Red pens are too aggressive ...

If this wasn't so pathetic it would be laughable. Sometimes I wonder about the people who dream up these suggestions and wonder how long they have sopendin fairyland that particular day. How on earth are the students and parents to see how they did in that particular class or subject. At least red stands out and mistakes are seen instead of being overlooked when checking the school books. This particular edict reminds me very much of one related to us by friends. They lived in a very small town in country New South Wales (Australia) and considered they were lucky it had a school. Their children used to go to the local school which was in fact in walking distance of the home. This was a very small one-teacher school as well. Every day the parents would ask their oldest who was in the second grade about homework and her school books and the answer was always the same. "Mrs XYZ does not give us homework and said we do not take our books home." After a couple of weeks of this, the parents send a note to the school saying they wanted to see the teacher. No response from the teacher even when they used to visit the school, she was too busy to talk to them. One day the mother went to pick up the children and told them to bring their school books home, which they did. The parents were horrified at the standard of the work and the fact that mistakes could not be corrected. When they spoke to the teacher, the parents were informed that correcting mistakes was demeaning and demoralising for young children who would end up with no self esteem. Over the following couple of weeks they chased up everyone in the education system, going right to the top of the chain so to speak. Basically that was the answer they got from everyone. So the parents moved their children to a private school in the nearest town which is some 80km away. Initially they drove them to and from school every day but then rented a house in the town and the mother got a job duringschool hous to cover the additional costs. As the parents were involved in agriculture, the entire family could not move into the town. I digress though. Our friends sent the education department saying they wanted their children to be educated to a standard that would allow them to live, work and support themselves in society and not "children with a high self esteem who know dog dung." Some bureaucrat from the education department replies saying "it is the parents choice where children go to school but the State SChool system has an excellent educational standard". Banning the use of red pens brings to my mind, the same thing as not correcting incorrect work in students bioug htto my friends.

kind of reminds me of being back in school, and we were always told to get out our notebooks and a "NUMBER 2" pencil. i mean, i wonder what would have REALLY happened if we would have used a number 3 or a number 1 and a half pencil.

I was afraid that this would happen with the collapse of the former Communist Empire Guy. Deep in capitalist centres all over the world special shipments of red pens have been waiting, in some cases for many years, to start their campaign of terror. Like most bullies they will start on the most vulnerable. Children innocently going about their school work will be targetted and terrorised. Their teachers innocent, but impotent pawns in the insidious march against the spread of the blue that has characterised childish scrawl across the decades since WW2. The red forces, just individual spots of colour, will increase on exercise books until at last, cowed and beaten into submission, the children will start to see things from a different perspective. "Did you answer the question", "Are you sure that 5/10 is 25?", "See me after class". All the classic opening gambits of a rise against free thought, and a forceful reinforcing that collectivism in the playground is the sublime end state sought from the school years. Is this what we want for our children? So let's drive out the red and celebrate the blue or the black, the indigo and green. For they shall inherit the earth and learn bugger all as they do it! (Would I make it as a Queensland legislator?)

Really a good decision for school going student. Hopefully it will help the school going students. As concerned to me, I used to hate those Red marks on my homework book, and answer books. It really hurts when u see "X" on your answer sheet. This sheets contains what u have learned and it also used some hard work, u couldn't write just any thing without thinking. Thinking should be developed in the schools, As we see on mylot, If someone dont know any thing about any topic, then too people used to write atleast 5-10 lines. And Mylot too dont disappoint these people, Mylot pays them too even it is out of subject. What can i say about "RED", Red is the color to say "Stop". It shows danger. I think if you avoid the red pens in the schools, and children see their paper without any red mark, just see the happiness on their faces. Even if any one gets the average marks, He still have confidence to achieve more. This "RED X" mark directly attacks on your "Self Confidence". I am from India, I dont think that, this rule will be applied here in 10 more years. Any ways, thanks for the article writers....

That's crazy! What in the world? Who cares what color ink is used, as long as it can be seen clearly and its not the same color as the students'? I hear the craziest things as life goes on...

When I was young my grandmother told me to never write a letter in red or use red pen when filling out forms. She said the red meant that you were angry. Of course when we were graded they used red pens (and red markers) but I was so use to it I did not think of it as offensive. Thinking more about it now that I am older, I was a good academic student and loved the challenge of getting good grades. I was not straight A, but I certainly had the potential to be. School work came easy to me. But there are students who struggle through school and have to work so much harder to get the information. I imagine that being compared to other students can have a negative effect on their psyche. The red pen certainly brings attention to the mess ups. I think it may not be a bad idea to stop using them. Schooling tends to be a competition of who is better than who when in actuality it should be a journey where everyone learns at the pace that's good for them. My daughter currently goes to a school where she gets no grades and she has such a love of learning and exploring because no one is rating her.

