'Science versus art' has always been a highly debatable issue among people.

Some believe that authorities should devote more

financial aid to science education for a nation to emerge into development and success. This essay will discuss why science-
oriented education can be harmful, and why art subjects are as equally important as science to develop a successful nation.

To begin with, although governmental efforts to support Stem subjects (science, mathematics and technology) have succeeded
to create high-performing students in the field of science, they have created a recipe for disaster for them. Firstly, researchers
stated that there is a close relationship between the incidence of depression among students in Stem schools and pure Stem
learning. In fact, science, as a field of study, is based on facts and requires tremendous effort to retrieve the information which
has been studied. This will in turn cause severe anxiety and stress among learners on the long run , leading to a dramatic
increase in suicidal rates in high-schoolers. Moreover, studies showed that pure scientific education encourage introversion
and anti-social behaviours. This is due to the fact that studying science demands hours and hours of high level of concentration
, which force a student to lock himself in his room for a long time without normal interaction with family and peers. Eventually ,
the government will succeed to create a generation of high- performing students in science, however turning a blind eye to the
devastating consequences of this single-sided educational strategy.

On the other hand, other subjects including art, drama and music, encourage creativity and innovation among learners. This is
because the imaginative aspect of these subjects. Art tend to help students to develop skills, generate ideas and create
fictional thoughts. As a result, their mental health will be efficiently improved and their grades in other subjects will rise
conspicuously. Not only do artistic subjects improve mental health , they enhance one's relationship with his family and
colleagues . According to scholars, increasing the duration of art lessons stimulates the brain to release a chemical substance
called Serotonin . This substance boosts mood , increase self-confidence and encourage interaction with others , allowing a
student to be more sociable and extroverted . These qualities drive the student towards innovation and creativity in various
fields .

To conclude , I believe that art is as imperative as science in terms of progress and development. Both subjects are integral to
create a high-performing nation, so the government should equally invest in both subjects to have a well-balanced educational
systems as well as mentally healthy students.

The given bar chart illustrates gender distribution of regularly exercising Australians in six age groups for the year 2010.

Overall, the highest percentage was of women aging between 45 and 54 years while the lowest was of 35 to 45 year old males.
The maximum percentage of regularly exercising men had been recorded in the 15 to 24 age group.

According to the bar chart, the percentages of men decreased dramatically from 52.8% in the 15-to-24 age group to only 39.5%
in the 35-to-44 age group. On the contrary, figures for women rose steadily from 47.7% to 52.5% in the same age groups.

On the contrary, regarding higher age groups, the maximum percentage for both genders was attributed to women in the age
group 45 to 54 years , amounted to 53.3% . This figure was lower by 3% in the 55-to-64 group . As for men, conversely, the
percentages were higher in higher age groups , rising from 43.1% to 45.1% for the same age groups. Figures for both men and
women were close regarding the age group of 65 and above ,46.7% and 47.1% respectively, with only a gap of 1.6% in favour of
women .
So you're having a baby? Welcome to the world of perfectionist millennial parenting, Harry and Meghan

Harry and Meghan have announced they are expecting their first child

Harry and Meghan have announced they are expecting their first child CREDIT: SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE

Rosa Silverman

It’s been a strong week for baby news. No sooner had we absorbed the joyous tidings that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are
expecting, than Pippa Middleton and husband James Matthews announced the arrival of their firstborn. At this rate, the
Cambridges will be having triplets by the weekend. (Since they already have three children under six, we hope for their sakes
they don’t.)

There is an agreeable symmetry to the fact that the siblings of both William and Kate are embarking on parenthood within the
same year; and Harry and Pippa will no doubt be grateful to have older siblings already some way down that path.

Because as keen as our mothers are to show us the ropes, millennial parents are in many ways a different breed: they
frequently take a perfectionist approach at once enabled and promoted by, among other things, the wealth of information now
available online, and the need to perform parenting more publicly than ever .

An internet article published the week my first child was born, in 2014, is a prime example of this overwhelming information
overload: “21 amazing parenting apps that will make your life easier,” ran the inadvertently terrifying headline. (Anything that
requires 21 apps to make it easier must be pretty bloody hard to begin with, I reasoned.)

But success, if not perfection, can apparently be pursued by plugging into the enormous font of parenting wisdom out there,
no matter how contradictory and confusing it can be. No wonder we’re all suffering from anxiety. As Vogue put it earlier this
year: “Millennials are the most tech-savvy generation in human history, and the most anxious. Coincidence?”

Not everything can be laid at the internet’s door though, as tempting as this blame game can be. In fact, the pressure on
millennials started far earlier in their lives. We are a generation whose school years were characterised by year after year of
examination, followed by further years of anxiety around the task of honing our CVs. Our potential and ability were nothing
compared to the stellar work experience placements and internships we had to make darn sure we accrued. University wasn’t
just about education; it was also about ensuring we had clocked up enough extracurricular positions and hobbies to be rated as
suitable candidates in some imaginary future job application scenario.

