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US: Do brighter walls make brighter students?

Publicolor, a program in which students are permitted to paint over the industrial shades of their schools' interiors, is credited by school officials with lowering dropout rates, decreasing discipline problems and increasing attendance.

On Thursday, 14-year-old Pedro Rodriguez was busy splashing oriole orange and apple green paints on the walls. The old colors, he said, "sometimes would make you feel down."

"I like doing work now and I actually like being inside the school building," Rodriguez said.

Ruth Lande Shuman, an industrial designer who created the program, said Publicolor has far surpassed her expectations and won over once skeptical city school officials.

"They didn't understand that schools are not meant to look like prisons," Shuman said. "I was, frankly, horrified by how hostile these schools looked and felt."

Alarmed by accounts of the city's dropout rates at some schools in the early 1990s, Shuman said she wondered how to help engage disinterested students.

"I thought color," said Shuman, who has researched the colors' psychological effects. "Color has enormous power. It can make you feel sad. It can make you feel happy. It can make you feel energetic or lethargic."

Posted by: SoulRiser
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Posted in: News on December 19, 2005 @ 12:00 AM

Tags: School

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