Should PE grades count towards GPA?

In My Humble Opinion
101

I agree wholly. I went to a small all girls’ school and was in the advanced/college prep track academically, and because of the smallness of the school ended up in PE with the same set of girls I had math and English and everything else with. There were about twenty-eight of us. Our abilities were all over the map, some of the girls were on the sports teams, a good half-dozen were asthmatic which our sadistic pervert of a teacher thought was a psychosomatic illness that could be conquered with more energetic activity (because running faster when you can’t breathe is excellent for your health :rolleyes: she also disallowed girls from bringing inhalers into the gym until someone complained to the principal about that) three of us (including myself) already suffered with arthritis and one had cancer and yet we were all expected to meet the same requirements. PE did factor into our GPAs.

When my 4.0 was ruined two grading periods in a row because of PE (two Ds) my mother was concerned. I was never athletic, but in lower grades, I always did well because we were graded on participation, enthusiasm, willingness to try to develop skills and effort. I got Bs and in certain grading periods when we did things I was good at like weightlifting or kickball, As.

When I told my mother that I had gotten an F on the volleyball unit, she was even more surprised. When I told her that this was because I was incapable, after seven tries over two PE periods, of “bumping” the ball with my forearms twenty times against the wall without it ever hitting the floor, while staying within a small square taped on the floor, she was livid. It was a drill designed for a volleyball team player, it shouldn’t have been impacting on my class rank and ability to get scholarships, in her opinion. (I didn’t disagree.)

Shortly thereafter I had a medical excuse from gym based on my arthritis (never took another class before graduation) and we joined a health club where I got far more exercise than I ever could’ve in that PE class. The sadistic pervert got revenge on me for getting out of her gym class for failing me in health class for missing the midterm, even though I had a legitimate medical excuse (chicken pox!) and school policy demanded that she give me the opportunity to take a makeup test.

102

I think that a big part of the problem of PE is the people who are in charge of teaching it. They usually had academic problems, and went into PE, and they get their revenge on the students that were like their classmates.

SOME PE teachers are great, and will work to make sure that every student gets assigned tasks that are within his/her capabilities. Others see no reason why they should lower their expectations for those students who have physical limitations, or just those students who have no interest in sports, especially team sports, especially the school’s team sports.

103

I was just thinking it would be funny if math was taught like PE. There’d only be one class called ‘Math’. All kids would be required to take it. Everyday you’d show up for class not knowing what the topic was going to be. The instructor would throw some random equations from any field of mathematics up on the board and the students would race to solve them. Sometimes you’d have to work alone, other times in teams. When teams were used, the two smartest kids would be the captains and pick which kids they wanted on their team. The instructor would shout random things like “Think harder” and “Push yourself” but never actually explain how to solve the equations.

104

I had really good PE teachers. We had to learn the rules of the sports and pass “performance” tests. E.g. we had to do a short trampoline routine, but they gave us options on which one we would do. Sure there were some really easy ones (probably aimed at students with less physical ability) but most of us guys pushed ourselves a little…we were guys, liked sports, challenged each other.

And I remember being forced to square dance. So it wasn’t like physical strength was the issue, completely. Gracefulness, overcoming some social awkwardness, etc. were also involved. I bet some of those girls dreaded the call “swing your partner 'round and 'round” because we guys thought the next would be “pick her up and throw her down.” We were a little rough at times.

But our system was a little different in that PE didn’t count a full credit. Algebra I was 1.0 credit and PE was .5 credit. P.E. was required all four years (couldn’t graduate without it) and the grade was part of GPA, albeit in a “half-weighted” fashion. If you played a sport, P.E. was waived but of course, you probably worked a lot harder to do that.

Besides, we were also required to take .5 credit of health class. Back in those days your lunch was what the cafeteria served and it included things called “vegetables.” You could have any beverage you wanted with lunch, as long as you wanted milk (chocolate milk, when you got to high school, was also offered). Well, they’d probably give you a glass of water if you asked for it.

The other point, then, is consistency. If you say that educating kids about health is important, why not practice what you preach? I know they should hear about STDs, drug addiction, mental health issues, and other things in health class but staying in some kind of shape is important as well. You can’t rely on them to exercise outside school any more than you can rely on them to go to bed at a sensible hour or eat right. So, provide the time during school hours and hopefully some will enjoy exercise, find activities they like, and pursue it outside as well.

