Academic achievement becomes a major concern for young people today. This raises pressure for both generations, the young and their parents, who expect them to become successful. There’s no doubt that education can lead to greater chance of opportunity and success in the future career and make the young people have promising future. However, non-academic subjects, such as physical education and cookery are also important components of overall education. This can be supported by the following reasons.
Firstly, education is a comprehensive lifetime experience that everyone go through to build up their skills, knowledge system and explore their potential for fulfilment towards professional and whole-person development. It is not only about academic evaluation through tests or examinations that only evaluate a part of their paper-based skills and standard competence. To prepare for a bright future for the young generation, non-academic subjects are equally important as these subjects stimulate interest, curiosity and create beauty for the life experience, which cannot be overlooked through the philosophical lenses.
Secondly, if non-academic subjects are removed from the school syllabus, there could be serious problems for the mental health and wellbeing of children as they live in the society that is constructed not only by test-based evaluation, but also other metrics that can shape the various stages of their work and life. Understanding both academic and non-academic components would help build up their comprehensive skills and qualities that meet both their elite educational purpose and shape civil education to become responsible citizens who can contribute to the society in both positive and challenging times.
Thirdly, the design of school syllabus should be based on pedagogical purpose and educational theories and align with the practice and strategies in society that ultimately would need the young people to be part of it. Removing the non-academic subjects would be a great loss for those who have talent in such fields and eventually causing problems of labour shortage in certain professions. This may be the negative consequences that should be considered when making such policies.
In all, I believe that academic and non-academic subjects are equally important, as the criteria for success and lifetime experience can be viewed through multiple paradigms and cannot be generalised with one rigid policy that is too biased.