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British school bans red ink, calls it “very negative colour”

British school bans red ink, calls it “very negative colour”

Teachers at a British school are ditching the red ink.

Under a new grading policy at Mounts Bay Academy in Cornwall, teachers will be marking students' papers in green instead.

Why the colour change?

Red, school officials claim, is "a very negative colour."

Students will be expected to write their replies and corrections in purple.

"Switching to the new marking system is certainly not about us going all soft and fuzzy," vice principal Jennie Hick tells The Cornishman.

"Students make more progress if it is a dialogue and the new system is designed to help that. A teacher will make two or three positive comments about a student's homework and point out perhaps one thing that will take them to the next stage."

Hick points out that the required responses from the students will help facilitate conversation:

"A lot of us in the past have skimmed over the teacher's comments and just looked for the final overall mark but by asking students to respond with purple pen forces them to read the teacher's comments and helps them to create a real conversation."

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Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, isn't convinced the colour switch is a good idea.

"In my own experience of 35 years in teaching is that children actually prefer teachers to use red ink because they can read comments more easily," he says. "The problem with using a colour like green or blue is that it's not clear."

"A lot of schools seem to have a culture where they don't like criticizing children but actually this helps them," he adds.

TIME's Kyle Chayka wonders what the long-term consequences will be if students aren't allowed to be wrong:

"Wonder what colour they'll write their diary entry in when, as adults, they realize everything is a lie and they are not actually special snowflakes?"

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And Jeanne Sager of The Stir asks when the banning will stop. If red is such a negative colour, shouldn't schools ditch all red things?

"In fact, now that I think about it, there's an awful lot of red in my daughter's school. An AWFUL lot of negativity," she writes. "Now that the folks at Mounts Bay have opened my eyes, I am on a mission! Pens are NOT enough ... just look at all the things we must get out of our schools because, well, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"

And while Canadian teachers can still use red to mark quizzes and essays, some aren't allowed to hand out zeroes — even if the assignment doesn't get handed in.

"Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life," Charles J. Sykes, writes in his book "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School."

What do you think? Is ditching the red ink a healthy strategy to help engage students in dialogue with their teachers? Or are we just hurting our kids when trying to soften the blow of being wrong?