It's not at all clear or obvious that giving higher grades to someone with higher natural aptitude, in gym class, is "unfair." It seems mostly wrong to me. Exa

It's not at all clear or obvious that giving higher grades to someone with higher natural aptitude, in gym class, is "unfair." It seems mostly wrong to me. Example: I start gym class and run a course of arbitrary length, my best effort. It takes me 60s. After working very hard over the semester, I lower that down to 45. You can even physically see I'm in better shape, but that's as low as I can go, during that semester. Meanwhile some other kid starts at 44s, literally holds back, and 'improves' at the end (no real change) to 40. They pretty much don't work at it; where they finish is the same place they started. Should they get a higher grade than I do? If we're grading by how hard the students applied themselves to what the teacher taught them, the bigger improvement deserves a bigger reward. It's not obvious that "A for effort" is the wrong answer here.