It’s true when they say that the youth are the future. All actions and decisions that they make today will shape the world tomorrow. But to make that happen, every child must have access to good education, especially by the time he or she steps into college.
The hardest part of preparing for college is deciding on what program to take because it is a building block of one’s career. There’s a lot of pressure for teens because they’re asked to make a life-changing decision at a young age. In addition to this, some have to uphold expectations from parents, who mostly want their kids to be in the “professional” industry, i.e., lawyers, doctors, architects, and electrical contractors. However, critical jobs like and painters contribute to the working mechanisms of society. But the truth is, these so-called and limiting professional industries need to be backed up by fields from social science. With all that said, here are three (3) reasons why incoming first-year college students should consider taking up social science courses.
Social science helps us understand the self and society
For an overview, social science helps people understand how one’s self interacts with the social world, establishing an interdependent relationship. Thereby, one’s social environment profoundly affects his or her life. Because there are many aspects in the social environment, social science has different branches — political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. There are lingering questions that cannot be answered by natural science alone. For example, social science plays a critical role in public health. It has the lens to analyze the current health system and its accessibility because there is a prominent gap between the rich and the poor. The privatization of healthcare is also another issue to look at.
Social science invites critical thinking
Supporting the first reason, social science provokes students to think critically. It means making a careful examination of a particular idea that is grounded on facts and reason. Like the natural sciences, social science is also backed up by evidence, requiring scientific observations. The most challenging part of studying this field is the usage of concepts. Most of the time, the concepts are contentious because they are subject to interpretation, like democracy, but that’s also the best part of social science. It’s an arena for debate and allows anyone to counter-argue an existing definition or statement. It’s also the reason why researches in social science are flowing and up to date. To think like a social scientist, one has to carry the perspective that everything is constantly changing, and nothing is permanent. There will always be new data contributing to one’s knowledge about the social world.
Social science produces future statesmen and academician
Lastly, it’s not true that there are no careers in social science. Perhaps, this notion has been entrenched in the minds of children growing up because it’s not the “ideal” career to have. When, in fact, there are many opportunities for students with a degree in social science. The most common is being a political figure (or a statesman) and joining the academe. There should be more strong leaders and intellectuals that will propel the changes that society has been yearning for decades — education for all, universal healthcare, etc. Anyone with a background in social science can make that happen if they make good use of knowledge.
Social science is as equally as important as natural science or any other field that is deemed to be of more value. All fields are interdependent with each other and should not be regarded as lesser than the other. But social science pushes individuals to question and to propose an alternative view of the social world, which is enough reason for one to invest his or her future in it.
