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.

My impression is (and correct me if I'm wrong but I have worked with several teachers who have worked in Scotland and England) that we are generally trusted to be professional and capable of doing our job up here in Scotland.
So we don't tend to be micro-managed at such a ridiculous level.
Head teachers checking exercise books for pen colour!?

Most teachers up here would be outraged if a Head or SMT member swooped in to "check up".

Trusted to be professional and capable?

Mwah ha ha ha! Not where I work. Dear lordy no. I was recently graded as inadequate because I used rulers the member of the SMT deemed to be unsuitable......... (May just have outed myself there!)

Where are you neverputasock?

Nottingahmshire.

Move up here.

SMT would no more worry about your rulers than I would.

Salmotrutta - I'd move in a heartbeat. My dad lives in the Western Highlands and I grew up on the East Coast.

I miss Scotland.

Sadly DH has a very specialised job with very few openings anywhere........

One day I shall live in a house on the coast somewhere and home ed my children....

What's all this about multiple colours for marking?

I remember we wrote in blue or black (but they didn't care much if you used anything) teachers normally used red but again could use anything.

The way we knew what was our writing, the teachers or some other kids was being able to recognize our own hand writing.

what about this?

or this?

Tbh, if he's been using black ink up until now, they'll just want him to go back to using his old pen again. I'd try to adhere to school rules, it must be for a reason.

Just buy him a black one FFS. It's really not hard in the days of the Internet. Save your fuss for something that actually is a problem.

We have a marking policy but it doesn't involve colours and if I used highlighters on my sixth form work they would laugh! They do love reward stickers though!

DD1 had a new teacher in Y5 who insisted (on pain of detentions) that all work was done in black ink. The school office sold only blue ink pens. He wouldn't listen to reason, so I set the dragon school secretary on him.

Next day it was blue ink all round .

Good old red pen for marking imo. All this fear of using the red= ridiculous!

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

So useful for the colour blind kids.

I remember once handing in an essay written in orange ink (I was about 12). Bless her, the teacher did mark it but asked that I used a 'traditional' colour in future. I used purple after that.

we had this with DS a couple of years ago. He was meant to have blue but had black. We were only told they needed handwriting pens, and he was made to borrow someone else's. I wrote her a letter asking what difference it made and why should someone else have to provide a pen just to suit them when he had perfectly good black pens (they mark in red so that's not the issue). She did reply but still didn't answer the question about what difference it made.

Same as the other week DS was making cupcakes at school. We realised the night before it said muffin cases but we only had the smaller cupcake ones. We sent him with proportionally less ingredients slight oversight on the marg too so he could make 12 small cakes. They said he had to use muffin cases and he borrowed some off someone else and made 12 small cakes in giant muffin cases . Were delicious though

This bizarre, controlling attitude to stationery drives me nuts. The kids turn up to secondary school in year seven too afraid to turn the page without my permission and keep sticking their hand in the air to ask if they're allowed to write with x-coloured pen. They look at me with wide eyes when I tell them that they should make their own choices about stationery and use their initiative about turning the page.

I realise it was four pages ago but I agree with mswilliamthebloody

How can smudges be preferable to blue ink. Ffs