So far, the high school education system in Korea has been divided into liberal arts and natural science tracks. However, last August, the Ministry of Education announced to merge them as of 2018. Though the new curriculum is established to produce students with both liberal arts knowledge and scientific thinking ability, it sparked the natural science students’ strong opposition. As they claim, should liberal arts and natural sciences be divided in high school? Or by extension, natural sciences and humanities are fundamentally different?

 

Actually, liberal arts and natural sciences are not completely separated studies ̶rather, they are linked closely, like an intricate web. More and more studies are done, between the boundaries of natural sciences and humanities. Evolutionary economics integrates traditional economic studies with Darwin's evolutionary theory. Science and technology studies have a research about the enhancement of science technologies by the view of humanities and social sciences while the network science goes over grounds of math, physics, and social theories. These are some examples of studies to cross borderline between natural sciences and humanities. As you can see, humanities and natural sciences share huge interface, but the tendency to divide them is prevailed in our society.

 

Edward O. Wilson, Harvard biologist professor, claims that we should break down the walls between natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences in his book Consilience. He believes that natural sciences and humanities would be the “two great branches of learning in the twenty-first century”, and “the social sciences will continue to split with in each of its disciplines, a process already rancorously begun, with one part folding into or becoming continuous with biology, the other fusing with the humanities.” Wilson also argues that the current education of scientists is too limited in narrow professional fields, making them to view the world wholly. Living in Korea, which has the culture to segregate people who had taken the natural science courses and the liberal arts, his claim to unite the natural sciences and humanities in university, seems quite persuasive. The Korean educational system pins down to students’ disposition between liberal arts or natural sciences, letting most of them to avoid diverse fields of studies after graduation.

 

Furthermore, zoologist and biologist professor Jae-Chun Choi of Ewha Womans University is renowned for criticizing Korea’s educational system dividing liberal arts and natural sciences courses, even referring it as the ‘Stone Age education’. He said that “Korea is the only country that divides the high school educational system into liberal arts and natural sciences tracks,” and for disciplinary convergence, “the barriers between natural sciences and the humanities should be eliminated” in high schools.

 

As Professor Choi asserts, the division of liberal arts and natural sciences in the Korean educational policy has problems. It makes students shun the other field of studies after graduation, and causes the limit of communication between people who have studied different areas. Korean teenagers must go out to society, without sufficient knowledge of diverse fields. The educational system segregating liberal arts and natural sciences courses is same as drawing borders around them to choose only half of the world.

 

It is a well-known fact that the Apple’s success is accomplished by not their techniques but also humanities. Whoever our society needs is the cultured person in both humanities and natural sciences as Steve Jobs. Professor Choi also said that “Korean students do not lack the intellectual ability compared to American students. The missing point is the ability to transcend disciplines.” To develop their internal ability and raise the stellar students with affluent knowledge, the trial to integrate liberal arts and natural sciences courses is essential.

 

Edward Wilson again: the only way to unite "the great branches of learning and end the culture wars," is to "view the boundary between the scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides." By the merger of liberal arts and natural sciences courses, Korean students will be able to approach easily to the various filed of knowledge. Through extensive and intensive search for liberal arts and natural sciences fields at the same time, I expect them to be a global leader, getting far toward the world.

 

By Soo-Yeon Kim
(DG reporter)