Elementary School Teachers Please Stop

Elementary school teachers please stop teaching our children that the primary colors are yellow, red, and blue. This bizarre combination of  additive and subtractive primaries serves only to instill confusion and limit their understanding of the real world.

My son came home last week with this information and in spite off my best attempt to convince him otherwise, he is still convinced that the primary colors are yellow, red, and blue, because that is what the color wheel says. I will have to work on this situation later.

Subtractive color mixing, showing how yellow, magenta, and cyan combine to create a full color image

Here’s how color actually works:

For printed systems, including photographs, magazines, and inkjet prints, yellow, magenta, and cyan colorants create a full color image.  These colors are the subtractive primaries because each colorant subtracts a portion of the visible spectrum from white light. Some subtractive printing systems also use black to print high-quality text.

 

 

Additive color system showing the combination of red, blue, and green lights to produce white light.

TVs or computer monitors, on the other hand, use additive primaries. In this case, red, blue, and green lights add together to create a full color image.

Note that neither system uses yellow, red, and blue.

So why is this information taught? I believe it is an archaic relic from a time when color was less well understood. Now, we know that the only reason a yellow and blue crayons create green is because the blue is typically not a very good blue. Similarly we know that a red crayon already contains yellow so it cannot be a primary color. Let’s stop teaching wrong information.

Please post this information to your Facebook account and forward to your local elementary school. Maybe then we can effect real change.

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