Teachers, no more red pens please.

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I know we have several educators on this board, so let me ask, do you use red pens to grade papers?

If so, better get ready to go buy a less confrontational and harsh color, as red is to harmful to the children’s psyche!

http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=3160467&nav=3YeXYE9Z

Just another case of the wussification of the world and PC gone to far.

 

About 20 years ago, I had a boss who did all of his work in green ink. He was one of those people who could never leave someone else's work alone - no matter what was submitted to him, it came back marked up to high heaven. He had switched to green all those years ago for the very same reasons that article cites.

Of coures, as this guy kept getting pushed higher and higher up the corporate ladder, GREEN ink took on all those negative connotations. Figures that green was my favorite color, and I had been using it since high school but suddenly had to switch or be labeled a suckup.

Red, green, purple, orange... who cares WHAT color the teacher uses, as long as it's something that stands out against the student's work so s/he can SEE the corrections?

 

I think that people want to blame their ****-ups on everything but themselves. Red ink affecting their psyche...

 

I have not yet starting grading and correcting stuff on a large scale but when I do I dont think I will think about what colour pen I use. Will use whatever I have close by. Hopefully most of the corrections done will be in the form of constructive comments and not just a mark to show that something is wrong.

As for the issue of red I do think that there might be a point here. Red signals: WRONG WRONG WRONG YOU FREAKING IDIOT! While you as a teacher is trying to say to the pupil that what he wrote was not entirely accurate perhaps he should look over it again. However, depending on the layout of a test or something similar it could be useful to utilise the glare of a red pen as to make sure that ones markings arent over looked.

 

I don't care wether teachers use red or green or blue ink - as long as one can read *what* they write.

Mandatory calligraphy courses for teachers! And MDs! And lawyers!

 

Sigh, isn't it pathetic how soft we are getting these days?

First they stop failing students, now the students can't even be criticized when they get something wrong? They seriously need to toughen up the school system to stop coddling them so much.

Is it any wonder why so many students crash and burn when they start University and the coddling stops?

 

yea, agree with this.

Hear Hear!

btw, as a student myself, I don't really think the color of the pen matters all that much. imo it doesn't matter whether it's in red, green or even brown. What "affects my psyche" are all the circles, "x"s and question marks on my paper

 

Yeah! For the former two.

I don't typically use any pen at all when checking anything unless I'm asked. Normally, the only the only thing written in pen that students get from me is vocabulary lists I make for them during conversations so that they don't have to interrupt themselves.

Red is confrontational and implies power. Not like it's bad for students to feel some discipline, but confrontation is not the best connotation. In some students, it might create the urge to best the teacher, but I must say I don't like confrontation for its own sake. Maybe competition - friendly competition with sound, reasonable rules that aren't crossed and in which compassion and understanding is shown to the competitors. This can be a good thing. But not confrontation between students and teachers. Sometimes it's needed, especially when students try to bend the teacher to their whims and think they can make him do what they want and not the other way round. Students who dare raise their hand on the master need a quick and violent reality check. But that's about it. Guess I understand why some people may have problems with it while others don't, but it isn't always bad. It does stand out and make it easy to notice what's wrong. In a certain Polish forum I moderate, we go for green. Red only happens on special occasions. Last time I used it when a guy pointed out someone else's mistakes. When I went through his own post, he had more red than black in it.

[ April 04, 2005, 22:53: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

They should use big, red Sharpies to make sure the corrections stand out.

Then they should send the student back to correct the errors.

 

I teach 4th/5th grade in a small Catholic school. I use red pen, or sometimes blue/black, something different than what the student wrote in. For some things, like spelling tests and math computational skills, it is simply right or wrong. For student compositions I go over the work with the student and circle things that could be improved.

 

Someone back in high school mentioned something like red having a negative impact blah blah blah...I liked the teacher's answer. Red stands out on paper so as to bring attention the the mistake that was made so you can see it and hopefully not repeat it. Plus we were required to write everything in black or blue ink so they used red for corrections.

Of course this teacher also wrote a novel next to the mark to show you where you went wrong. It's a colour people! What's next, changing the red street light to some other colour because it may incite pyromaniacs to start fires? And if that is the case the green lights are bad because they mean "GO" and since green is associated with Ireland then that must mean all Irish women are ready to "GO" and therefore easy...

What an age we live in... lol

 

I always corrected in blue or even in pencil; it was more a matter of convenience than anything else. I just made sure that any comments or notes I made were precise, clear and that what was wrong with the paper was noticeable and obvious.

The colour used to correct things only matters if you invest it with meaning. Big ****ing deal if it's red or green or purple; the objective is not to convey a symbolic message but to show what is wrong. I think it's utterly ludicrous, although I prefer less harsh colours to red; my eyes are better for darker shades than bright or vibrant colours.

@ JSBB: Sadly, unto my experience, they keep getting coddled there too. Unfortunately, I was prevented from failing students whose work was unsatisfactory while working at a university. Preventing arbitrary marking is one thing; there needs to be a check on any piece that does very well or very poorly. Telling people that they have to grade to an average irrespective of the quality of work is just crazy, in my opinion.

 

From my university experience, it is pretty hard to fail. Even one of my profs said to the class "you can't fail this course" when everyone was panicking after two poor test results. But that has more to do with the system and how marks are scaled and stuff.

For me, it's the score / percent received that is more shocking than the red ink. Reading comments in red ink is always helpful, but looking at a zero is just disturbing because it means I shouldn't have even bothered to try (since I'd get the same score).

 

Poor Billy is having nightmares about red pens? Yeesh. Back at school we used red to mark both right AND wrong answers. Frankly it just was another colour used to mark the paper that stood out from the blue or black we wrote in normally.

If someone is being traumatised by the colour red then the colour isn't the problem, it's the person.

 

On an off-topic note, it really sucks when they set a quota of marks of each kind or choose another stupid policy like no A's. What do the idiots think the purpose of marking is?