Seeing Red

To calm the troubled masses of poor students that live in fear that the test they took or the paper they turned in would be returned with scores of red pen marks denoting their mistakes, schools are now eliminating the color red as a correction color. Yes, red has now become politically incorrect.

Since the fall of communism over 15 years ago, I thought we were over fearing the red threat. Little did I know that the red pen was striking fear in the hearts and minds of our children. I don’t recall seeing mass demonstrations in school on this issue, but that doesn’t matter to the education establishment or the parents who declared that red was “stressful.”

So what is a less stressful color? The new choice is purple. Why purple? Well according to Leatrice Eiseman, a color specialist with a background in psychology (there’s a great mix) there is still that “element of the danger aspect—the red—but it’s kind of subtle, subliminal. It’s in the color rather than being in your face.”

I seem to recall that parents and schools raged against supposed subliminal messages in music a few years back and now this woman is telling us, subliminal is good? And what about red paper, clothing and food dye? Are strawberries banned?

We can thank Outcome Based Education proponents for this silliness as they have been advocating taking students feelings into account in every aspect of education. We aren’t developing future leaders anymore, but a nation of touchy feely wimps.

Don Irvine is the Chairman of Accuracy in Media.