Apparently in many schools across the nation teachers are being instructed to cease their usage of red pens for correcting purposes. It is believed that when kids see the red marks—whether they may be indicating something negative or positive—they immediately start feeling anxious and it is damaging to their psyches. The explanation behind this is that the color red is often associated with negative things such as anger, blood, etc.
The theory goes that if teachers use another color to make marks on papers and tests, children will not be as anxious upon receiving their corrected work and will therefore not be discouraged in their studies. My question is, Do you think this theory is sound? Do you support its implementation?
I responded to your question.
ReplyDeleteI remember in high school my english teacher had us peer review eachother's papers using red pens. She told us that everyone associates bad things with red pens, but that those pens were "love" pens and we could only write the things that we liked when using them. If teachers used this approach, students will not have negative feeling associated to red pen markings.
ReplyDeleteWas "implementation" a pun?
ReplyDelete