Too bad this rule wasn't around when Ralphie was still in school.
Posted on 12/26/2008 12:17:06 PM PST by lewisglad
Hundreds of schools have barred teachers from marking in red in case it upsets the children.
They are scrapping the traditional method of correcting work because they consider it ‘confrontational’ and ‘threatening’.
Pupils increasingly find that crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow, or even in pencil.
Traditionalists say that red ink makes it easier for children to spot errors and improve. There are no set government guidelines on marking and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.
Crofton Junior School, in Orpington, Kent, whose pupils range from seven to 11, is among those to have banned red ink. Its Marking Code of Practice states: ‘Work is generally marked in pen – not red – but on occasion it may be appropriate to indicate errors in pencil so that they may be corrected.’
Headmaster Richard Sammonds said: ‘Red pen can be quite demotivating for children. It has negative, old-school connotations of “See me” and “Not good enough”.
‘We are no longer producing clerks and bookkeepers. We are trying to provide an education for children coming into the workforce in the 21st century.
‘The idea is to raise standards by taking a positive approach.'
Shirley Clarke, an associate of the Institute of Education, said: ‘Banning red ink is a reaction to years of children having nothing but red over their work and feeling demoralised. When children see every single spelling mistake covered in red, they can feel useless and give up.’
But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘Common sense suggests that children learn by their mistakes and occasionally they need upsetting to teach them to pull their socks up.
‘Self-esteem has to be built on genuine achievement, not mollycoddling, which only harms children in the long-run.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
There are no wrong answers anymore.
funny you think they would love RED
We SHOULD be kinder...Like...”You Flunked” “Have a Nice Day”
spelling mistakes? those still happen with word processors?
There are no set government guidelines on marking and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.OMG! No set government guidelines on what color correction pen to use!
Quick!
Call out the ministers!
Form a thousand committees!
Spend a hundred billion pounds!
The UK must have those government guidelines or the entire population will be doomed!
This is similar to when "crippled" became "handicapped". Now people are considering whether "handicapped parking" should be renamed because "handicapped" has a negative connotation.
whoever is making this nonsense up, please stop.
Couldn’t possibly be because the red color contrasts well and is easy to find on the returned paper. England is finished. They wont fight pirates, the royal navy was defeated on the high seas by iranians in motorboats, and they are the euro-weenie LEADERS in the global warming cult. Their Winter Olympic team is forced to go to France to legally handle firearms for practice in the Biathalon.
PS,, and they can’t cook.
Many business leaders feel this way — they want to see the federal government outlaw all red ink, and through a system of bailouts make all stockholders and executives feel good about recent performances.
My goodness.
Maybe no corrections should be made, because green/blue/etc ink will soon become the “new red.” It’s simply too traumatizing.
"Error messages come up in red!"
And the problem is?
"It gives the impression that the user did something wrong."
Or how about, "This Sucks"
I just completed a course to teach illiterate adults to read. They absolutely do not allow red ink.
I used to run a tutoring business for 1st to 9th graders and used red ink all the time. At first, there was a fair bit of red on their pages and they knew they didn’t do very well. Week by week they saw less red ink and felt great. It works very well. Some solid teaching a lots of encouragement along the way helped too!
Shielding kids from reality does them more harm than good.
/Bump for laughter
When I was an editor a few years ago, I used red ink to edit the work of the writers who reported to me.
One woman (the worst writer on the team) asked me not to use red ink because it 'kind of seemed like an attack.'
I told her that I would continue to use red ink, that I wanted my comments to stand out, and that she should periodically review my comments with the goal being to reduce the amount of red ink that she forces me to use.
Too bad this rule wasn't around when Ralphie was still in school.
I'm glad I had her as a teacher.
Bull. I used my red pen and used it liberally. If my students don’t like it....tough. When I taught 5th grade, some parents would request that their babies did not get me cause I was too tough. OTOH, I had parents begging for their kids to be put in my class because they knew that they would learn something. I loved my reputation as the mean Marine teacher.
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