By Mauranda Men ’16, Feature Editor

Math and science person. English and humanities person. Left brain. Right brain. Each day, students use these descriptions to describe their internally regarded strengths and justify the weaknesses they encounter in their academic journeys. I’ve often heard the complaint, “I’m an English person. That’s why I just don’t get and can’t do physics.” Tacitly acknowledged, math and science are grouped together, English and the humanities are grouped together, and a chasm of knowledge exists to separate the two sets of disciplines—such that the average layperson can only excel at and fully enjoy one or the other. Science and humanities can both be extremely fact-based. Why aren’t the two associated with each other more often? In each of these four subjects, conjectures are made and proven. Yet these curricular subjects are framed in academia very discretely.

Most students have an embedded opinion on which classes, either math and sciences or English and humanities, they prefer. There’s a myriad of justifications for the division between the two. To Dean Rosenthal ’16, the difference is in the confidence with which conjectures can be made, stating, “With math and science there are facts that exist to be true even for things we don’t know…with a lab, for example, you already know that you’re right. In the humanities, any teacher can grade you based just on your opinion.” In this sense, the void between the two worlds exists because of the ways classes are set up.

Mathematicians and scientists can certainly face uncertainty with postulations and struggle to find proof; high school students, though, have the good fortune of being able to use the work of those who came before. Paige Willian ’16 noticed that the curriculum affected people’s views on these subjects in general, saying, “We’re just learning the basic skills, so right now math equals the steps and humanities means thinking about the world.” To Paige, the main difference lies in the prospective answers a student can give: “With math there’s only one answer. With English and history there’s room for interpretation, different ways to look at the facts.” Students agree: people tend to like math and science mutually or English and humanities mutually. The preference seems to be natural, embedded in the differing personalities of people.

Although their livelihoods are focused on specific subjects, the teachers were more open-minded on the topic than the average adult. Declared Ms. Morin, “We’ve all got stuck putting things into boundaries and having education be framed. I think it’s about the different way that each discipline sees the truth and how we justify things,” pointing out that even in one academic department, huge variations are possible. That variety is certainly evident in the Humanities department, which encompasses classes from Economics (with math prerequisites) to Philosophy and Art History. Mr. Kanarek believes, “People are drawn in the direction of their natural affinities. When someone is really good at something, they tend to discount what else they might be good at.” Either because of the way that courses are framed or because of embedded psychological blockages, a divide seems to exist, albeit an unnecessary one.