Perhaps this can partly explain why a study of more than 40,000 university students published at the end of last year by
psychologists at the University of Bath found perfectionism was more prevalent among millennials than in any previous
generation. And why wouldn't we extend such perfectionism to our parenting?

Another thing that differentiates this new cohort of parents is the older age at which we’re having children, a trend visible in
Royal and celebrity circles too: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were 31 when they had Prince George, while new mum
Pippa is 35 and mum-to-be Meghan 37. In 2016, 54 per cent of all live births in England and Wales were to mothers aged 30
and over, while more than two thirds (68 per cent) of new fathers were aged 30 and over that year. This means many new
parents today have had around a decade or more of climbing the career ladder before they started procreating. When they
temporarily step off it to have a baby, they take with them some of the transferable skills they have already learned in the
workplace.

For instance, we cannot buy a product, be it sling, pram, crib mattress or breast pump, without carrying out a wide-ranging
consultation process, largely via Google and WhatsApp. We strive to micro-manage the life out of our children’s behaviour,
particularly obsessing over sleeping and eating habits - all of which there are apps for, thank goodness. And it can be an
expensive business: we spend vast sums attending classes with our first child and feel bad about taking our second child to far
fewer. (How will they ever succeed in life if they never went to baby sensory, baby swimming and baby yoga?)

The problem, suggests parenting expert Anita Cleare, is the tendency of today’s mothers and fathers to see our children as
extensions of ourselves, and thus part of our quest for personal perfection.

The Duchess of Cambridge was 31 when she had Prince George

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were 31 when they had Prince George CREDIT: DOMINIC LIPINSKI/PA

“Modern parents often worry about whether we are getting parenting ‘right’,” she says. “We tend to see our children as a
reflection of ourselves and our competence as parents, rather than accepting them as independent personalities over whom
we have only a limited influence.
“We live in a culture where individuals are regularly measured and rated – at school through SATs and at work through targets
and reviews. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of parenting too as a performance you can grade.”

The result is we end up approaching parenting, “wanting that same sense of achievement and success” we look for elsewhere.
Hence, perhaps, the boom in private tuition, as middle class parents throw money at the problem of how to give their child the
academic edge. The proportion of pupils who had had a private tutor was up from 18 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent by 2016,
according to Sutton Trust research.

It’s not enough to simply feel we are doing the right thing, either. We also need to be seen to be doing it. Children’s birthday
parties are a prime example: British parents are said to spend an average of £166 on each child’s party, so intent are they on
keeping up parenting appearances. How different from the parties we attended in our 1980s and 90s childhoods, in which a
few kids went round to someone’s house, played pass the parcel and ate chocolate fingers.

Other trends have meanwhile come full circle. Mindful home-cooking is now embraced by those parents who were themselves
raised on a diet of oven chips and Wagon Wheels. And, amid growing concern about adding to the mountains of plastic we
discard, environmentally conscious, ethically sound millennial parents are also re-embracing reusable nappies, which now
come in bright colours and a range of sustainable materials. The hashtag #modernclothnappies had been used on Instagram
more than 17,000 times at the time of writing, again indicating the need of many to be seen to be doing the right thing as well
as actually doing it.

In short, presentation and display is now key. In the age of “sharenting” on social media, the relentless pressure to portray our
family life as perfect - or at least as interestingly and hilariously imperfect - is intense.

All of which can take its toll on our children. Parents’ excessive use of mobile phones has been linked to an increase in
children’s behaviour problems, while in a recent study by Illinois State University and University of Michigan Medical School,
some 40 per cent of mothers and 32 per cent of fathers admitted to some form of phone addiction, leading to what the
researchers dubbed “technoference” in their relationships with their children.

Previous research has also shown a significant decline in the quality of interactions between children and their mothers when
the latter have their phones out. Yet we’re righteously appalled that so many children start school now without being able to
speak in full sentences. Go figure.

Other pressures, there are plenty as well. While painstakingly curating a frequently dishonest display of our family life online,
we want and need to keep achieving at work, keep the house looking lovely, maintain an active social life, keep fit and look
good.

Lisa Williams, co-host of The Hotbed podcast about sex and relationships after having children, says: “What we hear from our
listeners are the words ‘overwhelm’ and ‘anxiety.’ I think these two things are a result being a parent who feels they have to
have it all. It’s not good enough to be ok at lots of things. We have to be really good not just at parenting but at a career.”But
Harry, Meghan, Pippa and James, and their fellow parents of today should take heed, as Cleare cautions against allowing
perfectionist parenting to spiral out of control. “Trying to be a perfect parent sets up you and your child to fail, because life is
messy and complex,” she says. “Children and parents will get things wrong, and that’s ok. It’s not getting everything right that
matters; it’s the learning we take from our mistakes.”