Ask a room full of students about colors associated with classes, and the room will break out in a flurry of passionate answers, all different. As has been the case for many years now, there has been a blazing discussion over the colors of the subjects among students in FCPS. 

“I think because when you’re in elementary school, and you have notebooks and folders, you always use the same colors so that it’s easy to remember from a distance. Since you use the same colors over and over for different subjects, you remember the colors forever,” explained 7th grade student Elizabeth Davis.

The associations spring from a common elementary school organizational technique– they assign colors to subjects that correspond to their folders and notebooks. After 6 or 7 years of associating one color with a subject, students’ opinions on the matter run deep.  

Longfellow students Breelle W., Elizabeth D., Kathryn W., and Charlotte W. agreed on some colors—for example, three of them said that science was green—but for most subjects, their opinions differ. 

One intriguing fact is that three out of four people agreed science is green. Maybe it is because plants are green, and science is associated with that.  Also, three out of four people agreed history was yellow. But for both of those subjects, Elizabeth, who went to Haycock, was the one to differ.

It is interesting that there are only 5 colors that anyone chose, and Breelle was the only one who chose orange for any of the subjects. No one chose pink or purple. Maybe folders just don’t come in those colors.

Breelle attended Chesterbrook Elementary, which teaches Chinese for a language.  This has definitely impacted her feelings about the colors. 

“Red is for Chinese,” she said emphatically,  and that means red can’t be used for any other subject, though interestingly, Charlotte, who went to Chesterbrook, associates Red with math.

“I feel like everyone should use the same colors so it doesn’t get so confusing,” said Elizabeth.

In conclusion, the answers vary from the elementary school kids attended. This is because, as you can see in the chart above, Charlotte and Breelle went to Chesterbrook, and they had the same answers. While Kathryn went to Kent Gardens, and Elizabeth went to Haycock, having similar but different opinions.