The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.
Harshness of red marks has students seeing purple
It seems that red is losing favor as the ink to use when correcting papers. It’s too authoritarian and bold. It intimidates kids and could even harm their self esteem. Purple is soft and comforting and it is much better for their little psyches.
“If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening,” said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. “Purple stands out, but it doesn’t look as scary as red.”
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A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.
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“I do not use red,” said Robin Slipakoff, who teaches second and third grades at Mirror Lake Elementary School in Plantation, Fla. “Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot.”
Tiffany asked what Jessie and I, as homeschoolers, feel about the red/purple issue. Well, Tiffany it’s like this: We’ve found that it’s best not to correct at all. Pointing out that a child has made an error can be very damaging to their self esteem. We review things with the child and for the correct answers we give positive feedback like “Yay! You got that one right!” For the ones that are not ‘traditionally correct’ we will say something like “Oh, wow! That is certainly an exciting alternative!” Using this method we can quickly build up our boys’ self esteem without exposing them to damaging concepts like “being wrong”.
Um…right. That actually hurt me to put down on paper. The reality is we haven’t done much written correcting at all yet. Jeremy starts book school next week. For the writing that he has done, we’re generally right there with him and we correct him as he’s doing it. If he brings me something he’s done on his own and there are errors I’ll point them out to him and we’ll fix them together if a writing instrument is handy.
Verbally I’m using red ink though. I guarantee.
(Tip credits to Aaron, Tiffany, Joanne Jacobs and Kimberly Swygert.)
Cross posted to Snooze Button Dreams.
Today’s column is a joke (100%), isn’t it. MSS
The only joke is the paragraph that begins “Tiffany asked” and ends with “being wrong”.
I wish the rest was a joke too, Michael. I really do.
this may sound ridiculous to all of you, but as a high school student myself i have to agree with not using red. however, green was always the alternative at my school, not purple.
i guess sometimes it feels personal, like the teacher is lashing out, when its red. it makes sense to me.
I thought the purpose of correcting a child is to show them the error of their ways hoping that it will make them feel bad and mend their ways.
“I thought the purpose of correcting a child is to show them the error of their ways hoping that it will make them feel bad and mend their ways.”
This reminds me of a quote I saw on Kimberly Swygert’s site: “In my opinion, the fear associated with getting an essay back that’s been marked up with red ink is the best conditioning a student can get. They’ll want to improve to prevent errors and the emotion associated with failure.”
While it may be rational, and morally proper, to condemn immoral behavior and demand moral behavior in its place, this method of instruction to me seems inapplicable to knowledge outside of the moral realm. What is the point in making a child “feel bad” about getting the wrong answer? A far superior alternative to my mind is to show how correctness and success are goals in themselves and lead naturally to the achievement of other goals in life; as the folks at No Treason have been harping for a while, to deal in first principles. After all, a person who thinks 2 2=5 should hardly be treated in the same fashion as one who appears to think that there’s nothing wrong with stealing, raping or killing people.
I cannot seriously believe that people really debate red ink usage.
We are gearing up for a generation of pantywaists that will give blank looks when I use such phrases as ‘bleeding on the paper’ or ‘time to get out the old red pen’.
When I went to school we had teachers that put red marks on the papers when there were wrong answers. If the teacher was feeling charitable we’d get half credit for finding the correct answers to the questions we missed as an optional assignment. That, my friends, is the difference between a student that graduates with honors and an average student.
Long live the red pen.
The discussion about what color ink to use is quite juvenile. It really does not matter. Right now red has a negative connotation to it because it is the traditional color ink to use when marking a paper. That is the crux of the matter. Getting answers wrong IS negative… It IS bad. That is just part of life and learning. If the color were to be changed to purple or green or whatever color crayola can invent next, and it was used consistently, then the same stigmatism would start to develop with that color.
In the end, its not the color that’s the problem to these people, its the fact that we still tell kids that they can actually do something wrong.
This is simply a repeat of arguments that date back a couple of decades. I had one COllege of Education prof tell me that we should use green, (because it is the color of healthy growth) rather than red (the color of blood and death and violence).
Personally, I use both red and purple — depending on whetehr I am at school (where I have a supply or red) or home (where my wife writes exclusively with purple pens). But every year my department chair gives us boxes of green pens because he subscribes to the “color of growth” school.
I saw a LOT of red ink during the course of my grade school education, and I never lost any sleep over it. If a child is somehow emotionally damaged because their errors are corrected in red, chances are they have pre-existing issues that need to be sorted out before they’re ready to be released into the general population.
Brown might be appropriate for responding to the purple markups.
My question is, how long until students writing in red will be considered aggressive and violent and sent to the office?
Well, Allanque, it’s already happened. A couple of years ago (post Columbine), a kid wrote a cryptic message regarding death in red on his T-shirt and totally freaked out one of his teachers who was under the impression the message was directed at her. She said the red color reminded her of blood. He was suspended.
To the homeschoolers who think it’s better never to tell your children they made a mistake; I fear for the safety of MY children when yours enter the world. Children such as yours, raised with artificially inflated self-esteem, are the ones who commit the Columbine-type atrocities, not children who have been corrected for making mistakes. If you’ve ever wondered why kids today are more self-absorbed and disrespectful than ever before, it’s because they’ve been told their whole lives that they can do no wrong. There ARE such things as wrong choices in life, why would you raise your children in such a state of blind ignorance?
gergen, the paragraph you’re referring to was sarcasm. The self esteem over learning movement is a public school problem, not a homeschooling one.