# Red Ink



## GenJen54

A friend, who is a school teacher, was just recounting a bemusing anecdote in which a parent of one of her pupils chastised her for using (horror of horrors) RED INK to correct the child's paper. 

Red ink has been used for a long time to point out and make corrections, I am assuming because it stands out so well from the other black letters on the page. 

The parent's gripe was that the red ink was offensive to the child's apparent sensitivity to being judged. The teacher says this is a growing "movement" among parents. She has even read (not red) a news article about the fact that the red ink is too harsh-looking.  In some schools, teachers are now required to use purple or green instead, because they are "happier" colors. 

To borrow a fellow forero's term, is this "politikal kerrektitude"* gone awry?

I know that colors carry significant meaning in some cultures. How do teachers in your country correct your mistakes? Do they use red ink, or another color?

What say you?

*Note to the fellow forero whose term I borrrowed, I hope I didn't misspell it.


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## cuchuflete

Any person so politikly kerrect as to give a flying hoot as to how it's spelled should work for the school board. Mark Twain's remark comes to mind. I paraphrase: God invented the idiot, for practice. Then he made the school board.


In my country they used red ink. When I taught at universities, I used red ink, usually felt tip pen variety. If I couldn't find a red one, I used blue or whatever was handy.
I had the really stupid notion that the words mattered more than the palette.  

Guess my plitical kerrectitudinosity was not all it should have been. The better students still argued with me, the sheep bleated, and the rest practiced to become card carrying members of the silent majority. I doubt the color of the annotations changed any lives for better or worse.


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## rob.returns

Red is the color of failure. Blue sometimes signifies purgatory(but some would use it also as passed). Black is perfect.


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## cuchuflete

rob.returns said:
			
		

> Red is the color of failure. Blue sometimes signifies purgatory(but some would use it also as passed). Black is perfect.



Perfect for whom?  For what purpose?

If an essay is written in black, aren't black notations less visible than those in a contrasting color?

Red is the color of roses, of lobsters, of birds and butterflies, of cherries,
of useful teachers' comments

Really, this seems a little silly.  Don't students read comments any more?
Do they just glance at the color, and respond with emotion?


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## VenusEnvy

I'm told this, too, Gen! I just started teaching GED classes, and they really frown on us using *red ink *  to grade papers.

I suppose that because it's a program for adults, they're trying to veer away from the habits and traditions of their previous public school education...?

Another rule? We can't call math word problems _word problems_, we have to refer to them as _math stories_.




			
				cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Really, this seems a little silly.  Don't students read comments any more?
> Do they just glance at the color, and respond with emotion?


While I agree that it's a bit ridiculous, (devil's advocate calling...) others have made the same comment against altering the situations in which certain races and genders are stereotyped in school textbooks. Why does it matter that Pedro and Tyrone are selling crack in problem number x, but Peter and John are counting the number of books they have in the next?... Why is John a lawyer in problem number x, but Jane is a maid? Sorry to stray, but the argument rang  a bell... "It's just a math problem/ink color, get over it."


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## cuchuflete

VenusEnvy said:
			
		

> I'm told this, too, Gen! I just started teaching GED classes, and they really frown on us using *red ink *  to grade papers.
> 
> I suppose that because it's a program for adults, they're trying to veer away from the habits and traditions of their previous public school education...?
> 
> Another rule? We can't call math word problems _word problems_, we have to refer to them as _math stories_.



And are you forced to tell them that they are all very nice people who deserve to succeed in life and have a problem-free existence and live happily ever after?

Good grief Venus, do the people who make the rules believe that reality is injurious to students' health?

I think I really do see where all this is headed.

Police Academy XIII, Act I, Scene 2, the classroom.
Instructor Sergeant to class:  "Now when y'all pull some bozo over fer speedin, ya caint say 'I'm gonna hafta give y'all a ticket. Nope, we caint say ticket.  See, there's people that got them before, an was traumatized by the experience of gettin one for going 87 in a school zone, all likkered up.  Put a baaad hurt on their self steam.  So now we gotta call a ticket an advisoree of regalatoree action, or an invitation to judicial gathering.

Got that?


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## VenusEnvy

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> And are you forced to tell them that they are all very nice people who deserve to succeed in life and have a problem-free existence and live happily ever after?


Well, we are expected to treat every "learner" (NOT student, this is frowned upon also) with great expectations, who yes, deserve to succeed in life.  




