Teachers in Australia have been told to stop marking schoolchildren’s work with red pen because it is an “aggressive” color. Over at Flypaper, they’re regarding this with arched eyebrows. Indeed, this is one of those seemingly trivial arguments that make outsiders think educators have lost their minds. Alas, this is not a new trend, as this five year old article from the Boston Globe will attest.
A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.
Lots of teachers are being trained to use “softer” colors like green and purple. The bigger issue for student work remains what — and even whether — to correct. A staff developer I worked with used to insist that it was only appropriate to correct the skill being worked on at the moment, not every error on a student’s paper. That makes a lot of teachers see red.
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