short takes

[cellio]

Funny: Only in... $location.

Overheard in the office: "Should that be on fire?"

From the whiners-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands department, a new education fad: some parents (and students) object to grading in red ink. Red is "stressful", some say, and teachers should be using more "positive" colors like blue. Sheesh. Some people will read negativity into anything. It's just a color, people! And for the record, I much prefer mark-up in red as opposed to blue or the fluffy alternatives like turquoise (which is too light to be able to see easily). Red has the best contrast with the black ink on the white page; if you want me to see your little squiggle, don't use lime green!

Comments

[goljerp]

I'm somewhat colorblind, and I still have no problem with teachers grading in red ink. When I was writing by hand, my color of choice was blue (blue erasermate... ah, those were the days). When I switched to a computer, it was very easy to tell the difference between my dot matrix printer and the grader's scrawl.

The nice thing about grading in red is that it's obvious what remarks are the teacher's, and what the student's. The reasons don't seem sufficient to me to change the general standard, although of course if individual people choose to use other colors for their own reasons, fine.