Schools begin banning teachers from using red ink

[Corporal Yakob]

Red ink to be replaced by the blood of poor students. More at 11!

 

[Pinkamena]

I'm fine with this. As long as they are allowed to use colored ink, I don't see the problem.

 

[Gwarr]

Next thing they'll stop giving grades because stupid kids are demoralized . Same with weak kids getting poor results in sports . Hey , you know what? tough luck , kids need to learn their weakness and fix them and they should be bashed till they do.

 

[pearcinator]

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 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.

I'm from Australia so I don't really understand all the American politics but it's basically the same. We have all these acts like the child care protection act and 'keep them safe' which means that we as teachers have to write reports if we have a child who appears to be in a domestic violence household or something. They put so much focus on the child psychology units, almost more than the teaching itself (I got classes like 'Indigenous Australians in Education', 'Sociology', 'Positive Behaviour Support' and 'Understanding children and young people')...just tell me how to teach and what I need to know. They had to add a few psychology classes to fill out the 4 year course.

 

[Vrach]

Congratulations on missing the point that it's not the red ink that depresses students, but the teachers who simply "write off" the students via mistakes without actually being involved in the process of correcting them further than the "right check, wrong check, next paper please"

 

[Alduin Silas]

Somewhere, there is an appropriate facepalm image to go with this topic. Possibly drawn in red ink.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I.... don't see the problem with this. I honestly don't. Red ink is used for Fear factor. Red is the color of danger after all. That's the only reason its used. It says: "You fucked up son. You fucked up bad. Now I'm gonna fuck you up!".

It's a classic remnant of the traditional/old-fashioned education system (there's a word for that, I'm sure); the system that scoffs at modern teaching practices like peer-discussion based education and gamification of education. It's a 500 year old practice that's designed to embarrass kids for their mistakes instead of helping them learn from their mistakes.

What I'm trying to say is, traditional/old-fashioned education sucks, in my opinion at least. If they have any kind of reason to believe that getting rid of red ink will help kids feel more attached to schoolwork, and less like a slave of the educational system: Fucking, TRY that shit OUT! Experiment until you find a definitive answer, or something close to that. If it works out: FANTASTIC! We just evolved a little bit as a sapient race.

Also, I don't know if I should be disappointed that so many of you sound like bitter old coots yelling "Those darn kids! We're making them soft! In my day, the teacher used to get out the red pen.....and beat the ever-loving FUCK out of us!! They deserve the same, not better!"

I'm glad you have an opinion based purely on your own misguided ideals of what helps kids to learn better.

My opinion (that traditional teaching is generally better for kids than alternative methods such as those you've described) comes from my experience as a high school math teacher, and surveys of several classes I've taught. In the case of the surveys, I'd teach them two chapters, each with a different method, and in the case of the alternative method, they had an opportunity to do anything they wanted to demonstrate their knowledge rather than just taking a test. Then I asked them if they preferred the traditional lecture-study-test method or the alternative teaching with project-based learning. According to "the research" out there, kids should have overwhelmingly said that they preferred the alternative methods "because they learn better", but just over half of the kids voted in favor of traditional methods instead. And of the half that voted for alternative methods, the majority were kids who do poorly on tests and just preferred the easier grades that come with project-based learning.

So, as an educator, I can tell you that kids generally don't care if you're trying to make learning fun....it's school. They don't find school fun, and many of the public school kids never will, no matter how hard you try. Plus these methods do, in fact, tend to coddle kids....there was a movement for alternative teaching in the past, and it eventually was phased out in favor of traditional teaching again because the kids were not learning their fundamentals nearly as well as the research suggested. I give it another decade or so before similar research pops up to disprove this recent push for alternative teaching being "universally better".

Thank you for posting this; it describes exactly how I feel. Ever notice how in most other fields, a paradigm shift comes maybe once a century, because something major has changed, while in education, one comes every 10 years or so? I'm sorry, but kids don't really change -- especially not that quickly. We have documented pedagogical methods going back, what, to the ancient Greeks? You'd think the best practices would have been figured out centuries ago, not within the last 10 or 20 years.

