Schools begin banning teachers from using red ink

[thedarkfreak]

This reminds me of that one place(forget who or where) wanted to ban the term "failure" for kids who don't pass classes. Instead, they wanted to call it "deferred success".


This PC bullshit has to stop.

 

[infinity^infinity]

People were talking about this when I went to high school, about three years back. I never saw the point in it some of the teachers did use red ink but I think they use just whatever colored pen was closest; and since blue and black are kind of bogus for making corrections on a test, especially since I wrote most of my tests in pen, that kind of limited their options. Still, it probably won't change much and if you start marking students test in, say purple ink, then wouldn't the purple ink start to get the same associations as red ink did?

 

[sneezure]

nice to see other cracked readers out there, following the red links and reading up about their articles. recently read the one on school practices that will be banned soon, i presume?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

People were talking about this when I went to high school, about three years back. I never saw the point in it some of the teachers did use red ink but I think they use just whatever colored pen was closest; and since blue and black are kind of bogus for making corrections on a test, especially since I wrote most of my tests in pen, that kind of limited their options. Still, it probably won't change much and if you start marking students test in, say purple ink, then wouldn't the purple ink start to get the same associations as red ink did?

The answer to your last question is a resounding "yes," and it's the real reason that I've been arguing with the people who have been saying that this is a good idea. It's not the color itself that inherently makes people feel bad; as others have noted, it means different things in different contexts. It's just that, in the context of education, it has been associated with mistakes for so long that students see it and immediately know they've done something wrong. I fail to see how this is a bad thing; the whole point of marking it in red is so the corrections stand out against the original answers, which, as you noted, tend to be in blue or black ink. Teachers could buy gel pens to grade with (although those are expensive; a big part of why red ink is used is that it's just as cheap and common as blue or black, while still standing out), whatever color they decided to use would eventually gain the same connotations as red ink -- so if, say, all teachers started using green like some people here have suggested, green would be the new red, and in about 20 years time, we'd have people complaining that green ink was demoralizing. It's a never ending cycle.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Glad to hear you're doing well -- and I completely understand about the homesickness. I occasionally get a bit homesick, and I live close enough to home that I can go there on the weekends if I want to or need to. Coming in from a completely different country has got to be rough. As for the specific school, it's USF in Florida. Not exactly Ivy league, but a good school. Humans Vs. Zombies starts up next month; I can't wait. If your school has a game, look into playing -- it's just about /the/ best way to meet people on a campus where people tend to be cliqueish, and the game itself may well be the most fun you'll ever have playing a game in your life. I'm really sad that this is going to be my last term playing.

HAHAHAHA! Waay ahead of you friend: I already played a couple rounds (1 week-long and 1 day round) of Humans vs. Zombies, and it was pure unadulterated awesomeness sold in a can for the price of a bandana and a Nerf Recon. Seriously: Best. club. idea. in. history.

I mean, the chapter here in Ithaca College (New York) isn't too big; about 40-60 people show up at most. I'm guessing a big public school like your's would have a LOT more players. But still, it's friggin awesome. Great way to meet new people of a similarly wacky disposition.

And I'm only about 5 hours from NYC where I have relatives so it's not that far tbh. I'm planning on going down there for Columbus day weekend. So it's not that bad. I'll manage.

Oh yeah, we only had 500 people play last term due to mandatory rules meetings weeding out the less serious players. Only. The average is much higher. Nice to see you've got a dedicated club for it, though; here, it's run by a different club every term, and that inevitably brings issues, because club leadership tends to want to play and moderate at the same time, and they can't bring themselves to be impartial. You would not believe some of the drama this causes.

Holy. fucking. shit!

Not gonna lie....I just pee'd my pants a bit, thinking of the horde of 490 zombies charging at the last ten humans in endgame. That is fucked up levels of awesome.

We do send a team of humans armed to the teeth with socks and Nerf guns to Penn State every year though, cause they have a massive multi-college HvZ Day with numbers even BIGGER than that.

But yeah we have a dedicated HvZ club. Their plan is to do 2 week rounds and about 3 day rounds this semester. So we've already had 2 of 5. I plan on joining in to every other one and try to survive for as long as I can with my one dinky Recon. Should be fun. Alright I'm gonna go get some sleep. It was great talking to you man.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Glad to hear you're doing well -- and I completely understand about the homesickness. I occasionally get a bit homesick, and I live close enough to home that I can go there on the weekends if I want to or need to. Coming in from a completely different country has got to be rough. As for the specific school, it's USF in Florida. Not exactly Ivy league, but a good school. Humans Vs. Zombies starts up next month; I can't wait. If your school has a game, look into playing -- it's just about /the/ best way to meet people on a campus where people tend to be cliqueish, and the game itself may well be the most fun you'll ever have playing a game in your life. I'm really sad that this is going to be my last term playing.

