When questioned, many students report that they think of specific colors as connecting to particular academic subjects. Remarkably, there are some individuals who have a condition called “synesthesia” where they experience a kind of sensory connection between colors and all sorts of things, like numbers, letters, places, sounds, or places. It is a fascinating and somewhat mysterious phenomenon. Is it neurological or do personal opinions form these associations? Do people create the associations subconsciously based on what they learned in earlier grades?
We surveyed many Upper School students and found that there was a pattern with these color associations. We found that most students who came to AIS around or before 6th grade linked the same colors with each subject. When asked the reasoning behind their color choices, one student stated, “On the first day of fifth grade we were given colored folders that corresponded to all of our classes and I’ve been using those colors ever since.” Many people’s subject-color associations are rooted in a handed-down practice from AIS.
However, some had more reasoning behind their correlations. For example, one student believes that Science is green “because green represents plants, life, birth…” Another commented, “History is green because I relate it to geography and land.” Many of those who strayed from the standard AIS subject colors agreed that “green is for Science,” but gave mixed results about the rest of the subjects.
Many studies have been done on color associations and their relationships with emotions. This comes into play here, specifically with the subjects of Math and English, and which is blue and which is red. Often, red is associated with negative emotions. Possibly, students use red for the less liked class of the two. Additionally, blue is mainly thought to be positive and joyful, so it would be used for a class that is more enjoyable to the student. Many students mentioned this, one who thought Math was red saying simply “Math makes me mad.” However, some said that Math was their favorite class and it was still red, so there is no definitive answer as to why we chose certain colors to represent each subject.
Through polling students, we can conclude that there really isn’t any objective logic to the association of colors with classes but that there can be strong personal associations for the colors students choose. The next time you see someone using a green binder for History instead of Science, you might want to ask them for their thoughts on this subject.
