to think that school are being petty about black ink and handwriting pens

[muminthenorthwest]

DS, 9, is left handed and having trouble with smudging his work as he writes (I am LH and had the same until I worked out how to write at an angle).

have bought a left-handed, quick-drying pen for him to try out, but have been told now that he can't use it as it is blue ink, not black. FFS.

queried it (there were no black ones available) and was told that they 'have' to write in black in books.

Possibly blue would be ok for writing on walls then?

AIBU to want to have a major rant about petty, pedantic rules (with no logical reason to them) stifling creativity and individuality in children and adults alike?!

I'd have thought it better to write neatly in blue than it looking like a drunken spider trail in black. But what do I know? I'm just the parent.

Poor DS is dreading parents' evening as he thinks I'm going to throw a wobbler. It's a possibility.

Perfect pink and growing green??

What on earth?

Is this a primary school thing?

Please tell me it's not Secondary! I couldn't actually bear it...

Here in Wales teachers seem to mark in any colour they want. TBH I've never seen any of my DC's work with highlighter on it, maybe that's a Saes thing too... Glsd to be out of it

My DD is a leftie. A left handed friend recommended this:

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B000KJR9KK

She loves it, and unless I'm losing the plot this one is black.

We have to mark in red. The children correct in green.

Highlighting - we have 'pink for think' and 'green for go'.

The children have to use blue.

If there is inconsistency we are hauled over the coals by the Headteacher.

I don't give a fig what colour my students write in - I teach mostly SEN and disaffected children - whatever works for them is good for me, I just choose something different to mark - or draw a box, write in it and colour itso it stands out. Fortunately I work in a school where this doesn't matter - sadly these schools are a minority.

I'm a leftie and use several different stabilo pens. They seem to come with the blue ink cartridges as standard but I've bought black (and red and green as I dislike blue) from the Anything Left Handed website and from Colemans, the ones from Colmans are six pack refills IIRC although I expect they are quite expensive if you have to buy a lot of them in a year.

when they get to year 11 you're just grateful they turn up with a pen, any colour will do.

Policies over colors that children and teachers use?!!

Ffs who thinks up this madness.

Ds3 is left handed and prefers to write in pencil still, we ja d a night are when they were making him use a small whiteboard for writing practose as he smudged it out as he wrote, eve tually they just gave him a clipboard and paper but it took many reminders and in the meantime nu erous school jumpers were ruined as the white board opens stain and his sleeve ended up covered in it!

The reason for black not blue is that exams (GCSE etc) are now scanned and copied to send to examiners to mark- blue doesn't scan/copy as well as black so at my kids' schools all are told to write in black from the get go so they are not unduly traumatised by a switch to black later on

The reason for black not blue is that exams (GCSE etc) are now scanned and copied to send to examiners to mark- blue doesn't scan/copy as well as black so at my kids' schools all are told to write in black from the get go so they are not unduly traumatised by a switch to black later on

What homebythesea said.

We have changed to black from black or blue being fine for this reason.

We alao have a special marking stamp. Left mine at school on Friday, so, sadly, I'll now have to mark year 7's books hastily in Monday lunch, rather than properly tomorrow. Daftness.

I have this problem with Dd3 , she is left handed and has Asd and hypermobility in her hands.

She had a massive meltdown over being told she had to use a berol pen as they have a ridge running where she puts her fingers so she hates them.

Last year she had to write in black but this year its blue!!

I found her a no smudge pen on cult pens and they sentusa nice freebie too.

There isnt much you can do really other than suck it up.

Agree about stabilo pens they are great but Dd3 thinks they look a bit babyish so we went for something a bit more grown up this time.

Good luck

What utter crap! They also have to sit 1m apart and work in silence - we don't make them work like tat all the time just because they do it in exams.
I sometimes give my students felt pens and plain paper for written work - bizarrely they often produce their best work as it doesn't seem like work.

I cannot use a blue Biro (well physically I can, I just don't) . I hate them. Not keen on blue ink at all. Am sure this is all to do with Berol handwriting pens at primary school!

Secondary, Salmotrutta. In fact I've just finished 'perfect pinking' and 'growing greening' my sixth-form essays. They were more green than pink unfortunately.

Another example of why I'm beginning to loathe schools (my 3rd year as a rebel parent). HE is looking more and more attractive each day.

What's wrong with writing with a biro? As a leftie it's all I've ever used on a regular basis, as I know it won't fecking smudge.
Am also pleased to be in Scotland with no SATS and no policy on pens.

I think this thread has done a lot for the customer to understand how truly insane and limiting this one small aspect of classroom practice can be.
Now, multiply this by a thousand and fifteen, and you have our day.

Black ink is preferred at secondary, and maths has some extraordinarily complex system that involves owning black green and red Biro's and smoke coming from miss's ears when you don't have them.

DD1 got so fed up of one boy borrowing her pens she stomped off to the library and bought him a green and red biro (library sells pens, rulers and protractors very cheaply).

As for marking, I realise I'm a bad parent as I never look in their books. DD2 would explode if I did.

DDs confess they often don't look back and read the marking anyway.

At my previous school the head tried to dictate that we should stop marking in red pen before he thought it might affect student's self esteem! Apparently we should use a more "inspirational" pink or green instead.

Ummm no.

Oh yes! We had to stop marking in red because it was bad for self esteem.......

We now have to mark in blue....

Some kids work still gets covered in blue ink mind......

Sigh.

There's a marking policy for every day work - for teachers?

Fucking hell, it's no wonder it's all going to the dogs - it's a wonder there are any teachers left.

I thank fuck, pretty much every day at the moment, that I didn't go into teaching as I had planned to. I'd have killed someone by now and it would not have been one of the kids. FFS it's all so bloody ridiculous!

We have to write "Verbal Feedback" if we talk to a kid about their work, simply so that if someone should check the book it can be seen to have been done.

It's pretty bloody insulting to be trusted so little.

noblegiraffe - we have to put a v in a circle along with a summary of what we said.........

And, if we do practical work we either have to take pictures as evidence and stick them in the books or we have to go through each book, write the date and a note about what we did...........

Each book a child uses has to have a copy of the marking code stuck in the front of it......

Years ago we used to tick and sometimes we'd write good or even very good. The kids took as much notice of it then as they do now....