Roses Are Red, Aren't They?

Although I consider myself a conservative, at least in the traditional fiscal sense rather than the more common “social” interpretation of the ideology, I’ve begun to find Bill O’Reilly increasingly shrill and motivated by seeming confrontational rather than well-reasoned. His “fair and balanced” often comes across as curt and dismissive when he disagrees with a position or he wants to flog his particular interpretation of an issue. But, I do like his tag for the show of “Most Ridiculous Item of the Day”

The hard part has got to be sorting the overwhelming number of ridiculous items into a hierarchy that has a winner. There is so much ridiculous stuff these days that one can be overwhelmed and left standing slack-jawed in awe at the sheer stupidity of so much.

As a former, but never quite finished pedant in the local college, I was particularly impressed with the sheer ridiculousness of something I saw just the other day. (http://tinyurl.com/3pufp) It seems that our poor children are being traumatized by teachers grading their papers in red. And, parents are outraged that their kids, even when being praised in the margins of their work, are simply frightened, intimidated, irreparably damaged by seeing correction or criticism or simply a letter grade in crimson.

Ahhh, yes. It matters little that Buffy or Biff are ignorant of the answers, unable to calculate or inarticulate in their expression and the teacher knows it. What matters to these parents and to their sympathetic teachers is that the color damages the child’s fragile little ego.

"I never use red to grade papers because it stands out like, 'Oh, here's what you did wrong.' " said Melanie Irvine, a third-grade teacher at Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad. "Purple is a more approachable color."

Irvine said that in elementary schools, it's unnecessary to point out every error. Instead, a teacher should find a more delicate way to help a child learn.

Can Miss Melanie be serious? Purple is a “more approachable color”? Couldn’t we use something a bit more designer-ish? Maybe we could call it “Professorial Plum” rather than such a mundane name as purple? We would at least be stretching the bumpkin’s vocabulary a bit.

Is it “unnecessary to point out every error”? Well, which errors should we point out and which should we overlook? Is failure to capitalize a sin? It seemed to be acceptable for e. e. cummings, but then the market for poets has always been a bit avant garde. Maybe it wouldn’t be right to shock young Tameisha by demanding that she punctuate. She might simply be a budding James Joyce and honing her stream-of-consciousness skills. How can we be more delicate in giving these students necessary life skills if we don’t teach them what is wrong with what they are doing?

I’m afraid that this is my candidate for most ridiculous item of the week.