SERIOUS: School bans red ink - "It's a very negative color"
83 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Protocol7;44299157]What's helpful for me is when the professor actually writes out what I did wrong. A line through my work and a -5 in red is bad because it's a loss of points with no feedback, not because it's red.[/QUOTE]
Precisely. In my school, if you had no red on you, you already know you did well. But if you didn't, red was exactly what we were all hoping to see. Maybe I just got real lucky with teachers, but they brought out every mistake, offering a generic path of solution and simple explanations, counter-inquiry and encouragement. The math teacher once scribbled all over every single square centimeter of blank paper on my test, and it wasn't enough so she had me stay a bit after class to make sure I understood.
If it works, stop trying to wreck it.
[QUOTE=Rusty100;44298679]That is dumb because then green or purple would become the new negative colour association (assuming the student does badly - whatever colour it is could have a positive association if the student gets good marks).
the only solution is to use a different colour every time. grade me a rainbow[/QUOTE]
Well, red = bad is a pretty universal association. It isn't as though it's a negative colour [I]because [/I]​teachers use it in marking.
Um garry the people in refugee camp are sad because the color red is negative
you should change the ban color to green to make it more positive
To be honest, I'm starting to get just as annoyed with assholes who scream "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" as I am with people who are accused of being politically correct.
I don't know if the ink colour makes any difference, but I wouldn't surprised at all if it did. People are wired to make incredibly strong connections with colours, and seeing pages of your hard work scrawled all over in red ink isn't exactly motivating; it stings.
There's the idea that green or whatever will just become the new red, but saying that suggests that the singular reason we think of red as bad is that it's used in marking. It's universally a negative colour.
There needs to be some actual research done into whether or not this makes a difference. If it does, surely we should do it. How are we going to find out if the default response is "lol hurt feelings cry more"?
Dismissing shit out of hand because it looks daft to you is a bad way to approach anything. That goes for big things; like trying to move a country entirely onto wind power, or equal representation of minorities in the media; just as much as "little" things like banning corporal punishment, or taking care to avoid demotivating students.
What my teacher does, is when you give in a paper as a rough draft, he uses 3 colours.
Red for information errors
Green for grammar mistakes
Purple for connotation errors (when sentences don't make sense)
My 9th grade math foundations teacher was awesome. He'd just use a bold red ink pen and write "HERE'S WHAT YOU DID WRONG DUMBSHIT" and would actually explain why that was incorrect. Helped me quite a bit.
Not literally, but you get the idea.
In this country, red ink is used on every question, a tick if you got it right and a slash or a cross if you got it wrong, so changing the ink would do nothing.
[QUOTE=AlfieSR;44299143]Or it encourages them to give up on the spot because they won't believe they'll get any better if they see too much red there.
They should just use a neutral black ink for both good and bad marks. People who give a shit about their grades can look through for mistakes, and people who don't care won't give a shit what colour it's in. People who are on the border of giving up, who this most effects, won't be able to see at a glance that they've done poorly until they've gone through it - at which point, theoretically, they'd see [I]where[/I] they've gone wrong which will help them far more than being handed back a paper covered in red and throwing in a desk never to be seen again at the first opportunity sheerly because it's covered in [I]whatever[/I] colour they use for negative marking.[/QUOTE]
As someone who has literally a 6th grade education because of flunking out in middle school do to social issues, I'm really confused by this post.
I see red almost all the damn time on mathwork I do. That doesn't irritate me. I say, "Well fuck, I'm an idiot" and go on with doing some other mathwork. Now what does bug me though, and this relates to a fuck-ton of other mole-hills which I really don't care to mention, is when someone gives me the passive-aggresive "you're a fucking idiot, shape up" look.
This:
[t]http://activetimeevent.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/future-muranica.jpg[/t]
They don't say much, but for the few times I have had people actually say something, I learned to know what that look means. I feel absolutely gutted when someone I care about gives me that look, and doesn't explain what I did wrong, or how I did something wrong. It's a feeling of being pushed aside, not getting an explanation, because it should be considered "normal" to know what you did or did not do wrong.
