I saw this story in today’s Daily Mirror newspaper.
I nominate headmaster – sorry: headteacher – Richard Sammonds for the 2008 Total and Utter Prat Award . I quote:
But headteacher Richard Sammonds said: “Red pen can be quite demotivating for children.
“It has negative, old school connotations of ‘See me’ and ‘Not good enough’.”
…Mr Sammonds’ Crofton Junior School in Orpington, Kent, is among hundreds to have banned the ink. He added: “We use highlighter pens in all colours of the rainbow – apart from red.”
Erm. I hate to break it to you, Richard, but one of the main aims of learning is to identify when things aren’t good enough so you can improve. Children are not able to determine what is good enough in this context, and that’s why we have teachers. Well, it used to be. It seems that teachers these days are allowed – nay! forced – to do everything except teach. It isn’t hard to imgine the meetings, brainstorming sessions, and other wastes of taxpayers’ money that led to this earth-shattering decision.
Also in the running for the same award is Shirley Clarke from The Institute of Education – an organisation which clearly moulds itself around whatever its members are doing instead of directing them in what they should be doing. Again, I quote:
“When children see every single spelling mistake covered in red they can feel useless and give up.”
The little dears. I’m sure Mr Sammonds and Ms Clarke will be proud to know in their retirement years that they contributed to a generation which doesn’t know right from wrong, or good from bad, and which will no doubt need psychiatric help when it discovers what real life is like once it leaves school – with the ubiquitous fifteen GCSEs (all A**) and the impression that it knows more than the rest of society put together.
This pair of idiots need someone to explain to them that children only react badly to red pen (and loads of other things the politically-correct brigade has jumped on) if they know that it is under scrutiny and they can win a point. And that in itself is because some moron in the past has given children the idea that they can decide what to learn – which is why half of them can’t read, can’t spell, and think that by answering a couple of multiple choice questions about gay civil partnerships they can become X Factor contestants when they leave school (well, it IS a job, isn’t it?).