Remember the August entry about the horror of red pens? The idea that it matters more what color the teachers uses to grade papers, than how or what she teaches, just refuses to die:
An increasingly popular grading theory insists red ink is stressful and demoralizes students, while purple, the preferred color, has a more calming effect.
"I never use red to grade papers because it stands out like, 'Oh, here's what you did wrong.' " said Melanie Irvine, a third-grade teacher at Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad. "Purple is a more approachable color."
Is it okay, then, if the purple helps the student to miss the point that they did, in fact, do something wrong? Or is pointing out what's wrong just completely verboten nowadays?
Irvine said that in elementary schools, it's unnecessary to point out every error. Instead, a teacher should find a more delicate way to help a child learn.
The writing-instrument industry is a lucrative one, netting more than $4.5 billion in U.S. consumer spending a year, and the nation's major suppliers of pens have discovered many teachers like Irvine. Paper Mate stepped up production of purple pens by 10 percent this year in response to focus groups that alerted the company to the many teachers switching to purple.
"This is a kinder, more gentler education system," Paper Mate spokesman Michael Finn said. "And the connotation of red is that it is not as constructive as purple."
Didn't you just know the marketing research folks were going to get involved at some point? And thus it was going to be said, with a straight face, that one color of pen was more "constructive" than another?
Here's a classic piece of educrat-speak:
"We try to be as gentle as we can and not slice children's thoughts to pieces with a red pen," said Laurie Francis, principal of Del Mar Hills Academy. "The red mark is associated with 'This is wrong,' and as you're trying to guide students in the revision process, it doesn't mean this is wrong. It's just here's what you can do better."
Oh. But if it's not wrong, why should they do better? Doesn't purple mean, well, it's really okay as is, and if you feel like improving it, here's something you could do - but no pressure, and no rush?
Really, I'm sure all these students will come back years later, when they're taking remedial classes in college, and thank their teachers for being so thoughtful with their choice in pen colors.
The idea that red induces stress, especially in younger children, has been around for years, said Lawrence Jones, a psychology teacher and former graphic-design instructor at The Art Institute of California San Diego.
"You associate red with blood, stop and danger," he said. "Teachers, realizing the immense problems they face with kids in education, find avoiding red helps them avoid one more negative in a child's life."
Wouldn't focusing on teaching in such a way that kids reduce their number of errors be a better way of reducing stress and avoiding negatives? I mean, color theory or no, if a kid is flunking, a kid is flunking, and the color with which the grade is conveyed doesn't do squat to help that kid.
Not surprisingly, as in all other articles I've seen on this topic, the teachers who prefer to stay with red are presented as old-fashioned stodges who are afraid to break with tradition:
...tradition is hard to break.
Gloria Ciriza, a fifth-grade teacher at Pomerado Elementary in Poway, corrected papers in red when she began teaching 11 years ago because it was familiar to her. Now, she doesn't necessarily favor purple, but she prefers a softer color...
Not all educators, however, are surrendering their apple-red pens.
Some argue that American culture is one of extremes. They say the same students who receive color-sensitive grades leave school and play gory video games. And some attribute the dwindling number of red pens in the classroom to self-esteem sensitivity run amok. Skeptics discount fears of the shade and wonder whether all the attention to the color of a grade has any substantive effect.
Oh, those old farts with their red pens and hatred of video games. Let's just ignore them and get back to talking about the "progressive" educators and the loveliness of purple, shall we?
Stephen Ahle, the principal at Pacific Rim Elementary, said grading is much more sophisticated than it used to be. Every aspect of grading – from the language used to the teacher's tone and the color of ink used to make corrections – leaves a psychological imprint on students, he said. "I tell teachers to use more neutral colors – blues and greens, and lavender because it's a calming color," he said. "And, of course, kids also like purple because it's the color of Barney."
And school should always be something Barney would approve of, right?
Posted by kswygert at October 7, 2004 03:22 PM