Also, it almost seems like teachers lock onto psychological theories that make them feel good, whether they're actually based in solid psychological methodology or not -- for example, the "theory" of multiple intelligences, which is what happened when one man decided to replace the word "aptitude" with "intelligence." Teachers love it, and they go around teaching new teachers to actually play to things like musical and bodily kinesthetic "intelligence," which even Gardner himself will readily admit are not workable substitutes for things like his verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematic categories. Also, is it just me, or are the various packages of reading strategies like CRISS and Kagan a load of BS that some very successful salesman did a good job of selling to administrators desperate for something, anything that would improve test scores? Has a KWL chart ever in history done any good? Long story short: teachers and administrators are gullible, desperate, or both. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Edit: Oh, by the way, be careful using phrases like "students who do poorly on tests and prefer the easier grades that come with project-based learning." Current pedagogy is supposed to recognize that some kids are just terrible at taking tests, and rather than, you know, letting the teachers help them get over that problem -- and make no mistake, it is a problem -- we're supposed to accommodate them by finding an alternative means of assessment. It's like, on the one hand, we're supposed to accept that all kids can learn. On the other hand, we're supposed to recognize that a lot of them (and I'm not talking about the disabled; that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish) are unable to perform basic educational tasks, so rather than teaching them how to perform them, we should just give up and have them do it in an easier way. The blatant BS is so strong in the educational program that, until my microteach started and I actually got into a classroom teaching kids, I was so fed up with the whole thing that I wanted to just get my degree, and then either take the LSAT and go on to law school, or do something crazy like move on to a masters in history. If I had been as fed up in my sophomore year as I was a month ago, I would have changed majors. I'm glad I didn't, but good lord.

 

[Chris646]

Well, if red ink is so 'demoralizing,' then tell them to quit screwing around and pay attention.

 

[Charli]

Well crap I used to write everything in purple...

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEEEEAN AAAAAAAAHHH.

 

[intheweeds]

Here's the link if anyone wants to read the article to make sure I'm not bullshitting...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1101790/Teachers-banned-using-confrontational-red-ink-case-upsets-children.html

Oh i don't have to read the article, I believe you! I live in Canada and have school teachers in my family. We haven't been allowed to use red pen for some time now. In fact it gets so much stupider than that. Teachers are not allowed to say anything negative either.

When I was a kid I would get a report card that said something like 'doesn't play well with others' or 'is having trouble focusing on mathematics. Doodles in class'. You aren't allowed to say that anymore. Now you would say something like 'enjoys spending time alone' or 'excels in creative endeavors'. Seriously. Teachers here spend a crazy amount of time rewording their report cards and then they have to go through the principal who might make them change it more than once because a parent might get offended.

Which is where we get to the real problem. When i was a kid, if I got a bad report, I was in trouble and was forced to study more. Now if a kid gets a bad report, the parent runs into the school freaking out on the teacher about why they suck at teaching their kid. Teachers are actually afraid of parents these days. Parents often feel school is where they learn so there is no need to continue good habits at home. If the kid wont study, teachers fault. Kid fails because kid won't study? Teachers fault. They don't care to listen to reason. Parents are the reason teachers can't be honest about how a kid is doing in school. They don't want to hear anything negative about their special snowflake. Kids aren't stupid either they know this and game the system like crazy. They act like jerks at school because they know their parents will not care or even know about it.

Obviously not all kids or parents are like this, but enough are that the way schools report has changed drastically since i was a kid.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

I can actual understand this. Red is like a "failure" colour, it often indicates that something is bad. Video games are a good example of this - negative responses are nearly always highlighted in red (eg. you lost 100 points for shooting the civilian that jumped out of nowhere). So when a student sees a page full of red markings, they may immediately expect something bad. If a student doesn't think that they're making good progress then it's easy for them to just give up and some people really need all the encouragement they can get so using green instead of red may actually help people. Strange but true.

 

[Ghostkai]

This isn't new (my missus is a teacher here in the UK). They started doing this about a year ago.

I disagree with it wholeheartedly.

 

[PhoenixFlame]

It's a classic remnant of the traditional/old-fashioned education system (there's a word for that, I'm sure); the system that scoffs at modern teaching practices like peer-discussion based education and gamification of education. It's a 500 year old practice that's designed to embarrass kids for their mistakes instead of helping them learn from their mistakes.

I see the point about being progressive about what we do to improve the educational experience. No issues there.

