Thursday, September 16, 2004

Sad Truths?

Despite its typical let's-blame-the-liberals-for-mucking-with-the-educational-system tone, this piece from The New York Post accurately describes much of what I see in my first-year writing students.

2 Comments:

At 4:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There were a bunch of posts recently about school systems in which it's forbidden for teachers to mark up student work with red pens...apparently, the color *red* is viewed as just too harmful to self-esteem.

It seems clear to me that this kind of thing helps to create the sense of entitlement referred to in the article.

And I strongly suspect that those who have problems with mark-up in red are indeed people who consider themselves "liberals," at least as that term is used in American politics today.

photoncourier.blogspot.com

 
At 11:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Personally, when marking up documents I like to use a green felt-tip pen. The issue, to me, isn't that one color is superior to the other--it's the attitude that student egos are so fragile that appropriate color-useage must be edicted by the administration, lest self-esteem be damaged. In an environment like that, students will not get used to having their work critiqued, and are likely to develop a sense of entitlement leading to some of the problems mentioned in the article.

photoncourier.blogspot.com

 

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