t) and repeadedly mouth off to teacher or otherwise be insubordinate.
Even if you got Us all four quarters you still passed for the year. It was actually district policy that no student ever failed PE for the year. I always hated PE and the male teachers; my senior year I had PE first period (every other day for the year). So I came in late alot. I ended up attending less than a 3rd of my PE classes and still got Ss all 4 quarters. Late in my senior year the attendance secretary even commented that she never bothered checking up on any of my excuses because I was only missing PE. I’m sure if it wasn’t for state law the district wouldn’t have bothered making all students take PE; at least in the high school.
Maryland, late 1970’s. I specifically remember getting graded on how far you could punt a football on two tries. I muffed the first, and got ‘B’ distance on the second punt.
I also remember that that was normal - there were specific metrics, and I sucked.
On the other hand, in other classes your grade depends on raw mental ability.
Gosh, you people had nice PE teachers.
In my experience in AZ, of course physical ability mattered. If you are one of the athletes, you show up and do something easy and fun and get your “A”. If not, you suffer through humiliation during team-choosing and do as many reports as the teacher will take to bring the grade up enough to not lose that grade-dependent college scholarship. Trying is nice and some teachers take that into account, but I don’t think mine did much.
I have always thought that PE in the public school system should be about health and fitness, nutrition, healthy habits and the like. In my experience it’s primarily about organized sports, and it turned me off to sports for life.
If only there could be PE (required) and PE (honors), I think that would be a great system. The honors PE kids could kick a soccer ball into low Earth orbit and get credit for their accomplishments and gifts, and the rest of us could learn how to stretch and jog and so on.
When I was in school, PE was required yearly through middle school, and then one semester per year in high school. In ninth grade, the teacher was a complete moron, and I received my first, last, and only D when we did a unit on basketball: our grade for that period was based on shooting free throws, and if you rated in the 74th percentile, your grade was 74%. She never did understand the difference between percent and percentile. Fortunately, marching band began to count toward PE requirements the following year! (And seriously, that D was probably the difference between my graduating fifth in my class versus first or second. It was academically a very competitive school.)
In the mid-late 80s in my school district (US Midwest), effort was sometimes a part of your grade, but ability counted a lot. I was pissed because PE was bringing down my GPA. In middle school, I regularly got C’s even when I tried, just because I was just not coordinated and not happy with the sports we played. By the time I hit high school, I had improved enough that combined with dedicated effort, I usually got B’s. I even did quite well in field hockey and aerobics/weights and think I got A- or so for those portions. After a certain number of quarters of PE in high school, you could opt out of it, so I didn’t have PE my senior year.
I went to HS in NJ during the late 90s. From what I remembered is that 3 out of 4 of the semesters you would be awarded B+ if you weren’t a trouble maker who used the 45 minutes to sneak off and smoke under the bleachers or some such. They didn’t really cared what we did other wise, as long as we were in the general vicinity of our assigned activity (which rotated each semester). If the sport you got for the semester didn’t suit your fancy you were aloud to walk the track the whole class period. One semester each year was devoted to “health class,” which depending on the year was sex ed, general health, going over responsible adult things (how to balance check book, manage a house hold, pay bills), and drivers ed. Those were graded based on tests.
I don’t remember what I got in PE in high school. If you showed up and your outfit was clean, you got a C, and it didn’t count in your GPA.
So I showed up, and my outfit was clean. Apart from that, by high school I was in pretty decent shape from judo, but I was not about to get hurt playing some sport I didn’t care about and miss a tournament. So basically, I didn’t give a shit, and just sloughed off until they hit something I liked. Basketball drills? Sure, whatever. Oh gee, I missed a layup. How devastating.
Then we did a wrestling segment. That’s an opportunity to practice my groundwork. Kicked ass in that one. Then we did something called (I think) speedball, and I went back to indifferently standing around for thirty minutes in the field.
Regards,
Shodan