This fires up a heated argument over whether studying liberal arts including literature produces more benefits or drawbacks on high school students’ lives. While there are many debates that studying literature could waste ample time of students, I would argue that it can be beneficial in other ways.
On the one hand, many educationalists believe that literature is intertwined with cultural and historical aspects of each society. In addition, studying literature can facilitate students to gain a comprehensive understanding of their culture, history and their ethos. The schools should educate students to learn about their culture and language on early ages. Therefore, students can broaden their horizons through spending their leisure time on reading novels and poems.
On the other hand, the advocates of STEM courses (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) maintain that studying liberal arts cannot provide students a broaden range of job opportunities which they are not the demand of today’s communities. Needless to say, it is beneficial to the youth to spend their precious time on studying STEM courses rather than non-STEM subjects. In the long run, young people can occupy the most important and demanding positions with higher rate of income. For instance, many developing and third world countries do not invest on liberal arts and students who are in favor of literature or history would face many troubles to find a relevant career.
To sum up, I believe novels and poems are inseparable components of each society’s literature and studying them could be advantageous due to familiarizing the new generation with their background and culture.
