• Question: Why do you prefer Science and other STEM subjects over humanities such as History and English?

    Asked by miley on 13 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Jo Montgomery

      Jo Montgomery answered on 13 Nov 2025:

      I am interested in all sorts of things – and loved many different subjects at school. I actually did A levels in Biology, Chemistry, French and Latin as I couldn’t choose between science and languages! I think subjects are sometimes artificially divided. There’s lots of creativity in science; and literacy and maths skills are really important. History needs lots of analysis and evaluation, which are also key to science. In the past our great science thinkers were often polymaths – studying lots of different things!

    • Photo: Heather Walton

      Heather Walton answered on 13 Nov 2025:

      For me, it’s about being able to work out the answers from a set of basic rules, rather than having to memorise specifics, that’s just how my brain works!

    • Photo: Pete Webb

      Pete Webb answered on 14 Nov 2025:

      Actually, I don’t prefer STEM over humanities. I love geology and I’ve enjoyed my career in oil and gas exploration, but on the way I’ve studied comparative religion, learnt several languages, sung in choirs and enjoyed philosophical debate.

    • Photo: Sharron Kenny

      Sharron Kenny answered on 11 Dec 2025:

      i actually have no preferance. yes my main qualifications are science based and my day job is in science but i have a keen interest in history and studied this up to A level.

      i have no personal experience but i always thought for some reason there would be more job roles in science which is why i took this to degree level rather than something like history. esspecially as it didnt want to move too far from my local area. this may not be the case at all as i didnt research into it alot when i was younger and that was many years ago now. just my thoughts at the time.

      i like local history the kind that surrounds us day to day for example my local church dates back to 1851 and the farm we have was built by john and benjamin green in 1831 they also built and designed the theatre royal in newcastle and greys monument

Comments

  • Photo: Andrew M

    Andrew M commented on :

    I’m generally interested about just about everything, particularly if the person teaching it loves their subject and is passionate about it. I loved and still love, history, but not the way it was taught in school. Episodic, isolated, devoid of context. English was similar, there’s nothing like dissecting a text, line by line, word by word, for weeks on end to rob of all feeling and joy. Geography and economics I was very fond of. I won prizes for economics and captained the school’s geography team. I would have loved to continue to study these, but at each stage we’re asked to narrow our focus, become ever more specialised. With science it was just easier to see a way forward. The jobs, the career, the life it would lead to, the greater certainty of finding a place in the world doing something I enjoyed. When it came to the time I needed to decide what my future would look like, I chose the future I could see, learning from the teachers most able to convey their own love of the subjects. Mr. Oliver’s love of dramatic demonstrations, Mr. Porteous’s love of rocks and minerals. Mrs Ambrose and her bees, Mrs. Heaton and her astronomy, Mr Maclaren who reminded me of Beaker…
    With different teachers, with different advice, with a different vision, well, the outcome might have been very different.

  • Photo: Caroline R

    Caroline R commented on :

    I absolutely LOVE history and it is so relevant to my current field of work. The history of medicine in particular, that I first learnt during GCSE history, is something I often use in my studies and work today, we have so much to learn about our past and it really helps shape our future.

    I would always recommend the humanities studies working alongside your STEM studies, they go together amazingly!