Schools begin banning teachers from using red ink

[Yopaz]

If I went out and insulted every person in the universe then they would live. Who cares if someone takes offense, its called being a human.

There's already someone doing that, they became immortal after an accident with a few rubber bands and a particle accelerator, and after millenia of total boredom, he decided to insult everyone in the entire universe in alphabetical order.
(Cookie for reference)

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy reference, I think this is from the 4th book in the series? Great stuff, haven't read them for years.

Banning red ink seems dumb. If they don't want to demoralize the kids maybe they should tell them all they're right? That would make them feel better about their results. When I was in high school and I got a B with no notes or comments I would get annoyed because I didn't know what I could have done better.

 

[Snotnarok]

The future is going to have a lot of depression and overly sensitive people if parents keep fucking babying their kids.

Yeah it sucks to see red ink on something you thought you did well on, but it also sucks to see a pink slip if you get let go from your job. Will making the pink slip yellow be better? Hold on I'll print you out a less demoralizing one for you. But you're still fired.

 

[tzimize]

Woopdi-fucking-doo. If they think it might benefit some students, go for it. It might work, it might not, but it's ink. It is as low risk as can be.

I wish I was kidding about this, but some schools in the U.K. have actually prohibited teachers from using red ink pens when correcting student assignments. They say the red ink is "demoralizing to students" and "making them do worse in school." Are you freaking kidding me?! Red ink makes sense to me because then you can actually see where the mistakes and markings are so you know where to fix mistakes! People need to stop being so freaking sensitive about everything. Coddling your kids all the way through school isn't going to do shit for them. If they're doing bad then they're doing bad and you're not helping them by making it easier for them to handle.

Indeed, we should skip the ink entirely and just tattoo "big fucking failure" on their forehead. That'll learn them.

The point isn't to make them feel better about their mistakes. I don't think it is a stretch to say that a bunch of red marks send a different message (this is a pile of shit you ignorant asshat) than green (these areas need attention). By making the mistakes easier to handle, they can actually address them instead of viewing them as insurmountable and giving up.

This isn't about coddling, it is about creating an environment that enhances learning.

Hypothetically.

So a pile of green would make a student more motivated? What a load of crap. The only reason red has negative connotations is because it has been used a long time for correcting mistakes, and thus the color in schoolwork is connected to bad work/mistakes.

The problem is NOT the color. The problem is that people panic when they do a mistake. A mistake is simply an opportunity for learning. If we could teach THAT to kids...school would be a lot better. Mistakes are not dangerous! They are supposed to be there! If students never made mistakes, it would only prove that the work they did was too easy!

Donald Foster once said: "No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar."

When we do work correctly we are not challenged, if we are not challenged we do not evolve. Mistakes are a part of the learning experience, and are usually what we learn FROM. Red, green, purple pen...who the fuck cares?

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Very well. I never liked using red ink anyway. I use GREEN! One of my favorite quotes when a fellow student got her writing sample back from me: "I got my paper back and I went, 'Oh my God! It's bleeding green!'" She said it with a big smile on her face.

Anyway, don't really see the point. So teachers will just switch to another color until that gets banned. Let me know when they ban black ink. Then things will get really interesting.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

I can see into the future! I predict this will not make any changes to anything

Yes you sir!
That's right, the one whos acting completely normally under the swath of over-acting!
You sir... ARE CORRECT!

This will literally make no changes to ANYTHING.

Carry on.
Seriously though, so what?
It's not a big deal and doesn't mean anything, they just don't like people using red ink.

 

[infohippie]

Fixed that for you. Not that you could include Britain in the liberal part of Europe, they're very nearly as conservative as America.

I beg to differ

Spoiler: Ahem

Oh, that's pretty ridiculous, I'll grant you. But it doesn't have anything to do with liberal or conservative leanings of the UK, it's totally motivated by the fear-oriented tabloid press which politicians of all stripes have to pander to or risk losing the votes of half of Middle-Britain. I wish the politicians would grow a fucking spine and publically tell voters to stop being so damn scared of everything.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I'm studying to be a primary school teacher and this doesn't surprise me...you wouldn't believe the amount of bullshit 'demoralizers' there are.

For example, when providing constructive (i.e. negative) feedback teachers are not supposed to say the child's name because that would be 'demoralizing!'. For example,

'I am disappointed that you didn't do you're work' instead of
'Johnny, It is disappointing to see that you didn't complete your work'

For some reason I am told that children would react negatively to this and blame themselves and become worse and still won't do their work. I call bullshit. The reason why students aren't doing their work is because they dont LIKE doing it. Find something the kids can enjoy and they will do it.

The red pen nonsense is stupid. Red is just a colour and in no way demoralizing...it's clearer to use red pen when students write in blue or black.