HAHAHAHA! Waay ahead of you friend: I already played a couple rounds (1 week-long and 1 day round) of Humans vs. Zombies, and it was pure unadulterated awesomeness sold in a can for the price of a bandana and a Nerf Recon. Seriously: Best. club. idea. in. history.

I mean, the chapter here in Ithaca College (New York) isn't too big; about 40-60 people show up at most. I'm guessing a big public school like your's would have a LOT more players. But still, it's friggin awesome. Great way to meet new people of a similarly wacky disposition.

And I'm only about 5 hours from NYC where I have relatives so it's not that far tbh. I'm planning on going down there for Columbus day weekend. So it's not that bad. I'll manage.

Oh yeah, we only had 500 people play last term due to mandatory rules meetings weeding out the less serious players. Only. The average is much higher. Nice to see you've got a dedicated club for it, though; here, it's run by a different club every term, and that inevitably brings issues, because club leadership tends to want to play and moderate at the same time, and they can't bring themselves to be impartial. You would not believe some of the drama this causes.

Holy. fucking. shit!

Not gonna lie....I just pee'd my pants a bit, thinking of the horde of 490 zombies charging at the last ten humans in endgame. That is fucked up levels of awesome.

We do send a team of humans armed to the teeth with socks and Nerf guns to Penn State every year though, cause they have a massive multi-college HvZ Day with numbers even BIGGER than that.

But yeah we have a dedicated HvZ club. Their plan is to do 2 week rounds and about 3 day rounds this semester. So we've already had 2 of 5. I plan on joining in to every other one and try to survive for as long as I can with my one dinky Recon. Should be fun. Alright I'm gonna go get some sleep. It was great talking to you man.

Good talking to you, too. I've got some homework to do, myself; we're in the same timezone, so it's just as late for me as it is for you, and I've still got stuff to do before going to bed.

Edit: Oh, by the way, if 500 sounded big, you should have seen the numbers of the game from last fall; we had roughly 1,000 students playing. As for the 490 zombies rushing 10 surviving humans, it didn't work out that way at all. Our human players are scary good, and we actually won the game last Spring by completing our victory conditions in the final mission. I was one of the major resistance leaders, and personally helped to get the four or five biggest squads organized and working together, instead of mistrusting each other and doing everything alone.

 

[Tselis]

...I'm sorry what?
it seems both America and the UK have both done some stupid things to their school system... (not trying to troll that's just what it looks like is happening)

That's not trolling, that's just telling it like it is. I should know, I have 3 kids in school, and my sister in law is a teacher.

 

[Delsana]

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.

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

They did this in America 40 years ago.

 

[orangeapples]

meh, my teachers in high school used blue pen

 

[pppppppppppppppppp]

Old news is old.

This practice has been the poster-child for overprotective parenting/legislature for several years. It's weird that people are only now hearing about it.

 

[kingcat1]

three words , the daily mail.

 

[RemuValtrez]

That is just silly. When I was in school, students were prohibited from using red on assignments, as that is what the teacher would use to show us when we were doing something wrong. It was something that would stand out from the black/blue/pencil lead on the paper. I did one assignment in red as I had no other pen/pencil and I got a 0 on it and was told to redo it. It's not a color that shows "Hey you're dumb" it's something that is used to let others know what to change so they can, yanno, learn.

 

[Hashime]

I bet there will be an increase in marking mistakes. Ever tried reading 200+ papers and looking for errors to count were the ink is the same colour as the text? I guess if they used green or blue instead it would be alright.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I always assumed teachers used red so the corrections would stand out. Little did I know that my teachers were trying to break my spirit, apparently.

Well, I'd like to stand up and inform them that they failed.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Where I live, we have a problem, about half the schools teach the kids how wonderful they are, and encourage the hell outa them, they don't write marks down, and nobody is ever really corrected, just encouraged, the rest are mixed between correcting and encouraging, and just correcting... it's been that way for long enough that we're looking at a couple "school generations" and it's readily apparent that the people generally from the schools that are too coddling, end up either useless or pricks, and generally not equipped for the HARSHNESS OF REALITY, everyone else seems to be doing just fine, hell most of the people I know including myself that have lived a relatively less merciful forgiving and overall cushy life, have become the chillest easiest going least self important(without becoming totally insecure), we know we're just people and do what we can to just be people, with our own ambitions, and no major psychological problems, cuz we've dealt with that crap for a good deal of our younger years, and GROWN and become responsible and capable people. Most of the other people I know who were raised in an altogether too soft environment(as far as I can see) have all ended up being either incredibly needy, or fucked up in some way... they have a hard tome coping with basic stuff, and any time their life sucks and they aren't having fun all the time they go running to a psychiatrist for meds... I know some people have problems, but honestly if we really have such a high number of people who can't cope and need medication just to not commit suicide, or attempt daily, we either need to change the society in which we live, or just let em all do it and get rid of the weak genetic strain that is threatening to overtake our race and spell out our extinction...

