Combining The Arts and Sciences

Although we are naturally born to be three-dimensional thinkers, we still somehow like to separate everything and place things into their own categories, especially the arts and sciences.

Most people see science as being more analytical while art is more creative and therefore, totally separate entities. However, it turns out that science needs art just as much as art needs science. They are actually interdependent on each other.

For instance, the fiction stories found in novels like Harry Potter often have some element of imagination (in this case, witchcraft and magic) which many readers will consider as art. However, creating fiction stories require an increasing amount of research on the author's part. In addition to this, imagination also requires knowledge in order for it to work. Imagination cannot work solely on its' own and neither can science.

In the case of science, art is often used to enhance the text that author's and publisher's present in science textbooks. If they were to only include text about the subject without any detailed illustrations and graphs of the concepts they present, most people would never understand concepts like DNA transcription and physics projectiles. No one would probably even bother to pick up a science textbook if this were the case. This also doesn't suit people who have different learning styles-- those who are more visual learners.

The difficulty with this kind of integration of the arts and sciences is that our society and the culture in our society often places higher value on the sciences which is now referred to as "STEM" or science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many schools across the United States as well as in other countries around the world are currently trying to implement more of these "STEM" programs in high schools, universities and are even promoting it to students as young as elementary school age. There's nothing wrong with trying to implementing and encouraging students to study the  "STEM" curriculum. However, schools shouldn't only be focusing on just teaching students about science. Rather, schools need to develop and then, implement a curriculum that includes a plate of diversity-- one that includes both science and art.

It shouldn't stop there. Many schools and universities will claim that: "Yes, we already have the curriculum that teaches both subjects,"  but an even larger problem is that schools, parents and our society does not teach our world's youth about the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of art and science. They only teach them how to separate the two, categorize them and treat them as two completely different fields of study.