Queensland (Australia) School Board gets an F-

[gurdymonkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081209/lf_nm_life/us_school;_ylt=AvFNQYNDG.tywpbFGPWfb6d34T0D
You have got to be kidding me.

Dealing with criticism is part of life. Dealing with failure is part of life. Learning to cope with one's imperfections is an important and necessary skill. I never got suicidal over red ink. I thought about why that red ink was there and how to make less red ink happen on the next assignment.

But gurdymonkey , you're thinking, you probably never got much red ink at all. O My Readers, you have no idea. Being the child of a graduate student who migrated to different universities in his quest for a Ph.D. meant multiple school changes before finally settling in one place. When I hit 5th grade, I was about two years behind in math because of the curriculum of the public school system I'd spent the past two years in.

Did my parents complain to my teachers about their red ink damaging my fragile self esteem? HELL NO! They said, "Load her up. She needs to get up to speed. Give her extra problems." I spent my afternoons chained to the dining room table until every last assignment was done - and my parents refused to help with them. It was my job, not theirs.

Did I attempt suicide over it? Did I hate my parents for it? Did I plot the demise of my teachers for Being So MEAN? No, obviously. I loathed math with a soul searing passion: so much so that I stunned the head of my high school math department by appearing in his Math 4 class my senior year. "But you hate this stuff," Mr. McDonnell said. "Yes," I said."In fact, I hate it so much, I'm taking your class so I won't have to take it in college." I passed with a hard fought C, my math pre-requisite duly satisfied. Then I went to Rutgers and took 6 credits of astronomy to satisfy my science requirements - without ever having taken physics. Two semesters of struggle (in addition to the near suicidal reading load of a history major), and dammit, I passed. 

Mammas, teach your babies to FIGHT when they see red.  They'll thank you later. 

Comments

[katerit.livejournal.com]

Apologize to students? That's what gets me. I use purple and green - I don't like the red (too much hurts my eyes) and I want them to get over the knee jerk reaction when they get a paper back, especially with composition, which is a process. I do focus on strengths as well as weaknesses because they need something to build on - but man, the problems are there - discover your patterns and fix them. I'll help in the process. I do not apologize to students for marking on their papers or for giving them constructive criticism, and I don't allow them to apologize for their mistakes. I just say - good, now let's fix it. If you were perfect you'd be elsewhere.

Ack.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Good marks or bad, EVERYTHING was done in red ink.

I am so sick to death of parents trying to teach their kids that the world owes them. I'd much rather see kids taught to be self sufficient, able to fight their own battles and take care of themselves.
Gah!

[xrian.livejournal.com]

Well, apologizing to students when necessary is definitely better in my books than pretending that teachers (or any other adults) are perfect and never make any mistakes. I have run into too many organizations that will never, ever admit that they blew it because the admission would "reflect negatively" on their image. Sigh.

As for red pen, I don't think they're saying teachers shouldn't mark errors, but only that they should use some other color. It still seems a bit silly, but the reason teachers use red is that it is VISIBLE. It is visible because it has high contrast both with black or blue ink and with white paper. Any other color that jumps off the page at you and hits you in the eye (i.e. is visible) would probably get the same accusation (of being "too aggressive"). However, I can see that subconscious imagery attached to the color red (i.e. violence, blood) might make it have a different (and probably unintended) effect than, say, green or purple or hot pink. Now that not as many student assignments get turned in handwritten (which often means blue ink) any of those, or bright turquoise for that matter, would probably work as well as red.

[katerit.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - apologize to students when there is a fault on my or any other instructor's part. I certainly do. I don't apologize for doing corrections, however, which is what the article seems to be saying.

[gottasing.livejournal.com]

The point. They're missing it.

**headdesk**

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

In my corner of the educational wilderness, which is admittedly a "special" one, it's my job to structure tasks so that students can succeed 80% of the time if they make a reasonable effort. When they get closer to 90%, the bar gets raised. If they're playing around, I'm free to call them on it. If they're really trying and not succeeding, I have to change the task, usually with student input, but then I'm free to lean on them. There isn't much red ink (actually, I use bright green) but they do see my comments put into the session log on the computer, which can be pretty motivating when it's something like the following: "Everyone finished except Jessica Goof-off."