Students, especially in India, have the privilege of choosing the stream of their choice after their first board exam or Grade 10. They generally get to choose between three streams, namely science, commerce or arts.

In India, there is a rather prejudiced belief that science reigns supreme among the three. The main reason behind people to think so is because of the popularity science stream gains because of children wanting to join medicine or engineering. However, this popularity has also meant that the other two streams lose their popularity, especially arts. Commerce is picking up popularity due to the new opportunities in business. But since Arts and humanities deals with languages and social studies, students find “no scope” in the stream.

However, it is a fact that arts and humanities is an indispensable part of their lives. They need to use language, they need to use history, they exercise their freedoms through political science, they manage their resources through economics, their beliefs are based on philosophy, their thinking is based on logic and so on. In fact, we can say that social studies and languages are sciences of their own kind.

Present day students and parents, deter their peers and children from taking arts. This is a wrong decision they take. When the student shows aptitude in a field, he or she shouldn’t be compelled for something he or she couldn’t do.

Science isn’t necessarily the best stream. Science students tend to be very narrow-minded. We cannot live without science. But at the same time, it is important that we realized that commerce and arts are equally important to our lives. Science and commerce students often forget their history, which is their identity and culture. They lose their values and become unethical. We learn history so as to not repeat the mistakes we made earlier.

The conclusion here is that science is not necessarily a better stream than arts or commerce. All the three streams have their own importance and they should be treated with equal respect.