“If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening,” said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. “Purple stands out, but it doesn’t look as scary as red.”

Oh please. Have we turned into little babies, scared that we are going to psychologically damage the little minds of tomorrow because they are seeing red marks on their papers? This is absurd. Who cares if it’s scary? It’s a red pen! Besides, if the little tot didn’t get the answer wrong in the first place, they wouldn’t have to see this scary sight. I can see it now—a little kid suing a teacher for psychologically traumatizing hime because HE had wrong answers on HIS homework and the teacher marked it wrong.

Kudos to the pen makers who are taking advantage of this pitiful new movement.

So then the author was probably worried that people would think this is a dumb story so she got a psychologist to say some load of crap…
“A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.”

But wait…there’s more! Now they got a color expert! “The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea,” said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. “You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression.”

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