Attendance, participation, cooperation and effort are the grade criteria applied by one physical education teacher (with thirty years or more of experience) at my school. I'm not sure why I asked him. He doesn't have a classroom this year, so I see him regularly in the science wing's utility room where there is a coffee-maker for the third floor. He was there working on grade entry work on his laptop when I stopped by for a re-fill one afternoon. I've been wondering a lot about grades the last few years, so I just inquired.

I suppose this set of criteria results in fairness. Students with little or no athletic ability (regardless of their motivation) and students with little or no ambition to reach a high level of accomplishment (regardless of their natural talent) can earn an A by attending, participating, cooperating and making an effort. The level of actual achievement in athletic pursuits, whether individual or group, indoors or outdoors, high-intensity or low-intensity, over the semester or academic year or even all four years of high school is irrelevant under this criteria. This may entail a dilution of the accomplishment of those who actually have a lot of ability or ambition or both, and consequently come to perform at a level of excellence, but who cares? By necessary implication that group of students will have attended, participated, cooperated and made an effort, so they will have their As too.

In my school an A for a semester of phys ed counts the same weight on the cumulative grade point average as an A for a semester in Latin. I can't help thinking that learning enough Latin vocabulary, morphology and syntax, and practicing thinking with all that Latin vocabulary, morphology and syntax well enough, to get As on my tests, quizzes and projects is necessary for a student to get an A in Latin. No doubt there is some correlation between this attitude of mine and the fact that there are three students in the third and fourth years of study in Latin out of a high school population of 600.

Statistic (from CDC): From 1980 through 2008, "the prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%" Is the appropriate reaction? (1) What the hell lousy kind of phys ed programs are schools running! (2) Without a phys ed course requirement this would be even worse. (3) Both?

Does anybody besides me wonder whether there is any causal relationship between the increasing number of fat kids and giving teenagers As in Gym if they show up, take part, get along nicely and give the impression of trying?

At least gym teachers are fortunate the bureaucrats in charge of such things as NCLB and PSSA haven't figured out how to hold schools responsible for making Olympic contenders out of whatever percentage of teenagers can fairly be described as porkers, weaklings, wimps or klutzes.