Equipping to read law

Haha..I was inspired to write this entry by a friend of mine who put out a proposition that science students are more equipped to read law than arts students. That's a really surprising viewpoint for me because I've always held that arts students are way more advantageous in reading law. First of all, there needs to be geographical and definition clarification before I proceed. When I mean Arts, its pre-university (A Levels or STPM). And I'm a Malaysian who studied in Singapore for my O and A Levels, and so, my A Levels Arts course is conducted in English. The situation in Malaysia is different though, STPM is where Arts are conducted in Malay while Science is in English unless the person does A Levels in private institutions. I'll address stuff on both parts of the peninsula..haha. Btw Joann, if u're reading this, u can also refer to this entry where I point out how my two favourite A Level subjects helped me very much in reading law.

Generally, being Asian countries, it's utterly impossible to run from the labelling that Arts students are the weaker bunch and those that graduate from it are..well..no where to go..haha. So, in Singapore, Arts in A levels has an easier cut-off point to get into than Science. I believe parents on both sides of the causeway would nag their children to get into and do well in Maths or Science. But I beg to differ that there are some students who chose Arts by choice because it's their passion and interest despite having the ability to do science. And many a times, these are also the same bunch of people who will reap the maximum benefits from studying Arts and possess really some vital skills such as critical thinking and creativity as compared to mindless grinding and practicing sums for Science.

Ahahaha, this may be a bit bias, but don't flame me. I'm speaking as a pure Arts student observing Science students and the studying style in general and of course, there will always be some who don't fit inside my generalization. First of all, science students are subjected to the same monotonous drill of sucking up the facts, memorise, practice and execute what you have just implanted in the brain. They can't dispute about Newton's law, matrices sequences or why certain chemicals just turns out that way. Students just take the reasoning as it is given from the text book and there are no alternative ways to think about it. So, it's equally fascinating to Science students that in Law, there are no right or wrong answers! In Maths and Science, they will ALWAYS be a definite answer. You can't say 2+2 maybe equals to four or it could mean something else. It is four and there are no other answers. You can't start arguing that 2+2=5 because it's impossible to do so. In exams, you are either right or wrong. There's no maybe, mid-way or out of the box answer you can give. This simple foundation speaks in general and shapes the way Science students think and approach matters in the real world and this results in the production of some rather rigid, boring and box-minded individual.

On the other hand, Arts students are already taught to be argumentative because the nature of their subjects demand them to be so. They need to write essays expressing out their thoughts. History for example, is NOT memorising dates and recounting them. That's blasting out "Chronicles". History is a subject of picking out points and arguing about subject matters. It's questions like "Is America justified in exploding the atomic bomb in Japan?" and "Which factor is most important in ending the Cold War" rather than when/what happened on a particular date. There are many dates and events in World War II for example, but the historian learns to pick the important ones to strengthen his argument and analysis. And every person has got different ways to argue about the topic and they are all equally permissible way to approach the subjects. In English Literature, students learn to analyse double meanings behind the words, language features such as metaphors, personification and ironies and at the same time, learn about life lessons regarding human nature from the authors and poets. For exams, students are stretched really to the limits in producing a creative critical analysis of what they read if they wanna score an A and not just literally recount the novel like a comprehension passage. Thus, Arts students would not be surprised on the way the reading of law is being approached. They have the critical thinking skills and can think really more subjectively because their academics encourages them to think out of the box. And they certainly don't fear the amount of words that they need to go through for law because they've being doing it all the time already.

The thing is that in terms of general knowledge and language skills, I'm of the opinion that Arts students are better than Science students. The scope which Arts students had to cover is very wide but Science students are very limited to the scope that they had to focus on. Not only that, Arts exams are way harder than Science exams and not the other way round. It's easy to pass Arts exams but to score an A is never a guarantee at all because it all depends on the skill and talent. For Science, it's a matter of getting hardworking and start practicing and grinding till you pop. I've seen many Science students who failed badly initially but easily scored all As in the finals because, well, they just had to study what is required..simple as that. For Arts, it points down on whether the person have the flair or none at all. The person can be a bull in practicing essay after essays but still fail in the end because he just doesn't have that creative edge. And another person could do it effortlessly in producing top-quality essays without studying half as hard as the bull person. This sounds a bit cruel, but any tom, dick or harry can actually do Maths and Science if he sits down and practice diligently on the facts and experiments but for Arts, not everybody can do and be well-versed in Arts even if he/she wants to. It's either you have it or you don't.

Hmmm..I'm in the opinion that Arts courses in Malaysia should really be restructured because they don't encourage that much thinking. I kinda understand why many Malaysian students loath Sejarah because it's all chronicles and memorisation! This gives them all the wrong perception about History. Plus, the scope of Sejarah in Malaysia is too narrow and doesn't focus on important practical knowledge such as World War II and most importantly, the Cold War which has shaped world politics for the 50 over years. It's really shocking if more than half of the graduating batch from Malaysian high schools don't even know who Joseph Stalin is. Hopefully there will be education reforms on the Sejarah syllabus. Well, Singapore is quite well-developed in the teaching of Arts and Humanities but sadly, there are very few who value the uniqueness and sheer talent that is involved in there. Most of the resources and attention are always provided for Science students and Arts students will always be regarded as the lousier lot. Unfortunately also, most Art students in Singapore end up as recycled materials in the forms of teachers especially if they don't do maths.

In any case, studying Arts has been really a joy. In my O Levels, it was such a torture to study and practice and practice my Maths and Science. The process of learning is just gone and it's just slavery. But for my pure Arts course in A Levels, I get to learn about the process of learning and developed my thinking in many ways unimaginable. You'll never see life in the same way as the masses once you've study arts and make full use of the skills obtain from there.

Yup, hopefully this post would give some new insights regarding pure arts students (and I'm proud to be one of them!) plus change a few minds =p