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

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Yeah sister! I read that article, and saw red ;->

The point is, red has the highest contrast with almost ANY color ink on the (white/yellow/pale-green) page. (Am I showing my age that I remember "Eye-Ease" paper?) Anthropological studies show that the first name for a color beyond "white/light" and "black/dark" is "red" of some sort, in pretty much every language.

When I was in school, the rule was we weren't allowed to use any color that was deemed too close to red (any other color was fair game), so that both student and teacher could distinguish comments from the submitted text. And that's how it was explained to the students -- as early as first grade! I suppose they had a higher opinion of student intelligence then. If red markup is more stressful, it is because the culture has made it that way. (See also prior comments on this post, on how other colors can be just as stress-inducing.)

The important thing here is that the mechanics be useful to the learning process. Being able to distinguish text from commentary is Very Important. The exact mechanism used to ensure that this happens is less important, but you gotta have *something* in place to ensure it.