...But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red, the color that teachers long have used to grade work.
Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was "stressful." The principal said teachers were just giving constructive advice and the color of ink used to convey that message should not matter. But some parents could not let it go.
So the school put red on the blacklist. Blue and other colors are in.
Bic, Pilot Pen and Sanford, which produces Papermate and Sharpie -- are making more purple pens in response to rising sales. School leaders and teachers are largely driving that demand, company representatives say.
Oh my stupidity.
I'm sure when everyone switches over to purple pens, that color too will be too 'stressful' for students to see. If the students don't want to be stressed out they should try actually working hard on their homework, instead of complaining about the color of the corrections on it...
8 comments:
I've had to study the effects of colors on people, and its a known fact that the color red is very intense, which causes people to have a stressful reaction. There are two "types" of colors... warm and cool. Typically, warm colors (red, yellow, orange, etc) are more intense and can cause a negative reaction (depending on the situation. I've actually read about how Red and Yellow together trigger a stressor in people to make them hungry. Look inside McDonalds... red and yellow.)... while cool colors (blue, green, purple..) have a more calming effect. Understandably, especially in my schools I attended, I wouldn't use blue to grade papers, because many people use blue pens to write with. You wouldn't know what was a correction, comment, etc. Green, depending on the hue, is a borderline warm color (yellow-green is very very borderline)... so depending on the ink color, it could trigger a similar reaction.
*shrugs*
At school, teachers and inservice leaders, suggest that we grade in not red. I bought some cheap pink/orange/green/blue pens and don't use red anymore. The whole stressor thing, like Shann said, try harder and you won't get red.
Personally, I like red ink on my papers, it shows the teacher actually read it.
me *shrugs* too
I actually have to agree with the students. Red pens stress me out. My mother used to grade my papers before I turned them in and she would cover the paper in red. It was intensely aversive. Think about what red means in nature... Stop! Danger! That's why poisonous things are often red (they warn you before you try to eat them). I never grade papers in red because of my aversion... somehow when I see a paper covered in blue or green it does not bother me. I can focus on what the comments written were. I grade papers with as many comments on good papers as bad. Thus I especially don't want to make students who did well have an aversive reaction to my comments. I even asked my college adviser to stop grading my papers in red (for my thesis). Thus I believe it is not a ridiculous request to ask them to grade in a different color. It has a psychological and empirical basis. Now the real question is... do non-intrinsically motivated students pay as much attention to non-red ink as they would to red ink?
So you are saying that red has been shown to you as a bad color, and a different one is not as bad... once everyone uses purple for bad work, everyone will shudder when they see that color as well. Maybe it'll be ok though, because then we can shift back to red pens...
Red is simply the easiest color to see on any typed or wirtten paper. If you use another color (even green or purple, and especially blue or black) I often miss punctuation corrections, and other little mistakes. COmments are hard to read if written in any bright colors. Red is simply the most effective. It also does motivate doing better. I see a red -5 with corrections all over and think, well, crap. However, seeing a red -0 still thrills me, even though it is written in the "stressful" color of red. Perhaps its stimulating to the mind, not stressful.
Oh, yes, I also think that once another color becomes the color teachers grade in (perhaps purple), it will become more stressful.... How's that for a non-emperically based arguement!
I just randomly had this thought: What does this do to our colorblind friends like Aaron? Does red stress him out as much? I shall ask him sometime... seeing as how he never reads blogs.
See the problem with your arguments is that you are assuming that the effects of color on emotion are learned which is completely the opposite of what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that there is an innate. It's an evolutionary adaptation to a danger signal. Red DOES affect mood when compared to other colors and in fact reduces performance(Stone, Nancy J. Designing effective study environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol 21(2) Jun 2001, 179-190.). It is not learned by grading papers and will thus not be relearned if teachers change colors. I have had no trouble seeimg green pen on any of my papers nor have I ever had a student complain.
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