Science or Art Class – My Daughter’s Experience
By: Deji Yesufu
My daughter resumed her first year in senior secondary school last year. While her mother and I rejoiced over the much progress she had made in school this far, we also agonised over what class she should belong to – arts or sciences. My thinking was that she would do better in the art classes because her arithmetic skills are not very strong, but she excels with words and spoken English. We spoke with the guidance and counselling personnel in her and they recommended she should go to the art classes. Now, while a lot of the things I do in life today are in the humanities (art), I am always thankful that I went through the rigour of the sciences, and I thought I should do the same with my daughter. At last, we allowed her to do art, as she was more inclined to those subjects than the sciences.
The morning she was to resume school and report to her art class, I called her and counselled her. I told her that the students doing “science” will look down on her and her colleagues in the art classes. I know this because we also did the same thing in the 1990s, when I entered senior secondary school. I told her that she should never be disturbed by this. I told her that in my senior secondary school class of 1991 to 1993, Demonstration Secondary, ABU, Zaria, the most accomplished person among all of us is an art student, a lady, Hadiza Bala Usman. I told that Hadiza is so well placed today that she cannot even join our secondary school WhatsApp group! My daughter claimed she had heard but probably never knew how important that counsel will serve her. This second term, a parent of her best friend counselled the daughter to no longer walk or associate with my daughter. His argument was that his daughter did not do well in Physics in the first term, so why should she be walking around with an art student? Perhaps, if she had had a science student as best friend, she might have done better. When I heard that, I told my girl, “Keep your distance from that girl”. While the argument behind that parents’ thoughts may sound mundane, everyone has different purposes for sending their children to school, and I do not want my child to be the reason someone will blame their own children’s failure on.
A few years ago, I saw a post on Nairaland. A young man said that he does not think he would be studying engineering at any Nigerian university. He explained that throughout his stay in secondary school, all his Maths, Physics, and Chemistry teachers were engineering graduates. He then posed this question: “Is it that engineering graduates don’t get jobs in Nigeria?” When I saw the article, I shared it with people in my university WhatsApp group and asked them to answer the “WAEC” question. Here are the facts of life: what you read in the university may give you an initial impetus towards succeeding in life, but what eventually brings lasting success is what you make of what you have learnt on campus. So, one of the most profitable jobs in Nigeria today is medical courses because people will always be sick and they will need a doctor. The problem, however, is that many doctors and other medical professionals may never go beyond average in life. They will graduate, get a job, work thirty to forty years on that job, retire and die. The people who will make it big in this life are those who take what they have learnt and build something out of it. Many of those people are usually not the “science” graduates, but the arts graduates.
Here is another interesting fact: scientists are the people who work in the system. They are the technocrats and the professionals, etc. The art students, the lawyers, the journalists, musicians, etc, are the ones who run the system. The art students employ science students. The people who go on to lead countries as politicians are usually lawyers and journalists. The scientists: the doctors, pharmacists, etc, work for these people. One day, somebody found out that I went to school with Hadiza Usman. The guy sent me a message asking me to link him up with her so she could get a job for him. That is the reality of life. It is the so-called “art” student that all of us are now looking at to give us jobs.
There is no doubt that the sciences offer a lot of opportunities for people. Mastering Physics, Chemistry, and Biology will open you up to so many disciplines that one can specialise in. The fact, however, is that not every person will become a scientist. Some people will thrive more in the literary disciplines and others in the humanities. If you force them to read science, they will simply be frustrated. I know of a guy whose parents insisted he must do engineering. He managed to graduate with a third class. Handed his certificate to his parents and went on to do music. How parents will today, in the twenty-first century, be forcing down “science” into the throat of their child, is something I will never understand. Is it that this parent thinks that “art” students cannot make it in life? Or, are they hoping that their own children’s success will be their means of pension in the days to come? I cannot understand it.
Here is the final thought that I wish to challenge my readers with: our children today should be challenged to do everything. If it is possible for a child to read both the sciences and the arts, they should do it. When they get to the university, they can now specialize into something they may wish to do. But their learning in school will never leave them. Today, I spend all my time reading History. I write literature. I am heavily critical of the government. And I preach religion. Those are the art courses. If I had done History, Literature, Government, and CRK in senior secondary school, it would have helped me more in what I do with my blogs and social media content. I have had to learn all these things all by myself. It has not been a waste, though.
Let me end by saying this: We are blessed indeed to have life and to live in a time when learning has exploded. There is no discipline anyone takes from the university that they cannot make a success of. Also, there is no discipline that you cannot learn all by yourself. Even sitting with YouTube, you can learn a discipline. So, rather than espousing this whole idea that “science” is better than the “arts” or art students are better than scientists, let us be thankful that we have these opportunities in life. And then let us use these opportunities to better the lot of people all around us.
I hope you found this helpful. Thank you for reading.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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