I believe that science and art should stand on their own and remain separate, when it comes to teaching children in the classroom. Science and the arts are two very different subjects and address two entirely different questions. According to Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author, Steven Pinker, “Science gets the empirical universe: religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.” Meaning science teaches what is and arts teaches how to interpret these new scientific findings in a way that is meaningful and useful. Although art and science go hand in hand they are asking two different fundamental questions that one can not possibly comprehend all at once and should be broken into two different subject. According to Cellist and songwriter Yo-Yo Ma, “Advances in neurobiology now make it clear that we humans have dual neural pathways, one for critical thinking and one for empathetic thinking. Only one pathway can be active at a time, so when one is on, the other is off.” If this is true then it makes merely no sense to try and combine science, which involves critical thinking, and arts which involves empathic thinking in schools. They are simply attacking two different aspects of not only our world but also our brain, and when analyzed individually will give us a better understanding of each and allow us to better imagine the whole picture of science and arts combined. 

I feel that the school systems today have become more and more competitive, starting at an every younger age. Today you will see parents competing to get their young children into top rated preschools and kindergartens, you see more and more people applying for private high schools, and not to mention the extremely competitive nature of college and graduate school acceptance. Todays world has become one giant competition to see who can climb to the top of the socioeconomic ladder the fastest and reach the greatest amount of success. Even as a freshman in college I can see and remember this competitive nature, and arts was my escape from the stress of it all. According to Cellist and songwriter Yo-Yo Ma, “Because todays economy is so hyper-competitive, much of the focus in education these days from Singapore to Shanghai to American schools is on STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math.” Because of this many will say that we need to incorporate arts into the mix and create a more STEAM oriented education. But having been through todays school systems and see how competitive it really is I strongly believe art and science are best kept apart. My art teacher once told me that “everything is art” and because of this art class was my escape where I could be creative and not have to worry about the judgement of my peers and the fear of my grades not being good enough my assignments not comparing to other, because yes in art it was still true that some of me peers excelled at art much farther than me, but with this idea that everything is art their skill level did not make my piece of art work any less valuable than theirs. I feel that combining the arts and sciences would not only limit the creativity of the students but it would take away the true meaning of art, to express human creativity and imagination, something not necessarily boosted into days education system, but something that would get lost if combined with the STEM programs.