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Australian Teachers Told Marking In Red Damages Students 19

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-children dept.
Teachers who mark homework with a red pen could be inflicting psychological damage on their students, according to new Australian guidelines. Teachers are being urged to use less aggressive colors, like the-real-world-is-going-to-eat-you-alive green, and setting-you-up-for-failure blue. Stephen Robertson, the Queensland health minister, defended the new rules, saying that youth suicide was a serious issue. "If mental health professionals determine that as one of a number of strategies teachers should consider, then I'll support them every day of the week," he said. "This is not a matter for ridicule, this is serious."

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Australian Teachers Told Marking In Red Damages Students More

Australian Teachers Told Marking In Red Damages Students

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  • Seriously, I had an Literature teacher in high school that felt red was getting a bad rap, so he used green for negative marks and red for positive marks. It didn't bother me so much, but I think he drove a student with OCD completely mad.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by fj3k ( 993224 )
      I think the prevailing reactions to teachers using colours other than red for marking when I was at school ranged from "This teacher is crazy" to "It makes it so hard to find the comments". I do remember one person saying that red was a kinda depressing colour, but she was also the one who complained to another teacher when they used a different colour... I really don't understand the point of this.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

        I do remember one person saying that red was a kinda depressing colour

        Sure, because it means you made a mistake. Green will be depressing as soon as it comes to imply that Little Johnny is less than perfect.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kandela ( 835710 )
      Red is used for the positive wire in electronics. This always confused the hell out of me, until I realised that the electrons flowed around the circuit â" which is the opposite of conventional current â" then I remembered it by thinking "the colour is the opposite of the convention." Now, if we start associating red with positive by convention, I'll be screwed up again. But then, so will everyone doing economics, so it's not all bad.
  • Can you please people think of the colorblind children?

    On a more serius note, after some time they do that, you can actually say "blue is the new red" and they will starting to ban blue and going for colors less agresive ... like red.

    Is not that the color is evil purely because of it's wavelength, but _also_ because is asociated that way.

  • Yeah (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Right, after getting my paper marked up with red ink to the point I am supposed to be psychologically damaged, I go home and kill people in grand theft auto for about 4 hours, then sleep and dream about my recent Gears of War victories, which involved killing more people and the use of a chainsaw.

    The red ink is still far more damaging, though.

    (For added fun, read this page's HTML source)
  • carry a light blue pencil.
  • I know several teachers in Canada that have been told the same thing, although I'm not sure whether or not it was an official prohibition. Between things like this, the dumbing down of math (no calculus in high school, or at least it was proposed), and all the non-competitive grading, these students are in for a large shock. The last studies I read showed that trying to build students self esteem this way actually had the opposite effect in the long term.

    • I really think the schools should be back-pedalling on the touchy-feely stuff. I mean, does the real world care if you have good self-esteem? Does the real world care if you insult people?

      I mean, seriously, isn't school supposed to prepare you for the real world, not set you up for failure?

      Also, suicide is a useful population control, and should be viewed as such.

      • Also, suicide is a useful population control, and should be viewed as such.

        Evolution in action, let the weaker ones die off, we will be much better for it as a species in the long run. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.

  • help them prepare for the real world (Score:4, Insightful)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Friday December 12, 2008 @06:34AM (#26088387)
    Don't give handwritten responses (in any colour). Instead, emulate what will happen then the little darlings get out into the big wide world of commerce and industry. Make them email their assignments in, then completely ignore them. When pressed (for the third or fourth time) to mark them, skim the first couple of sentences and award a purely random mark based solely on that.
  • Quit crying. Maybe telling someone that what they have done is wrong is the real "damaging" action. Maybe we should just tell everyone that they are always right? No. Welcome to reality.

  • It's doesn't take a genius to see that all pens are symbolic of masculine aggression, suppressing the student with violent slashes across their virgin white paper.

    Students will only truly enter into a nurturing and caring learning environment when teachers see pens as the instruments of oppression that they are, and mark papers with rose-petals sprinkled across the page to form kisses.

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