The problem with the current education system is that it's centered around en'masse testing, and no realistic application into things like trade or work. I hardly find myself using late Pre-Algebra for just about anything outside of possibly judging gear ratios for things in Garry's Mod, but in that same consideration, I'll never get a GED or anything of the sort until I study everything in Algebra and possibly beginner Calculus, because its expected to be known, because the grade or generation before you had to learn it. By socially-alienating people and not explaining what they did wrong, and how to fix it, you are throwing several groups of kids under the bus and expecting them to have a hammer to put down a nail, without giving them a goddamn hammer in the first place.
Red ink isn't the issue, its the setup for an Industrial Economy, while we have a Service Economy.
If a kid would chew a poptart into the shape of red, would they get expelled?
Seeing red all over your homework means it is the color of motivation. Motivation to do better.
Also, changing colors just means students will have negative associations towards that particular color. So nothing changes.
the red hue is detrimental to my emotional well being :-(
[QUOTE=AlfieSR;44299143]Or it encourages them to give up on the spot because they won't believe they'll get any better if they see too much red there.[/QUOTE]
It's sad how much this used to affect me. I used to get a test, see red, and just put it down and never look at it again. It greatly affected my ability to learn from mistakes and hurt me over the course of my 7th-10th years of school. I eventually forced myself to actually learn from it, but I wish I had had that skill earlier.
[QUOTE=Protocol7;44298719]So what, bad marks will be banned too? A 50% will be "acceptable" and everything above will be things like "good", "great", "excellent"?
Extreme negativity is one thing, but a kid needs to know when they fucked up. That's how you learn. At least it's a pen color they banned this time.[/QUOTE]
it's because, at least in the US education system, children are told to be afraid of failure 100% of the time, and treat people who do fail like outcast retard dumbos, instead of helping them learn from their mistakes.
[video=youtube;iG9CE55wbtY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY[/video]
(i think the video embed thing is broken)
this guy sums it up much better than I could.
why don't people just stop this kind of crazy stuff. you cant do anything now that will make people feel bad. What's next you can't put a cross next to a wrong answer cause getting it wrong makes them annoyed. Come on
[QUOTE=Seriousshakey;44313551]why don't people just stop this kind of crazy stuff. [U]you cant do anything now that will make people feel bad[/U]. What's next you can't put a cross next to a wrong answer cause getting it wrong makes them annoyed. Come on[/QUOTE]
Why should one be able to make people feel bad? Insulting people is hardly a right.
[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;44313873]Why should one be able to make people feel bad? Insulting people is hardly a right.[/QUOTE]
it is not insulting people. It is like people who run in a race and having everyone win cause it would make them feel bad.
People have to feel bad at times else we won't fully be able to the great times in life.
Let's protect the poor kids from everything before they graduate. Let's make it so the first time they fully understand failure will be when their resume gets denied.
What a glorious world that would be. Grow a thiker skin please, if seeing red makes you give up instantly, then franky you should see a doctor or fuck off.
I've got severe anxiety, especially with tests and grades and even I think this is fucking stupid.
[QUOTE=Seriousshakey;44318596]it is not insulting people. It is like people who run in a race and having everyone win cause it would make them feel bad.
People have to feel bad at times else we won't fully be able to the great times in life.[/QUOTE]
Making everyone that runs a race the winner isn't the same thing at all. The kids who get their work back will still have a big fat "F" or whatever scrawled on it, they still fail.
If there's reason to think that telling them in green ink would be better for their mental wellbeing than telling them in red pen, why wouldn't we make that change?
To draw a comparison, my grandmother's been clearing stuff out and she came across an old school newsletter from ~1970 which contained the results of every single student.
Now, the results come packaged in private envelopes. Why? Because it's just as effective at getting the message across, and doesn't hold up people that fail for mockery.
We should let schools try this, and see if it does make a difference. The logic of simply telling kids to grow a thicker skin and deal with it pangs of a watered down version of the corporal punishment debate. "They'll grow up to be spineless!" "it builds character!".
[QUOTE=Teddybeer;44298701]My primary school used to grade me in smileys.[/QUOTE]
My school teachers do this all the time.
One time my friend wrote "Forgive me for my own shortcomings my dearest educator" in her chemistry test and the teacher wrote "There shall be no forgiveness for you" :v:
Teachers in my high school were asked not to use red ink when grading papers as well. So my french teacher bought a ton of red pens to grade everything with. In retaliation, our class started doing all of our assignments in red pen and he had to switch to black to grade them. Victory!
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