Everyone has heard of extracurriculars. These activities are supposed to be extra, away from your regular curriculum at school. As defined by the word “extracurricular,” where the Latin Prefix “extra-” means outside and “curricular/curriculum” means career. However, some clubs have decided to issue grades in their classes that can and will impact your overall GPA. Sure, some “clubs” are, in reality, extra classes that require attendance and collect work, such as Journalism, or they need an extreme commitment to a topic or subject, such as FRC Robotics. Nonetheless, some clubs that don’t have much commitment still issue grades for little to no reason, yet they still can impact the student’s grades. Should this even be allowed?
According to the Leadership Society of Arizona, the first concept of a grade arose at Cambridge University, where a Tutor decided to rank and maintain the quality of his students’ work. This usually applies to quantifiable subjects like stem or some aspects of humanities, where your accuracy and performance measure the quality of your work to determine if you understood the topic. Similarly, clubs also have a system of measuring performance to make sure that the members are doing their utmost best to ensure member quality. This is understandable for clubs if their grades are separate from the schools, but some clubs put their grades in the same grade book as their science or history class, which could significantly impact the student’s overall GPA if they fail to perform well in their club. However, grades can be utilized in the opposite direction, artificially boosting a student’s overall GPA without doing much in the club. A Quartz Hill High School student, Sang Tran, also agrees, stating, “Clubs should not be given a grade because a grade would mean the club is a class. A class is defined as a program that you join in to learn about something. Classes are typically more commitment-based than clubs.” Using this logic, clubs that require high commitment should be allowed to assign grades, mainly to ensure quality and participation, but clubs that are just to hang out or discuss topics should not be allowed to assign grades whatsoever, as they are just there to artificially raise the performance of students or artificially tank the grades of students if the grades were not desirable.
In the end, clubs will be responsible for keeping track of their members in any way they desire. Keeping grades could be beneficial anyway, as it can also be used as a form of logging for colleges to see their dedication to the club. Nonetheless, it’s best if clubs that did assign grades convert themselves into a class so students who join aren’t surprised when their grade dropped from an assignment they didn’t even know was required, ruining their confidence and increasing their chance of dropping, thus decreasing your club numbers.