So what’s wrong with coloring?

We all love a fresh box of crayons. But coloring is no substitute

for reading and writing.

Ask us what we like most about October, and you will get a single answer: We love autumn days when the South is a tapestry of reds and golds in a rainbow of harvest colors unrivaled by any of nature’s other seasonal dresses. In her poem, Leaf Blanket, Irene Crofoot writes, “Leaves are falling, soft as snowflakes, red and yellow, gold and brown. The breeze laughs gaily in the treetops, shaking all the color down.”
Color is fascinating. We use color to set a tone, create a mood, send a message or signal a change. Although research suggests that psychological reaction to color varies in different cultures, in our Western culture we tend to color our world very deliberately.
Black represents formality, power and elegance, but also death. We associate red with excitement, passion, strength and anger. Blue, the color of sky and ocean, is calm and tranquil; wear blue to a job interview, say fashion consultants, and you convey loyalty. Green, symbolizing nature, growth and fertility, is a popular decorating color. It is the easiest color on the eye, and so it is used in public places for a relaxing effect.  Yellow is cheerful and sunny. Purple represents luxury and wealth. White is innocence and cleanliness.
Colors make wonderful song titles, too: White Christmas, Pretty in Pink, Lady in Red, Purple Rain, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Green, Green Grass of Home,  and Don’t it Make My Brown Eyes Blue?

True colors

Colors are also used to help people understand personality types. In the 1980s, Tennessee introduced “PATS: Positive Attitudes in Tennessee Schools,” a program for valuing differences and improving communication.  The program uses colors to identify four personality types, but it cautions that most people demonstrate qualities of different colors, depending on the situation. Here are the four colors associated with personality types:

Orange—spontaneous and adventurous. “Orange” people like to do things now, and they like lots of freedom. They also like action and the practical.

Gold—responsible, organized. “Golds” are the keepers of tradition who look to the past to determine what must be done in the future. Golds value rules and those who honor the rules.

Green—curious and knowledgeable.  Greens are always asking, “Why?” They seek to make their organizations highly efficient and expect that of others.

Blue—harmonious and peacemaking. “Blues” focus on people and their relationships to one another. Their careers are often the helping professions.

So what’s wrong with coloring?

We love color, so what’s wrong with coloring? We both fondly remember chunky coloring books and fresh boxes of crayons (the ones with at least three tiers of Crayola soldiers). We can recall our countless masterpieces of landscapes and caricatures expertly completed without instruction. But we also remember that much of the coloring occurred at home, not in school.
Mike Schmoker is author of Results Now and other books prompting schools to raise expectations for children capable of much more achievement than we see reflected in current test scores. Schmoker made an interesting discovery as he toured schools in 2001, looking for evidence of excellent practice. What he found instead were classrooms where children with poor reading scores spent their days coloring worksheets rather than reading. In his article, “The Crayola Curriculum,” he writes,

For improvements in early literacy we should take a hard look at what’s really happening in reading classes. . . . A number of things, but the activity that overwhelmed all legitimate literacy activities may surprise you. Students were not reading, they weren’t writing about what they had read, they weren’t learning the alphabet or its corresponding sounds; they weren’t learning words or sentences or how to read short texts. They were coloring. Coloring on a scale unimaginable to us before these classroom tours. The crayons were ever-present. Sometimes, students were cutting or building things out of paper (which they had colored) or just talking quietly while sitting at “activity centers” that were presumably for the purpose of promoting reading and writing skills. [These centers] were great for classroom management—and patently, tragically counterproductive.

Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust, found during her school visits that coloring continues in some middle and high schools across the country. “I’m astounded that kids in some middle schools are given more coloring assignments than writing and math work,” she said. “Even in some high schools, the kids are asked to do a lot of coloring. ‘Read To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and when you’re through, color a poster on it.’
Because of the reform work in progress in Hamilton County Schools, one is less likely to confront the Crayola Curriculum or secondary project scoring guides that show as much as 25 percent of the grade is for coloring a poster. Still, parents need to check assignments and ask questions about the best ways to celebrate our love for color in every aspect of our lives, including school work. When “coloring” assignments are simply busy work, we must work with schools to color them gone!