			
				KIA said:
			
		

> Police Academy XIII, Act I, Scene 2, the classroom.
> Instructor Sergeant to class:  "Now when y'all pull some bozo over fer speedin, ya caint say 'I'm gonna hafta give y'all a ticket. Nope, we caint say ticket.  See, there's people that got them before, an was traumatized by the experience of gettin one for going 87 in a school zone, all likkered up.  Put a baaad hurt on their self steam.  So now we gotta call a ticket an advisoree of regalatoree action, or an invitation to judicial gathering.
> 
> Got that?


Barely, but yes. Cute!


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## Benjy

yes they do 

a teacher in england lobbied recently to have failure transformed into deferred success. failing is too painful to bear it seems.



> Good grief Venus, do the people who make the rules believe that reality is injurious to students' health?


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## cuchuflete

Crap like that can drive bright, eager teachers away from teaching.


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## VenusEnvy

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Crap like that can drive bright, eager teachers away from teaching.


Ya, hey, I know!

I guess it's their way of moving away from the traditional way of teaching. ??


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## rob.returns

VenusEnvy said:
			
		

> Another rule? We can't call math word problems _word problems_, we have to refer to them as _math stories_.


Are you kidding me?...math stories..very funny..hahaha..for students to listen, right? Hope the end of the story would be good marks.
IN our country, we still used math problems...let x=blah and blah..if i were to choose between the two, i'll choose math problem. "Math story" would be so unorthodox.


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## SweetMommaSue

And who is it that is behind this movement, anyway?  Why do they have so much power?  

I do believe that all this coddling nonsense has gone way beyond too far!  Life is not always easy or fair or nurturing.  Over-coddling students does not prepare them for life. . .it sets them up for future trauma!  What a shock when they get out into the "real world" only to find it's dog eat dog out there, and who cares about almost-grown-up Johnny's feelings now! He is being conditioned for future failure.

Goodness. . . it's all bassackwards now!  Little Johnny needs to learn to grow a thick skin, and red ink/a student label/a math word problem aren't about to make such a huge difference in him that it's worth causing a ruckus about it.  Instead of worrying about such trivialities. . .what about worrying about literacy and ability to do math. . .

OK. I better jump off my soap box now. . .


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## GenJen54

> Originally posted by *SweetMommaSue*
> I do believe that all this coddling nonsense has gone way beyond too far! Life is not always easy or fair or nurturing. Over-coddling students does not prepare them for life. . .it sets them up for future trauma! What a shock when they get out into the "real world" only to find it's dog eat dog out there, and who cares about almost-grown-up Johnny's feelings now! He is being conditioned for future failure.



I could not agree with you more, which is why I wanted to see what others had to say. The state of our trying to be hypersensitive to others' is only going to hinder these same coddled kids when they have to face reality and their boss tears up the prospectus they spent hours working on right in front of their face. What are they going to do then, go crying home to mommy? 

All of this has gotten out of hand.  I certainly understand the need to change the scenario in certain "math *problems*" to make certain they are culturally sensitive, but come on - no more red ink? Next, thing you know, teachers will not be able to correct students' work at all for fear it will give them a "deferred success" complex.



> Originally posted by *VenusEnvy*
> Another rule? We can't call math word problems word problems, we have to refer to them as _math stories_.



HAHAHA!   But they're _*problems*_ - the whole point is we are supposed to *solve* them. How does one _*solve*_ a story? Does changing the name make them any easier? Maybe now that they are stories, those of us - like me - who achieved "deferred success" at solving them the first go around will be better able to figure them out now!   Oh, darn.  I forgot.  My story problem tests were so filled with red ink I'm now to frightened to go back and try.


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## ILT

The only "recommendation" I received about red ink is that I should not write a whole letter in red, because it is considered bad manners here in México, since the color is too bringht, it may affect the reader's eyes.

As for correction of exams, my son, 5, gets his work corrected in red by his teacher, and so far I have not seen any anguish caused by this.

I agree that overcoodling kids will very like hinder their adult life in the real world.  And we learn from our mistakes, and we notice our mistakes when they're pointed out.  We can rarely see our own mistakes by ourselves.


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## LV4-26

When I was at school my papers were corrected in red. I guess I was very happy with a good remark on the front page whatever the colour used and less happy with a bad one. As a teacher I use red ink for corrections (or a green pen if I don't have a red one). 

I see GenJen's anecdote as yet another instance of the parents not trusting the teachers any longer. Though I haven't yet received any complaints about my using red ink, I do notice that, more and more, parents want to teach us pedagogy. Of course, everybody can make a mistake but we know our job, we've been trained for it. 

Nowadays (in France, at least), when a pupil gets a bad mark it's the teacher that gets scolded by the parents. (I don't mean they should necessarily scold the child : a mark isn't a judgement, it's just a way to know what stage you're at in your learning process).