I think the PE req is dropping from a lot of high schools now and we have a lot of childhood obesity. Not counting it in the GPA would mean, to some, “It’s not really important.” Uh yeah, it is.

105

I think it’s less a personality problem and more a structural issue: PE is taught by people who have every incentive to blow it off: they are almost always coaches, and coaches are evaluated by the performance of their team (and the perception of their coaching in general). Most coaches, IME, work their asses off: practice goes to at least 6, often later, and then they spend time after that taking care of the equipment and working on strategy–watching film of games and practices, setting up schedules, that sort of thing. They also go to every game–sometimes for three different teams (Varsity, JV, freshmen). For football means really late nights–home well after midnight even for home games–and for things like baseball or volleyball, it means 2 games a week. They also have to deal with ordering supplies and organizing fund raisers, and they are usually the first person many of their kids call, often with real emergencies that have to be dealt with immediately(arrests, abuse, suicide, homelessness etc), and even more often with things that are not quite so urgent but that you can’t walk away from and be a good coach (emotional meltdowns, failing grades, etc.)

Being a high school coach is a physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting job and out of all the hundreds of things they are asked to do in a 16 hour day, the one thing no one much cares about is how they teach their gym classes (or, in some cases, their academic classes). It’s not right, and I am not saying it’s how it should be, but people do what they are given incentives to do, and no coach ever won a achievement award or was made athletic director or got at job at a state-championship school based on their lesson plans for gym class. If you want to change gym class, you have to change that.

106

That’s an excellent mental image.

PE as it is taught today is so worthless that it shouldn’t be taught at all. PE did ruin more than a few perfect quarters/semesters for me and it really was entirely useless and the grading was completely subjective - in one quarter which I distinctly remember, they told us “your grade for this quarter will be based on a race. The first 10 who can run around the track once get an A, the second 10 get a B, the third a C, and everyone else a D.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened (I got a “C”). That’s education? Really?

107

@Manda JO: the teachers I described were also coaches. In many cases though, you’re probably right.

108

To extend what Manda Jo said, I think part of the problem is that PE involves generalizing from a specialization. Most PE teachers coach one or two sports and are very very good at it. Then they’re assigned regular PE classes where they’re responsible for teaching a variety of sports, most of which they’re not familiar with. They’re also used to helping already-proficient kids get better; their focus isn’t on teaching the non-proficient kids new sports. Even if the class is small enough to apply any sort of discipline, the standards of discipline for extracurricular teams may be different from what is allowed in the classroom.

In short, perhaps it’s time for school districts to sever coaching from PE teaching, and to have dedicated PE teachers who know how to teach, and dedicated coaches who know how to coach.

109

I totally agree with this analogy.

PE as it was taught when I was in school 20 years ago should not count toward one’s GPA. I took PE until eighth grade. In senior high school we were required to have 3 PE credits. However, marching band counted as a PE credit. Band was more physically demanding than any PE class I had previously taken and the band director actually taught things.

My college required 3 PE credit hours too. I took 2 credit hours of jogging, which was graded by participation and 1 credit hour of paddle tennis which was graded by talent. I still jog.

110

Not necessarily. Here in Oklahoma, most state universities give scholarships to any valedictorian or salutatorian but only if it is printed on the transcript. Getting a B in PE can be very costly.

111

When I was a high school student in the New York City public school system they didn’t count PE or any other ‘minor’ (non-academic) subjects in our averages, nor did they even mention them on our transcripts - we were just required to pass in order to graduate. That’s what saved my neck, since we had gym teachers who graded strictly on physical ability and the last thing I needed was to have a ‘65’ show up among the nineties I earned in the academics. Just getting THROUGH PE class was a major trial, and, yes, you COULD flunk if you were a klutz like me and wind up taking PE in the summer! For that matter, I also had an obnoxious music teacher whose idea of a final exam was having us identify the recorded sounds of various instruments. If you think THAT’s easy, just try distinguishing an oboe from a bassoon or the lowest ranges of a flute from the highest of a soprano sax. There were some real sadists in that school, and thank God they couldn’t screw up our college applications. I just hope Nanny Bloomberg the Phitness Phanatic doesn’t change the system and throw a monkey wrench into the ambitions of bright but clumsy kids. NOBODY deserves to be denied college just because they’re not athletic. If that were allowed to happen, our Einsteins, Salks and Edisons would be
dropouts and we’d be a defenseless nation groping in the dark and still dealing with polio epidemics!