Albert Einstein was, by anyone’s standards, a genius. However, if you put him in an art class he would most likely fail.

He was successful in math and science, but he was not born with the same amazing ability in art.

Just like Einstein, many left-brain thinkers struggle with art and many artistic people struggle with math. People’s brains work differently, so it does not make sense that they should be forced to take the same types of classes.

It is unreasonable to expect a left-brain thinker to excel in an art class or vice versa. With art, a person either has talent or not. With math, a person is either going to understand it or they simply cannot.

The point of school should be to help students further their knowledge in subjects they are interested in, not to force them to learn about something that they either do not care about or are not built to understand.

If a student wants to learn how to be a better artist and how to draw or paint better, then their education should be focused on that. After all, if that is what they are going to do later in life, then they should spend their time in school preparing for it, not wasting time learning how to take the derivative of an equation when all they want to do is make art.

However, this does not mean that they should have no math or science courses built into their schedule.

Courses that they do have that are science- or math-based should be applicable to daily life.

For math, they could take a class on how to balance a checkbook and manage a budget. Then for science, they should take a human anatomy course because it is always important to know how our bodies work and what to do when something goes wrong.

On the flip side, if students excel in math or science but is not artistic, then instead of making them take talent-based classes they could take photography or an art-history class.

Everyone can learn how to use a camera; I am not saying that every picture they take will be a masterpiece, but at least they will have a fighting chance.

The point is that someone who is interested in the arts should be allowed, encouraged even, to take art courses, but they should also have to take math and science courses that will actually be helpful in their lives. And someone who is a “science geek” should not have to feel frustrated and bad about themselves because they are comparing themselves to artistic people who were born with a talent that they do not possess.

As Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”