The fact that parents could object to the teacher's using red ink for his/her corrections is just plain straightout outright "pathétique de connerie" to me (can't find any English equivalent at the moment). Just as all symptoms of political correctness, I guess.


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## cuchuflete

Jean-Michel,

I am troubled to learn that "culture" has become so international in this sense, and that the same idiocy we suffer in the US pervades the UK and France also. 

 You have written something that disturbs me a little:



> Of course, everybody can make a mistake but we know our job, *we've been trained for it.*


  What happens when those doing the training are the same politically kerrect morons who tell people to call a problem a story?

When the teachers of pedagogy are products of politically correct 
education _sic_, then we will be in grave trouble.


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## Agnès E.

Destroy schools, kill all the teachers, all the kids and all parents, too...
I fully support you, all teachers suffering from parents' efforts to prove their children are skilled angels deserving a special treatment.
Do people sometimes think to good pupils never more encouraged nor rewarded because of political correctness? What's the point being a good pupil nowadays?


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## LV4-26

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> When the teachers of pedagogy are products of politically correct
> education _sic_, then we will be in grave trouble.


Fortunately, I think more and more people are aware that all this is becoming utterly absurd. Hopefully, there'll be some sort of heading shift in the next few years.



> I am troubled to learn that "culture" has become so international in this sense, and that the same idiocy we suffer in the US pervades the UK and France also.


Yes, we're always a little late over here for most things . Could it be that we're keeping pace with the US in that specific field ?


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## asm

I think the red in is more than OK, it highliths your comments. However, I do agree that when correcting papers, we have the tendency of correcting the mistakes and do not have the positive comments.
I turned an important paper to a professor, he returned it with comments on the format (the APA style was the norm in that paper, and this style is very choosy). The paper had a lot of comments (black ink I guess), although I learned a lot from my mistakes (not to cite this way, use this font, etc.) I did not know if the paper had good quality in the content or not. I think that the problem that iniciated this issue (red ink, etc.) was related to this, the focus on the negative things (only). However, I think "they" have gone too far.
Red ink is OK.
The "self-confidence" fad has gone to far. Self esteem is important, but denying faliure at all cost is not the way to get it. There is no healthy esteem without a dosis of faliure.



			
				GenJen54 said:
			
		

> A friend, who is a school teacher, was just recounting a bemusing anecdote in which a parent of one of her pupils chastised her for using (horror of horrors) RED INK to correct the child's paper.
> 
> Red ink has been used for a long time to point out and make corrections, I am assuming because it stands out so well from the other black letters on the page.
> 
> The parent's gripe was that the red ink was offensive to the child's apparent sensitivity to being judged. The teacher says this is a growing "movement" among parents. She has even read (not red) a news article about the fact that the red ink is too harsh-looking. In some schools, teachers are now required to use purple or green instead, because they are "happier" colors.
> 
> To borrow a fellow forero's term, is this "politikal kerrektitude"* gone awry?
> 
> I know that colors carry significant meaning in some cultures. How do teachers in your country correct your mistakes? Do they use red ink, or another color?
> 
> What say you?
> 
> *Note to the fellow forero whose term I borrrowed, I hope I didn't misspell it.


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## cuchuflete

LV4-26 said:
			
		

> Yes, we're always a little late over here for most things . *Could it be that we're keeping pace with the US in that specific field ?*



What a fine idea for a new Olympic competition:  For the sprinters, we have
pedagogical faddishness, and for the distance atheletes, we can all compete in societal stupidity.  The latter will be a kind of mixed-sex (of course) relay race.  At the end of each lap, the runner will drop some more common sense, and pick up a new brain chip that has less storage, and less computing power.  After a number of laps the runners will be allowed to run backwards, if they prefer, or leave the track and meander around aimlessly.

The last ones to reach the finish line will win big smilie faces and will be told that each of us is a winner.  All competing teams will win gold medals, though France and the US may get extras


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## juliebebz

VenusEnvy said:
			
		

> Another rule? We can't call math word problems _word problems_, we have to refer to them as _math stories_.


 
math word problems involved a math stories.... we can't easily solved the math word problem if there is no story involved.. math story is more important to let the students understand the situation of a problem... it motivates the student to learn..


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## cuchuflete

Here is a 'math story'.

I have a politikly keyrect school administrator.  The principal of the school where I teach believes in new math and high self-esteem.  The parents of my students think red ink should only be used to sign birthday cards.

How many of the people in the story can add 2+2 and get an answer >1<7?

All story endings provided by you learners will get high respect---we don't do 
grades--for effort.