What I really just disagree with you on is the degree to which you don't think this is a big deal or is not overboard. As someone who had to teach a few semesters of basic composition courses in college for his degree, I know that you're obligated to teach your students right from wrong in order to give them a baseline of correct writing behaviors and styles that help them survive more complex paper assignments. Using color as a means to coddle students into being soothed about what was not done right is doing them a disservice.

Now I was never an ogre with my red pen. I wrote and pointed out flaws assertively but not aggressively. "this paragraph was decent, but could have transitioned better", "could use a bit more elaboration", and in the end, saying things like "I see how you wanted to execute your idea and your point, but your structure makes it difficult to understand. Please work on x,y, and z to help with that.

Honestly, we should be looking more towards changes in grading and providing feedback that create huge and sweeping improvement overall, rather than what I would deem cheap and kneejerk short-term benefit through vague psychological things like color.Improvements like you list are fine. Color is not.

I fail to see how writing "This was an effort that could have been much better. 67. See me after class" in green ink could possibly be significantly less demoralizing than writing it in red. Reading the words is pretty much just as bad.

 

[AquaAscension]

It's not the red ink that's getting to people... it's the fact that they made mistakes when everywhere else they [the children] are being hailed as perfect, usually by the parents. If you want kids to be less sensitive about red ink, get them to see the mistakes they make not as failure but as a chance to learn.

I could bet you some sums of money that the kids aren't "demoralized" from the red ink; they just associate red ink with failure rather than as a chance to improve, and this is a failing with the system through which we assess/grade children rather than a problem with the red ink that is used to complete that assessment.

So I should clarify because I think I'm not too clear: the study may in fact point out a certain truth that children get a sense of failure from seeing the red marks on their page; that is just psychology. However, no one has taken this study beyond its conclusion and asked why the kids may be feeling demoralized or whatever. Probably because red is associated with failure. Changing the color to blue will start to associate the color blue with failure, and if it's a kid who sucks with teachers who use tons of different colors, then s/he'll just be riding the fail rainbow all the way to Self Pity Town and I-can't-do-this-so-pity-me Ville. Change the way stuff is graded/assessed (i.e. learn that red means: an opportunity to fix a mistake). This study is just as fail as any of Rick Santorum's arguments against gay marriage... And that's worth a lot of red ink.

*snipped*
I fail to see how writing "This was an effort that could have been much better. 67. See me after class" in green ink could possibly be significantly less demoralizing than writing it in red. Reading the words is pretty much just as bad.

After posting, I read your comment and thought my own formed a nice extension of your argument quoted here.

 

[Kargathia]

Funny. After having multiple teachers who'd correct with whatever was on hand I got the distinct impression that the colour ink barely matters.

All I ever paid attention to was the grade on top.

There was one exception, however, and that was my teacher biology. He'd grade in blue ballpoint, because it'd be harder to distinguish from your own writing, and force you to actually reread your test. I believe he claimed it'd give you a better understanding where you went wrong.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

Dude...
4 words:
TORY IN NUMBER 10!
Of course the whole countries retarded!

 

[Von Strimmer]

They had that (sorta) at certain private schools in Queensland. However, the rule only applied in specific cases where the student would actually be affected by that colour, which presumably must have happened at least once.

I attribute this to the half-orangutan, half-stationery themed supervillains Queensland had a few years back.

...

Also, might want to check sources for this. Various newspapers like making this sort of stuff up, (same way they pretend kids have to sing PC nursery rhymes and stuff), in order to run a scare campaign against what they see as the left-wing dominance of the nation, or whatever.

Which Queensland Schools were this?

I can vouch for this my school (private school) did the exact same thing for about 2 weeks. It's a stupid idea that wont work. Although now UK and USA have tried it, you can bet the rest of OZ will try it

 

[Jfswift]

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.

I was thinking that too actually. Or maybe use blue since the mind doesn't really know how to react to blue (I remember reading that somewhere).

 

[Brandon237]

Wha...huh...*shakes head* Good god, people are stupid. As it was said above, red is used because YOU CAN EASILY SEE THE ERRORS It's not demoralizing. Your shitty performance in school is demoralizing, not some damn colored marker.

Yes, and seeing a big shining 100% in a circle Bright red ink like someone had to be slaughtered to celebrate your performance as opposed to 2 concentric circles makes it feel all the better!

Red works, red highlights the problem, is easy to see, and gives you one colour straight off that you know not to write in yourself, because DANGER. And this spoon-feeding is BS, actually teach the kids and make them somewhat competent.