School children should choose the subjects they study from a young age and stop doing subjects they find uninteresting.

“In most education systems today, children learn a wide variety of subjects until they leave school.  At university, they begin to specialise before focussing on a specific job or career in the long term.  Some countries, however, allow students to start to choose areas of study they prefer from a much younger age and in my opinion this is not a good idea.

First of all, when a pupil is still young, they often do not realise the consequences of their choices.  By this I mean that, if they choose not to study a subject because they find it too difficult or not interesting, they may not realise that this will prevent them having many careers.  They may lose their dream job because they did not select the right subjects to study for it.  In any case, working hard to overcome difficulties is an important life lesson to learn for every young person.

Another reason for not allowing students to drop subjects too early is that they may give up studying ones they feel are not useful in terms of their academic future, forgetting that these are important for their well-being and creativity.  Art, music, drama, dance and sport are all important for our lives and can help build self-esteem.  Research shows that these positive feelings can lower stress and even improve pupil’s exam results.

Finally, in my view, the world’s best thinkers are the people with the widest knowledge.  In the future we will need creative people who can make links across many subject areas to come up with new ideas.   Computers cannot do this as well as humans can, but to be able to make new links we need a wide foundation.  In conclusion, school is the place to get the broad subject knowledge to build our future.”