On a cookery programme the other night, one of the judges giving criticism to a contestant said their work wasn’t up to the usual standard. The judge added that if he was the contestant’s teacher, he would have written ‘See me!’ in their exercise book. I don’t know if it happens now, but when I was of school age to see those comments written in red by your teacher struck fear into your heart.
Especially after it may have been a difficult piece of classwork or homework to complete. It was never one of the nice teachers that wrote this. They would have called you aside in the class and asked you if you were having difficulties and may be encourage you to try again with some extra guidance. Oh no, it was always the strict shouty ones. The ones you were afraid to ask, because you would receive an ‘ear-bashing’ in front of the rest of the class. You may even been asked the killer question, ‘Weren’t you listening?’
A more courageous past me may have responded, ‘Yes, I was, but I didn’t understand your explanation’.
However, in a school environment where you would be hit on the palm of the hand with a ruler for forgetting a book, it probably wasn’t the wisest comment to make.
I admit, I did receive the dreaded ‘See me!’ comment a few times, but they were generally for subjects I didn’t really have the aptitude in, or come to that, any interest in. I would be able to choose the subjects I wanted to study soon. If I did receive, the ‘See me’ on my work and my teacher would ask why I hadn’t yet ‘visited’ them, I would always say, ‘Oh sorry, I must have turned over two pages at once’.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only child to use that excuse.
Anyway, these things that happened in the way distant past would affect my behaviour in my future career (although it would be a good thirty years or so before I realised that). Let’s digress a little. In my days of learning Danish, I had two tutors. One day, the head of languages was marking her students’ work and was highlighting their errors in red ink. My first Danish tutor noticed this and reprimanded her for correcting this way. She told her she should use any colour but red to correct work as it may have a negative psychological effect on her learners. The head of languages was now my Danish tutor and recounted the discussion to her class. I can see the point as the red ink probably awoke the dreaded ‘See me!’ in some people’s consciousness.
When I first started teaching, the use of technology in EFL was in it’s infancy (if it existed at all in some places), so all essays were handwritten. I had decided if I had to correct, it wouldn’t be using a red pen, but just a different colour from that in which the essay was written. Later I used correction codes and later on in word processed documents, I could use the ‘comments’ function on my computer (which I find quite useful).
I remember one of my students asking in class, ‘Steve, why do you teach as you do? What influences you?’
I told them I just remembered how I was taught in secondary school (and then did the complete opposite of most of my teachers). The class did find that comment quite funny.