Posted 4/03/2005 05:06:00 PM by Douglas

Man, what a different world it is today from the one when I was in school. When I was a wee lad, the important thing was how many things you got right on your homework, not what color the teacher used to grade it. I had no idea what untold damage was done to me by red pens.

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.

"It's not an argument we want to have at this point because what we need is the parents' understanding," Karwoski said. "The color of the message should not be the issue."

Well, duh. But schools have been so eager to bend over backwards to any and all of the parent's stupid whims, why stop now?

In many other schools, it's black and white when it comes to red. The color has become so symbolic of negativity that some principals and teachers will not touch it.

"You could hold up a paper that says 'Great work!' and it won't even matter if it's written in red," said Joseph Foriska, principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh.

He has instructed his teachers to grade with colors featuring more "pleasant-feeling tones" so that their instructional messages do not come across as derogatory or demeaning.

So what's derogatory? The fact that the pupil got the wrong answer, or that someone is pointing it out?

This idiotic arguement strikes at the heart of the controversy of education in this country today. The fact that teachers have to jump through hoops to protect the self-esteem of these little angels, even when they're wrong, just shows that constant bickering from their part-time parents has left the fox firmly in charge of the hen house.

Someone has to be the adult in this situation, and if their fragile egos can't take a little red ink when they're wrong, then too bad.