Where are the soccer hooligans when you need them? The latest from the educational frontiers in Blighty:
They are scrapping the traditional method of correcting work because they consider it "confrontational" and "threatening".Pupils increasingly find that the ticks and crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow or even in pencil.
Traditionalists have condemned the ban sweeping classrooms as "absolutely barmy", "politically correct" and "trendy".
They insist that red ink makes it easier for children to spot errors and improve.
The red pen goes back further than most schools, having been developed during the mid-19th century when ammonia-based dyes became available.
But the opposition to using red ink is now a worldwide trend with recent guidelines to schools in Queensland, Australia warning that the colour can damage students psychologically.
There are no set guidelines in this country on marking, and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.
Crofton Junior School in Orpington, Kent, whose pupils are aged 7 to 11, is among hundreds to have banned red ink.
Its 'Marking Code of Practice' states: "Work is generally marked in pen - not red - but on occasion it may be appropriate to indicate errors in pencil so that they may be corrected. Teachers must be sensitive about writing directly onto pupils' final work."
Head teacher Richard Sammonds said: "Red pen can be quite de-motivating for children."
(Via Mark Shea)
UPDATE: Of course, Father Jape denounced the tyranny of the purple pen first.
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As a psychologist in training, I'd just LOVE to actually see peer reviewed methodologically sound studies indicating that red ink is psychologically "damaging" to children. What this sounds like is a moronic educational system misusing or misunderstanding behavioral science research ONCE AGAIN!
Rod, you keep posting these scare stories from the british press.
Do you know why the British Conservative blogosphere hardly ever gets worked up about them?
It's because it's what the british press do. Lots of these stories aren't true, you notice the continued use of the words "hundreds of schools". It's probably one or two, this ban won't be enforceable and will be forgotten by the teachers in a few weeks when they can't find another colour but red.
Oh and by the way, this is extremely tactless; "Where are the soccer hooligans when you need them?" Next time you complain about american political correctness i'll ask "where are the KKK when you need them?" Because hey, what do we need more than violence against ethnic minorities.
The red pen goes back further than most schools, having been developed during the mid-19th century when ammonia-based dyes became available.
The use of red ink to distinguish parts of a text goes back, in the West, at least to the Middle Ages. Black (or brownish-black) and red were probably the easiest and cheapest colors of ink to make. In many liturgical and choral manuscripts the "instructions" that accompanied the text were in red, which is why they acquired the name still often used for them: "rubrics", from the Latin word for red.
***
Many of my college students tell me that their high school teachers were not allowed to mark their papers in red, again because it was supposedly "threatening". They agreed with me when I suggested that if all teachers started using, say, green, then pretty soon green would be regarded as the "threatening" color.
The benefit of red, of course, is that it is easily visible, esp. when the students turn in their work in a variety of colors, or even in pencil.
But then, the ban on red pens presumably comes from the same people who came up with the nutty idea of not keeping score in children's games, lest any of the poor dears have to labor under the label of being a "loser". As if children themselves aren't the most meticulous score-keepers around.
I agree with that last comment about kids being meticulous scorekeepers. My daughters played Upwards Basketball, in which nobody kept score. They received awards not only for "Best Defense" but "Most Christ-like." It was a nice idea, and a good environment for small children who were just learning, but it didn't conquer basic human nature: the older kids always knew what the real score was, and (sadly) my daughter cried whenever she got "most Christ-like." Now there's an irony!
Telegraph again!
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