I had a teacher who used green ink instead of red for this particular reason that you mention. I do consider red as a shocking colour and a colour that attracts your attention. I don't believe that the colour will inflict low self esteem on students. i think that a good teacher can encourage his students to accept correction and not to repeat it another time, no matter in what colour you write whether violet black or red,

Really? Maybe they should remove the use of pens altogether and embrace aromatherapy and whale sound music only? It is certainly a bizarre directive to be issued and yes, it will be very interesting to see what the heck they decide to come up with next! Educationg youth is a big enough challenge as it is without all this airy fairy crap in parallel.

oh, i believe this! we have several friends who are teachers (both male and female teachers) and here in ontario (canada) they are not allowed to fail students because it will damage their psyche! i guess it was inevitable that the red pen follow suit! crazy! i agree with you!

Hi Guybrush, Oh this is ridiculous, whatever next I agree. I thought, like you, that the whole idea of marking in red was to highlight mistakes so they could be learnt from and corrected for another time. If we stopped pampering and molly coddling the kids of today perhaps the next generation may have a chance at being respectful and law abiding but these days there are no deterrents at all, can't even mark their homework in red in case we hurt their feelings, it is no wonder they think they can get away with murder literally in some cases, grrr. Huggles. Ellie :D

I am also from the prehistoric school days and agree with you. The red makes it easier to hone in on items that need attention. I don't know who came up with that one, but it's obvious that whoever came up with that conclusion has way to much time on their hands!

This is nothing new, happened in my school in Middle School also. They handed out purple pens to teachers and for a time some of them graded using them, or green pens, or blue pens. Didn't really matter to me, I still knew the difference between an A and an F and felt crappy about the second one no matter the color it was written in.

Hey hey ! A red pen should be the least of everyones worries ya know . Gosh , its just a color and I am so used to having techers use that .What next makes me wonder . I am not giving up writing up my christams cards in red or green take cares

Unbelievable! But it doesn't surprise me. Seems more frequently I am scratching my head thinking what will they come up with next. Its like somebody is have a contest to see who can come up with the stupidest arguement. I wonder how long it will take someone to figure out that unless we can figure out a teaching system that teaches our children to think and analyze rather than memorize information it wont matter what color ink the teacher uses.

This sort of non-sense has been going on for the last 20 years. Many teachers have left the profession because they are terrify to be sue for doing their job. I am looking forward to the day when it is not politically correct to send your children to school because it interfere with their civil liberties. On one hand you have a law preventing children from being educated. On the other hand... you have a law throwing children in detention centres because they broke the law due to their lack of education. The more laws we have... the worse it gets. lol

How embarrassing. That makes me ashamed to be an Aussie. What a pathetic bloody joke. Why do kids go to school?.....they go to learn...and learn about life, not just the 3 r's...though they don't seem to be learning a whole lot. If hurting their feelings through the use of a red correction pen is a problem then I'm surprised they have to attend school at all. And actually having to do any work must be perilous. God help the poor darlings. Scuse me...think I'm gonna be sick.

I personally do not like it when teachers use red pen to mark the papers of their students. My mother is a retired school supervisor and she is against marking student's papers with red ink because children tend to associate red markings with failures. Red markings on the paper are also very prominent that it is easy for the student's seatmates to see how badly he or she fared in the exam. I think it is a good idea for schools to refrain from using red pens to mark the papers of students.

oh for Gods sake what next. Yeah I am sure we are all scared for life because our teachers used red pen to mark our work. So what now they have to use silver and gold pens I supose. Should those people that are deciding this things be working on something more useful like how far behind our school system is and that half the kids dont know how to read when the finish school. Or they will stop telling the kids how bad they are doing or they will get depresion or something. They are saying things like its ok for kids to use sms kind of writhing but think teachers writhing in red is the bigest problem????

Hi, Guybrush! It's been a while! Many years ago, a girl came to me crying after class one day. She said she's tried really hard on an assignment, and I disliked it so muchh I made her work bleed. I never used red again! It just began to feel creepy. Now I do the grading in purple or green. I still often write more than the kids do, but they take it OK. Classes are too big for much other individualizing than that.

Couldn't agree with you more. I've heard this rubbish about red ink previously, and really do think it's a load of bunkum. Really, you'd think that educators would have better things to think about when considering how to best serve our children. The reason teachers have traditionally used red for marking is so that it stands out and is easy to see. Students are unlikely to use red, so it's not likely to get confused. Positive comments are written in red as well as corrections, so I really don't understand the logic behind this.