Schools begin banning teachers from using red ink

[kannibus]

Waiter? WAITER! Where's my check?

I think I've had it with the all you can eat buffet of this world.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

And you're going about it wrong by assuming that the red ink is a power play. It's a commonly available color that stands out against blue ink, black ink, and pencil. It means "you got this wrong, and I'm showing you so you can learn from the mistake." As for what you were saying earlier about a 500 year old system that exists to humiliate students, it's nothing of the sort. Old fashioned teaching techniques have been around for a long time for a reason; they work. All this focus on teachers being "learning facilitators" who are supposed to be equal to the students, instead of authority figures who have special knowledge to be passed on? That is a sign of the decline of the educational system. It's one thing for a teacher to admit that he or she doesn't know everything. It's something else entirely for the teacher to know nothing, or to know no more than the students do. There's a word for teachers like that: it's unqualified. As in "if you don't know this stuff, you are unqualified to teach this subject."

Now I know that sounds like it plays right into what you were saying about how teachers act like they know everything and you know nothing. But that's not how it works. A well qualified teacher is one who knows more about the subject they're teaching than the students. Their job is to impart that knowledge to the students. It's not a case of "I know more than you ever will." It's a case of "I know more than you do right now. Let's fix that."

I'm not assuming anything, I'm just stating my observations. Take that for what it is, I keep telling everyone.

Also, no arguments about that last bit. I never said teachers should try to be equals. If that's what it sounded like, then I misspoke. I only mean that I view the red ink barrier (which is what I and a lot of other students DO view it as. Not everyone, by any means... But many, I'm sure) as an arbitrary one that separates students from teachers on more than just an academic level. It separates them on a symbolic "status" (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not) level which I believe is counter-productive.

Also: hey Owyn, how are you? Being a college student in America isn't as bad as I thought it'd be

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

Soon the stop lights will be grey because red incites panic in .000000000000000001% of the population.

Exactly. I admit i'm not perfect in school and see red pen on my tests all the time. But do I go home crying every day? NO! It helps me see my mistakes and work on them!!!!!!!

 

[emeraldrafael]

I think I saw this before in a cracked article when they were talking about stuff that was disappearing from schools and our kids would never see.

anyway, I just hope my 8th grade english/grammar and college argument and research teachers never see this. Otherwise they'll just write whoever the genius that came up with the idea a strongly worded letter in red in just to piss them off.

seriously thoug, I remember those two teachers would always use red ink. red was bad, and you only ever got blue ink (good) if you got a 100% or your paper was drastically better then the rest of the class that they wanted everyone else to know that they failed horrendously and would never be as good as the kid who got blue ink (of whcih I did a few times). and if you ever got less then a 75% (hard C), they'd just take a big fat red sharpie and write on every page of your paper your grade. usually adding a word to it like Dunce, or Failure, or Crap.

...

Actually, i remember in 8th grade one kid failed so hard on a seven page paper the teacher just wrote YOU FAIL in big red letters, one letter a page, down her paper, then added an eighth sheet just to berate the girls paper and tell her how horrible her paper was. The expressions "made me want to quit nd kill myself so I never see your writing again", "you have no business advancing past second grade", and "waste of paper the other (valuable and worthwhile) students could have used".

it was an interesting year.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

And you're going about it wrong by assuming that the red ink is a power play. It's a commonly available color that stands out against blue ink, black ink, and pencil. It means "you got this wrong, and I'm showing you so you can learn from the mistake." As for what you were saying earlier about a 500 year old system that exists to humiliate students, it's nothing of the sort. Old fashioned teaching techniques have been around for a long time for a reason; they work. All this focus on teachers being "learning facilitators" who are supposed to be equal to the students, instead of authority figures who have special knowledge to be passed on? That is a sign of the decline of the educational system. It's one thing for a teacher to admit that he or she doesn't know everything. It's something else entirely for the teacher to know nothing, or to know no more than the students do. There's a word for teachers like that: it's unqualified. As in "if you don't know this stuff, you are unqualified to teach this subject."

Now I know that sounds like it plays right into what you were saying about how teachers act like they know everything and you know nothing. But that's not how it works. A well qualified teacher is one who knows more about the subject they're teaching than the students. Their job is to impart that knowledge to the students. It's not a case of "I know more than you ever will." It's a case of "I know more than you do right now. Let's fix that."

I'm not assuming anything, I'm just stating my observations. Take that for what it is, I keep telling everyone.

Also, no arguments about that last bit. I never said teachers should try to be equals. If that's what it sounded like, then I misspoke. I only mean that I view the red ink barrier (which is what I and a lot of other students DO view it as. Not everyone, by any means... But many, I'm sure) as an arbitrary one that separates students from teachers on more than just an academic level. It separates them on a symbolic "status" (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not) level which I believe is counter-productive.

Also: hey Owyn, how are you? Being a college student in America isn't as bad as I thought it'd be

So I suppose you never had a teacher that did peer grading? I know you're not exactly from the States. Around here, teachers will frequently pass out multiple choice exams (which are easy to grade) to students, as well as a bunch of red pens, and then go over the answers, which saves a lot of time by grading everything at once. It's not the color of teachers correcting students; it's just the color of corrections and comments.

Edit: I missed the last question at first. I'm doing pretty well, actually. I'm right in the center of campus this year, and a member of several active clubs, so I feel a lot more plugged in than I did last year. And yeah, American collegiate life is pretty laid back. Sure, the work gets hard at times, but it's not significantly worse than highschool, and you actually live on a campus with (potentially) thousands of people your own age, so the downtime is a lot more fun. How have you been doing?