I'm a secondary ed major, and I completely understand what you mean. It's like at some point the entire profession started scrambling to find any way at all to improve test scores, and since things like actually making sure kids had a good home life and were well fed were off the table, they started trying random crap and hoping some of it worked. Some of the things they teach us to do -- not to mention the things they teach us not to do [footnote]Like doing a lecture -- which is inevitably told to us through a lecture[/footnote] are enough to make even the most bleeding heart liberal on the planet start to respect what George W. was trying to do with the No Child Left Behind act. I thought it was a terrible attack on the teaching profession -- until I actually started on the path to become a teacher, and realized just how much of a reality check the profession needs. I still think NCLB went about it the wrong way, but I no longer doubt that the president had pure intentions -- and coming from me, when talking about that president, that is really saying something.

 

[Doitpow]

You only have to read as far as the title of the website to know thats not even true.
Might as well refference an article about how teachers are indoctrinating kids to be left wing reported by FOX.

 

[Aiden_the-Joker1]

Yeah there are lots of new weird rules for schools. Students at my school are not allowed to raise their hands to answer a question.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Well, red IS a psychologically aggressive colour. We're trained to consider it alarming, so this makes as much sense as not letting teachers swear at students who misbehave.

Outright banning seems a bit...overboard, but it's probably best that red ink be discouraged. Green would be a good alternative.

Or, you know, not using letter grades, but a number of EXP and if the whole class gets enough EXP to LEVEL UP then they get a field trip, how about that?

Yes, or we could focus on quality education and proper teaching. All of these changes are just gimmicks that would have little effect. A good teacher who knows what he/she is doing goes a long way.

OR WE COULD DO ALL OF THE ABOVE! For what Teachers that get paid for what they do, they don't get enough to actually do what they want to do.

I agree. Now the school boards and other higher ups want to do some backseat teaching. My last couple of years of high school, teachers were tightly controlled and told what to do or else. How about you pay them more and let them do their fucking job?

 

[Do4600]

I wish my teachers had written in red ink. In my day they wrote in blood! Every mistake in arithmetic was another small animal that was pressed for the rebuking power of it's blood.

 

[Wintermoot]

let,s say they mark errors in brown wouldn't that make brown demoralizing?
the only reason we find red demoralizing is because that,s the meaning we gave it.

 

[vxicepickxv]

I'm American and even I know not to take the UK's Daily Mail seriously. The Onion has a better record of truthiness.

What's worse is that if I want to read the news of the future, I can do it on the onion. Maybe, if I'm lucky.

I've seen 3 articles on the onion that were almost identical to real articles written a few years later, except the second time, the sources sited for this proved they were real. That creeps me the hell out sometimes.

 

[Joel Soh]

Last updated at 1:03 AM on 26th December 2008

Is this the date of the article?

Either way, my view on this is that red is just another color. No matter what the color is, it'll "confront them" because it's the teachers comments and markings on the paper. Sooner or later, wouldn't green/blue/other become the new red?

 

[Hawgh]

Them Englishmen be wacky.

Now it's just a question of whether it's the Daily Mail or the rest of them that currently wears the wack-hat.

 

[ultimateownage]

This is a schooling system which lowers how well you need to do to get a good grade every year to make us sound cleverer. I still think it's better than the American schooling system though.

You're making a fuss out of nothing. It's not really going to change anything, and if they do have to change ink colour then there are plenty of other bold colours.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Ehm? What the hell??? Honestly, where the fuck is the spine of UK's school systems? Are they just going to pussy out over the smallest and stupidest complaint? Are they going to ban black ink pens next because someone might think it is racist? To mark mistakes in black ink... to be honest I might just see this happening.

In Finnish academic laws there is a section that states that mistakes can only be marked with red pen and that students are not allowed to use red pens in their exams or other papers that are returned to teachers. This is mainly because of the optical scanner system they use on the Final exams.

But still... Come on... UK used to rule half of the world, now you are breaking down on the demands from little children. Whats happened to you guys? I used to like UK because the government and people used to have common sense. You are turning in to America... But without the fundamentalist patriots.

 

[llubtoille]

Crank out the pretty green pens imo!
Mmm, if all my errors came back in glitter green, I'd make more mistakes me thinks.

 

[Do4600]

Or, you know, not using letter grades, but a number of EXP and if the whole class gets enough EXP to LEVEL UP then they get a field trip, how about that?

That's actually not a bad idea. I'm not saying we should turn our schools into MMO's. The system of grading that we do have allows people to "pass" without learning key concepts. Think about any class you ever had that you earned a D or C- or equivalent in, did you really grasp the material?

If we had a system of education that assigned "experience points" to certain fundamental concepts in different branches of education then we could create a system to educate students based on what they actually know instead of what they are supposed to know. For instance, you could have a student with a mathematics "level" of 3, a reading "level" of 5 and a science "level" of 4, that student could go to a math class for level 3 a reading course for level 5 and science class for level 4.

This way the student wouldn't be bored in a "level" 4 reading class, be falling behind in a "level" 4 math course and be perfect for the "level" 4 science class.