So, I don't think the elimination of red ink is really the issue here, it's that it's happening as just ONE of the many changes put in place to continue the breakdown of our social standards into a pablum-like mush, where the weak and needy are coddled at the expense of those who can bloody well survive.

just my $0.02

/end rant

 

[gabe12301]

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 sorry what? I'm actually learning in the current education system and it sucks. Peer-discussion based education doesn't really work simply because it's hard to keep children focused and no one is gamifying anything.red ink is used to mark because it's visible and you are supposed to not want a poor grade. I supposed next were going to replace F's with frown faces to make them less intimidating? one of my teachers tried to make the classroom "engaging" and "fun" Guess which students almost failed their final exams. EVERY student that had her as a teacher.

I also had another teacher.Although he was an ass and we all hated him, we all passed with a 5.5-6.0 on our final writing tests (6 is the highest) because shielding children from difficulty DOES NOT FREAKING WORK!

 

[Urgh76]

It's at times like this I wish I had the "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" image.

Will you accept a video clip instead?

Damn, you beat me to it

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I would also need to point out that getting a 750 on your English SAT doesn't actually "spite" your English teacher seeing as how those numbers would be placed into her file and she would receive "credit" for them (just as students who do poorly on standardized tests get the teachers blamed for their failure, regardless of how much the teaching had to do with it), so if anything, you actually helped her permanent record....and she's probably glad she threw you out because it reduced the stress on her class. You made it a win-win for her, so right now she's probably quite happy.

Just something to think about, since you seem to be really overexcited about how you've somehow "beat the system" when really, you haven't. You've played into their hands if anything, since generally teachers look better when they aren't giving a lot of Fs, and students' test scores earn the teachers either blame or praise regardless of how much the teacher had to do with the score. This is why I generally oppose standardized testing as a general rule, as it attributes blame for poor scores to everyone EXCEPT students as it presumes that students can never do wrong, when you've just nicely illustrated the perfect sort of negative attitude that, in normal circumstances (yours being more "abnormal" since you actually passed), can tend to hurt a lot of schools' scores.

...And you make assumptions about my class structure as well, so I guess we're even. But yeah, no, the English teacher in question had nothing to do with my SATs par' se. She didn't get a raise, since the schools here technically have nothing to do with SATs (I'm not american if that wasn't clear.). She was just supposed to teach me English (for school purposes/shits and giggles) and she failed to do so because she was too pompous and egotistical to acknowledge that I didn't fit firmly into her cookie-cutter mold of what an English student should be. My getting a 750 is just me saying to her: "In spite of your best efforts, I managed to learn English. So HA!"

Now, you can still blame me for having the "negative attitude". That would just be the response I expect you to have as a teacher yourself: blaming the kids for being ignorant pestilent little warts, getting in the way of the hard-working teachers who "can never do wrong"......

But I would keep disagreeing with you. There ARE teachers who use their occupations as fallacious "seats of power". And these people DO use red ink, and raised podiums/chairs as subtle methods to maintain control. That's not in any way indicative of all teachers, or in fact, a general fault in the system. I'm just saying it exists and should be made to NOT exist, since it prevents certain teachers from viewing students as potential human beings.

I'm not saying all classrooms should become peer-based hippy classes taught under trees. I'm just saying that you don't NEED red ink, just like you don't NEED to create an arbitrary barrier between teachers and students. That's what psychological power plays, like the use of red ink, do. They create barriers.

I mean I've yet to run into a college professor who writes down critiques in foreboding red ink. They usually just write with a normal (or blue or green) pen, hoping that the kids are smart enough to pick out the professor's handwriting from their own. And colleges, as a result, foster a much better kind of student-teacher relationship. Why can't that be emulated in High schools is all I want to know.

 

[Abengoshis]

Red ink stands out on the page against black ink. What is wrong with people, do they think its like writing in blood or something? Its not demoralising when you get a really good compliment in red ink, so wtf is that about?

 

[synobal]

I'd grade my papers with blood but I'd die from blood loss in a day or two tops.