Mr. Salty

I'm friends with a few teachers, so I'm not one who is ready to condemn our entire educational system as a lost cause, but it's stories like this that make me wish school administrators would find their backbones again.

Read the full story at CNN.com:

Red ink falling out of favor with teachers
Monday, April 4, 2005 Posted: 12:11 PM EDT (1611 GMT)
At Public School 188 in Manhattan, 25-year-old teacher Justin Kazmark grades with purple.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Of all the things that can make a person see red, school principal Gail Karwoski was not expecting parents to get huffy about, well, seeing red.

At Daniels Farm Elementary School in Trumbull, Connecticut, Karwoski's teachers grade papers by giving examples of better answers for those students who make mistakes. But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red, the color that teachers long have used to grade work.

Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was "stressful." The principal said teachers were just giving constructive advice and the color of ink used to convey that message should not matter. But some parents could not let it go.

So the school put red on the blacklist. Blue and other colors are in.

HistoryProf

I've seen this reported before. Fucking morons.

Randy Miller III

Well, why shouldn't red ink be "stressful"? It's just pointing out what should be corrected, for cryin' out loud.

talemyn

I actually remember jokingly giving my teachers a hard time about that in 7th/8th grade (late 80's). I think there is actually some longstanding research that went into this "belief" . . . sad to say.

LilyLilyRose

I had a professor that did this. She wrote in purple because it was less confrontational. She also made us remove our hats, gum and had us wear nametags. I felt like I was in elementary school again. I think it's stupid, over time the new color will seem just as "stressful" as red did. It seems like just a bunch of parents that are mad that their children are being corrected and not reguarded as the geniuses that they really are.

Tom Banjo

Reminds me of a time when I went in a Yahoo chat room for bipolar people. I had my default text color set to red, and several of them started freaking out. I was asked by a moderator to change it to a less "confrontational" color.

agrall

This is so ridiculous. We are babying our children so much these days... Can't have ANY negative reinforcement.

OldDude

Or, the kids could just work harder and get it correct. Then, they wouldn't see any red ink.

devilshalo

F-

Breakfast with Girls

Well, people do instinctively associate red with alarm and anger. I mean, really, is there any reason to use it over green or, say, light blue?

muggins

Repost...

http://dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=381608




As devilshalo wrote:

OldDude

Well, yeah, green and blue were reserved for "correct" check marks. Red was for the "you got it wrong, stupid" X's

Breakfast with Girls

I don't think I've ever had a teacher mark the correct answers, just the incorrect ones.

TomOpus

Next thing they'll do is not fail anyone because it's too stressful.

OldDude

I suppose that is "efficiency." When I was in school, at least on tests, every answer was marked, either correct or incorrect. That is what the half red/half blue pencil was for.

talemyn

Don't get me started on the school systems that ban dodgeball because it excludes the kids who get tagged out.

mikehunt

and then kids will think "purple means I suck" after a month or two

Goldberg74

I grade everything in red ink... and I LOVE IT!

mllefoo

If your kid wasn't so stupid and refused to study, your kid wouldn't get red marks to begin with. I really hate people. Grow a thicker skin, parents, because your kids are NOT perfect. Sorry. If they make a mistake on their paper, it will get marked down. Red is used because red is the most visible color.

Even blue ink would be difficult to see on a paper hand written in blue ink, you know?

Frankly, red ink never bothered me as a kid. It doesn't bother me now as a college student. Stressful color, indeed.

Squirrel God

Oh no! Red! The bad colour!

Do we know if the parents had just recently watched 'The Village'?

OldDude

I'm sorry to inform you this thread is incorrect, because it is a DUPLICATE.
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...eachers+purple

DVD Polizei

I suggest parents should stay away from the Elektra DVD, Ocean's 12, and Valentine's Day. Oh, and Christmas too.

WiccanMuse

Amen. So many people are way too "touchyfeelypoliticallycorrect"... I'm waiting for the pendulum to swing back towards normalcy, where kids can feel free to drink out of hoses, eat dirt, and get lots of red marks and LEARN FROM IT. :-)

Muse

tasha99

This pops up now and then but is pretty old (I read some essays from ten years ago on it in a composition and rhetoric class). I think they're talking about the comments more than the marks, which would be a huge mass of red if the teacher writes a long comment at the end. I would use red for in text corrections and comments (because they show up) but regular pen for a long end of paper note.

But red isn't really any more stressful to me than any other color. It's just an eyesore for long paragraphs.

Squirrel God

They should mark in yellow. That'll give 'em something to moan about.