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

So I suppose you never had a teacher that did peer grading? I know you're not exactly from the States. Around here, teachers will frequently pass out multiple choice exams (which are easy to grade) to students, as well as a bunch of red pens, and then go over the answers, which saves a lot of time by grading everything at once. It's not the color of teachers correcting students; it's just the color of corrections and comments.

Edit: I missed the last question at first. I'm doing pretty well, actually. I'm right in the center of campus this year, and a member of several active clubs, so I feel a lot more plugged in than I did last year. And yeah, American collegiate life is pretty laid back. Sure, the work gets hard at times, but it's not significantly worse than highschool, and you actually live on a campus with (potentially) thousands of people your own age, so the downtime is a lot more fun. How have you been doing?

We did have something like that once or twice.....but we just used our own pens. Just to not be a cheeky little bastard I'll put the blame for that one not on my teacher's sense of superiority.....but on his stinginess for not wanting to buy so many red pens. See I can be open-minded

That's good to hear man. I'm trying to balance academics with a healthy club-life as well. It's definitely not as hard as I thought it'd be right now, since I got some easy courses. So yeah I'm alright. A little homesick already; but alright. What Uni did you say you were in again?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

So I suppose you never had a teacher that did peer grading? I know you're not exactly from the States. Around here, teachers will frequently pass out multiple choice exams (which are easy to grade) to students, as well as a bunch of red pens, and then go over the answers, which saves a lot of time by grading everything at once. It's not the color of teachers correcting students; it's just the color of corrections and comments.

Edit: I missed the last question at first. I'm doing pretty well, actually. I'm right in the center of campus this year, and a member of several active clubs, so I feel a lot more plugged in than I did last year. And yeah, American collegiate life is pretty laid back. Sure, the work gets hard at times, but it's not significantly worse than highschool, and you actually live on a campus with (potentially) thousands of people your own age, so the downtime is a lot more fun. How have you been doing?

We did have something like that once or twice.....but we just used our own pens. Just to not be a cheeky little bastard I'll put the blame for that one not on my teacher's sense of superiority.....but on his stinginess for not wanting to buy so many red pens. See I can be open-minded

That's good to hear man. I'm trying to balance academics with a healthy club-life as well. It's definitely not as hard as I thought it'd be right now, since I got some easy courses. So yeah I'm alright. A little homesick already; but alright. What Uni did you say you were in again?

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.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

You would have been thrown out of my class before the first quarter was over if you were disrupting class, so you wouldn't have had the time to save yourself. But as I've told my kids: you don't have to like me to pass my class, you just have to be smart enough not to spite yourselves out of some delusional notion that you're hurting me by not trying. Because you're not. I like how you judge my teaching methods based on absolutely no knowledge of me at all, it really helps validate your case. Honestly I don't care what kind of student you are, or what kind of student any of my kids are. I only expect effort and I try to convince students to put forth that effort. You've managed to misread my statements based on a single line, which convinces me that this argument is not worth having. But for the sake of setting the record clear....

I agree with you: [color=ANY other color at all. heck even black. What's so wrong with teachers wiritng in black ink. Can students not tell apart their handwriting from their teachers' nowaydays?] constructive criticism is the best way to teach mistakes to kids. Also I didn't say anything about coddling or not coddling. Some kids prefer the traditional method of teaching, and traditional methods are built into the fabric of most job environments, so kids should be aware of these environments and trained to handle them. State tests also aren't going to ever bend over and allow alternative assessments, so kids need to know how to sit down and take pencil-and-paper tests.

All I said was "alternative teaching is NOT the best way for everyone" and to suggest that it is, is utterly dishonest. Even the kids will occasionally testify that they prefer traditional methods, and to tell them "no, you have to put up with it" is wrong too. I'm a strong believer that we need to reorganize the teaching system to incorporate both strategies....the problem is how to manage it.[/color]

See? I came this close to not even fully reading your entire comment, because the first paragraph was a big 'ol dump of pedantic, obtuse "teacher-talk", scolding me for my bad mannerisms, and hypothetical behavior.....even though you're not even my teacher!

THAT'S what Red ink does man! It hides your perfectly reasonable and intelligent assertions (in the second paragraph) behind an impenetrable wall of pure meh. I'm extremely sorry if this seems rude, but it's just true.

Btw, I'm not saying I shouldn't be reprimanded for actually committing the actions I theorized in my last comment. But I didn't commit them. I only threatened to do so. It's something I've seen hundreds of teenagers do. In short I was trolling you. And you cut me a nice, big turkey leg: you had the obvious response, which is to pre-maturely call me out for my "actions", instead of discussing it with me on a level playing field and preventing my actions.

This was the mistake my English teacher made: She threw me out of her class when I wouldn't conform to her ridiculously specific standards. So I did all the studying myself, and got a 750 in writing, in my SAT. Then I rubbed it in her face in the most politely cruel way I could.

And you are absolutely right that many kids DO learn better with the "I will fuck you up!" treatment (easy, that was just a joke). There is no doubt about it. I'm sure there is no cure-all for teaching every kind of student. I respect the shit you guys have to go through, trust me. Many of my best friend's are teachers, and some of my teachers are my fondest childhood friends.

After much though, I guess I do agree that banning the use of red ink altogether was a little bit excessive. But it's just that a lot of you guys are debating that red ink doesn't have a subconscious negative effect on some students which it clearly DOES! That's all I'm saying.

 

[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.

 

[dorkette1990]

This happened in the US as well! I was a teacher's assistant, and her first warning was "don't use a red pen - apparently they make kids feel bad, so we have to use something else, like black or blue".

Of course, this just meant I went out and bought a package of brightly colored gel pens, so I could write "F - you failed to answer the prompt, and I think if you went over your essay with spellcheck, you could get a higher grade " in neon pink! Because the pink will make the F less painful.

 

[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.

 

[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.