Education is ever more endowed all over the world, and with high investments come huge expectations. Proficiency in school subjects is getting increasingly demanded from students, and some people believe it is necessary to sideline scholarly-unrelated subjects to enhance learners’ results on academic-focused ones. I disagree with this opinion for a number of reasons.
To start with, non-academic subjects have their unique benefits. First, these lessons are critical for academic performance and overall health. Doing scholastic training for a long period of time requires a lot of concentration, which exhausts brainpower and leads to unproductivity if not given adequate rest. Besides, it is actually in these resting periods that the brain consolidates and rearranges information, allowing students to retain knowledge better in the future. Non-academic lessons also provide opportunities for students to get active and relax, which increases learners’ physical and mental health. Moreover, there are necessary skills that can be better fostered when engaged in non-academic subjects, for example, teamwork and communication skills in physical education, aesthetics and creativity when learning about arts and music. Therefore, removing these subjects would lead to huge disadvantages in the long term.
In addition, including non-academic lessons in the curriculum encourages social equity and economic stability. Having many scholarly-unrelated lessons teach students to value each other’s strengths in different areas and respecting differences, which helps promote inclusivity in future society. Furthermore, having children exposed to many subjects allows them to discover their interest, and the ability to join a diverse range of professions in the job market. There wouldn’t be chefs, designers, or musicians if we only taught academics in schools, and we all need them. Nor would there be enough jobs, resulting in soaring unemployment rates that threatens the economy. Teaching non-academic subjects is thus vital for a sustainable future and should be continued.
In conclusion, removing non-academic subjects from the curriculum will hinder students’ development and may upset society as a whole in the long term. Although we can change the ratio of time spent on scholarly related to nonrelated subjects to fit the students’ need, I believe these lessons should be made compulsory and even more diverse in every school.