Hey, Humanities are Here Too!

For a self-proclaimed STEM school, Stuyvesant has an excellent humanities department. Offering a variety of courses from basic Freshman Composition to English APs and electives such as Poetry and Existentialism, as well as boasting some of the school’s best teachers, there’s hardly a lack of resources. However, Stuy’s policies make it difficult for students who lean toward the humanities to choose an appealing course load. Instead, humanities-oriented students are forced to take classes such as drafting, computer science, and extra science electives.

This drought of diversity in subject matter often hinders humanities-oriented students academically. The intensity that excess STEM classes add to a course load often cause a noticeable dip in grades, and students feel a lack of willingness to learn. And with a motivated student body being the crux of Stuyvesant’s repute, this isn’t conducive to a thriving school environment. Encouraging students to take STEM classes and forcing them onto students are two very different things, and the administration should stop doing the latter.

To be fair, Stuyvesant is definitely a school that concentrates on the sciences above all else, and every student who goes here was made aware of that fact beforehand. From the multiple floors devoted to science classrooms and renovated laboratories, it’s obvious just by stepping into the building that the administration tends to prioritize STEM.

But most humanities-oriented individuals couldn’t afford to count this imbalance as a factor when choosing to attend this school. Most humanities-centered schools are both limited in presence as well as size and resources, which reduces the number of opportunities offered to their students. Stuyvesant can provide students with outstanding faculties, and along with its prestigious reputation, this hardly makes it an acceptance one can afford to decline.

Students are enticed by what Stuyvesant has to offer: it seems like the right place to go to put themselves on the path for success, and for a lot of them, it is. Classes such as drafting and computer science also teach important skills valued by many potential employers. But the skill set they cater to is extremely specialized, and students who aren’t interested in going into engineering, for instance, will find very little use in taking drafting. But even if someone is only interested in pursuing a career in the medical field, knowledge of the humanities is universally essential to excelling in future fields.

Studying subjects such as language arts or social studies helps improve writing and critical thinking skills. These disciplines encourage a more creative thought process. At the bare minimum, these classes help students write an important biology research paper, nail an engineering presentation, or even speak more eloquently during a deciding interview. And with schedules already chock-full of extracurriculars, core classes and APs (that are already arguably much more rigorous and math/science-focused than in a regular high school), it isn’t fair for the administration to mandate such an excessive number of STEM-based classes. This can be especially frustrating for students who are already struggling in their math and science classes.

Piling on so many classes on these students has a backward effect. Their workload in such subject matters simply doubles, but understanding does not. While students are being immersed in the content, it can often become overwhelming, and—for students whose skills don’t lie in STEM—almost impossible to handle.

In order to remedy this, the administration should relax the policy surrounding electives, or at least switch one out for a humanities subject. At the very least, students should have somewhat of a choice between computer science and advanced English. Humanities classes are meant to culture future generations and make them well-rounded citizens who can not only contribute to society, but also do it intelligently. By mandating only STEM-based classes and limiting the number of humanities classes a student can take, the administration is entirely underestimating the value of these classes.