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## ggca

Here in México, I had notice that teachers usually grade with red ink, but now they are grading with purple or green ink.


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## cuchuflete

We need to continue on this trajectory.  Eventually corrections will be only in very light colored ink, and finally in invisible ink.  That will himpruve thuh selfess steam of thuh lernerz.


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## juliebebz

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Here is a 'math story'.
> 
> How many of the people in the story can add 2+2 and get an answer >1<7?
> 
> All story endings provided by you learners will get high respect---we don't do
> grades--for effort.


 
owhs... this is a "probability" math word problem!!!!!! how many people are there in the story?...

i've known a teacher who is using a red ink to emphasized the wrong answers...
maybe bcoz red is an attractive color....


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## Isotta

I had never thought much about it, except for the annual annoyance at having to buy and keep up with a red pen in elementary school for correcting exercises. 

As far as criticism go, I have always been happy to hear it, with the exception of my first semester at university, when a somewhat maniacal political science professor wrote a big, red "NO!!" next to one sentence, with no other comment. And then what a delight it was, the discovery of the three-week drop period...

Isotta.


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## panjandrum

I read the thread. What on earth has this to do with me? I'm not a teacher - but I do spend a lot of time reading, evaluating, commenting on and correcting other people's work.

I offer you a future lifeline.
Eventually, the work you correct will no longer be on paper. It will be in Word, or another similar product.

The corrections and comments you make may be presented to the "student" in any colour they choose - red, green, blue, black or invisible. That will be _their_ choice.


> I turned an important paper to a professor, he returned it with comments on the format (the APA style was the norm in that paper, and this style is very choosy). The paper had a lot of comments (black ink I guess), although I learned a lot from my mistakes (not to cite this way, use this font, etc.) I did not know if the paper had good quality in the content or not.


Forgive me for picking up on this comment - I want to use it for illustration only - no reflection on the original poster. 

I have been on the other end of this situation.
I have been asked to consider and appraise a recommendation that was presented to me in a report that was ill-structured, ungrammatical, illogical and full of strange acronyms.

I returned it with a lengthy series of comments on these problems.
My concluding comment was that their overall impact made it impossible for me to come to any sensible judgement on the quality of the case being made.


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## zebedee

VenusEnvy said:
			
		

> Well, we are expected to treat every "learner" *(NOT student, this is frowned upon also)* with great expectations


 
"Student" is frowned upon? Goodness, on what basis? Is "studying" also frowned upon?


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## cuchuflete

Shouldn't we merge this thread with the others which lament the ills of society, or ask why education is so dreadful?

Panj had to address the results of a 'learner' who hadn't learned--perhaps because some kind school administrator, prompted by a professor of pedagogy?--forgot to include study in the curriculum.


Why is red ink good for students lernerz?

 1- It gets them to pay attention to a teacher's comments.
2- It informs them what they need to learn or reconsider.
3- It trains them to calmly accept constructive criticism. 
4- It creates a contrast with remarks in other colors.
5- It may alert parents to difficulties their child is having.
​


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## mzsweeett

I couldn't agree with you more Panj and Cuchu and SweetMomma and Genjen and Venus.....ooops, I'm sorry I didn't remember ym punctuation. if I mssspll soemthing to pleese dont kerrekt me cuz i mite be sensitiv to it. and i mite not feel lik a good persn nee moor. 

Good grief.  Someone please smack some sense into those ridiculous parents who are making a teacher's job even harder.  

If on correction, process, title and so many other conditions must be met to educat a child........ what the heck are they going to learn?? Life is hard.... no bones about it.... the only way to be prepared for the future reality is to give them reality. I'm not saying bash them over the head ... but don't coddle to them either... if they fail a paper, they need to know it and then be told how to pass it the next time.... isn't that what correction is all about??

I and all my peers went to school unscathed byt he multitiude of red marks on our papers.... no trauma came of it... not to us or our kids either.... I personally think the trauma is on the shoulders of the parents who THINK their kids are being traumatized...... I wonder if they kept their mouths shut would the kids really feel traumatized?? Would their self esteem really plunge to a deep depth?? PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE spare us the inslult.... ya know?

I feel the sudden urge to pull my kids out of school and homeschool again...... rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

Sweet T.


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## tey2

I couldn't agree with you more mzsweeett  Here in the Philippines teachers usually use red ink, during my school days I haven't had a bad impression about red ink, maybe because I'm used to the idea that that's what the teachers use when they correct our papers. Personally I like red inks to use when correcting exam papers and the like, I find it attractive and you easily know what's your mistake when the teacher returns the exam papers back to us. 

cheers,
tey2


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