Everyone has their strong opinions, but not everyone cares about the same topics. What one might consider the world’s foremost debate, another would declare imbecilic and opt out of answering. Yet, there is one question that will incite a fierce discussion among any group it is posed to: what color are the subjects?
While English is a battlefield, science is a true sanctuary. In a poll of Ms. Olson’s students, science was unanimously voted to be green. The sky is blue, the earth is round, science is green, and so on. As a subject that keeps both nature and chemicals under its umbrella, any doubt regarding its stance as a green subject is removed.
The subject with the greatest diversity of answers was social studies. After one day of voting, the poll ended with a total of 7 votes for purple, 5 votes for yellow, and one vote for red.
“I think about fourth grade; my social studies teacher was Mrs. Torbush, and she just had a lot of red in her classroom,” Robby Specter (12), senior student at AHS, said.
“Repeated exposure, reinforcement, and emotionally significant events” are the three most important factors in color association, research into the science of color associations reveals. For Specter, Mrs. Torbush’s classroom reinforced his red and social studies connection for an entire year.
However, the color red has no actual correlation with social studies. The main argument aside from personal connections is that blood and wars are common social studies topics; but can anyone actually remember a time in a social studies class that blood was shown or discussed? I am inclined to believe the answer is no.
On a similar note, purple is an option that seems to have no reasoning behind it. Despite being the top-voted color in the poll, the only argument for it is the process of elimination. There is even a lack of individual experiences reinforcing the link between these two; social studies classrooms—at least between Anderson, Nagel, and Maddux—seem to contain very little purple. Yet, there must be some form of repeated exposure to build the association.
My hypothesis is that the purple social studies bias is determined by folder colors. I myself have a purple AP Government folder; seeing the same color every day in a class will inevitably link the class with the color. While other subjects are typically assigned the same one or two colors, social studies having such a large spectrum of options will inevitably lead people to have an assortment of colors for the class. Purple, included in many multi-packs but without a specific class-link, ends up becoming many students’ social studies folder color. But the color of the folder does not have a real correlation with the subject itself; there is no reasoning for purple besides an almost subconscious connection.
So, what is social studies if not red or purple? The only real consideration left is yellow. While both orange and yellow feel reminiscent of old maps and parchment that one might see in any social studies class, yellow establishes dominance through the virtue of being a primary color.
Yellow also has a stake in every social studies subject; in a history class, yellow is correlated with aged artifacts and papers. Real proof of yellowing can be observed even in the course of our lives; my old desk used to sit in the heat of the sun from an uncovered window every day, causing even a desk to turn yellow with time. Considering history is the study of things far older than my childhood desk, it is safe to say much of it is yellow.
This yellowing affects not only history, but subjects such as Human Geography as well. Old maps have a tendency to take on a yellow tinge, and the class includes an agricultural unit. Naturally, this unit arouses mental images of wheat and corn, two of the most common and most yellow crops (which are also common to think about in the context of history, given most people used to be farmers).
Unlike science or social studies, math and English are typically torn between two colors: red and blue. While some people have the occasional odd or biased opinion, most agree it is between the two.
“Math is yellow because that is the color of joy and math is my favorite subject!” Mr. Fender, AHS Principal, said.
Mr. Fender’s statement proves that the only reason anyone places math as a color other than red or blue is a personal disposition toward the subject.
Math is not yellow, it is undoubtedly blue. This can be said with complete confidence, because I have actually done something no one in all of human history has ever done before: changed my opinion. Originally believing math was red, I realized the main two arguments I had for it were invalid.
Firstly, that math inspired anger. This is once again biased because of a personal feeling toward math, and given that everyone has a different experience with math based on their personal demeanor and aptitude for it, anger and math cannot be fully correlated. Red ink for wrong answers could also lead to this connection, but once again, how much red ink one sees is dependent on the person.
Second, the process of elimination. I was convinced that english was blue, and red was therefore left for math, until I heard an unbeatable argument from Mr. Fender:
“English is red because you will have read books in that class.” How does one beat a reading pun? Any serious argument pales in comparison to a reading pun caused by a difference in spelling, which is quite literally taught in English class.
Other convincing arguments include the temperature of english vs math. While math is cold and calculating, English is more warm and cozy. While English classrooms have warm-colored lighting, and AP Language & Composition has a coffee shop day each quarter that features hot chocolate, math has none of that warmth.
Not to mention the passion that english inspires, and everyone knows red is the color of passion. The intense emotion of story characters, raucous literary debates, and lively readings occur in English, while math has only ever inspired a fraction of that passion. Blue is a much more subdued color that represents intelligence, a trait which is often considered to go hand-in-hand with mathematics.
All in all, science is undoubtedly green, social studies is yellow, math is blue, and English is red.