Social Studies is of No Relevance?

 "Why are we taught Social Studies in school? Social Studies is of no relevance once we grow up!" Somebody told me this when I was in class 10. And very recently another commented the same with some addition to it, saying that, "General Knowledge is more important than the regular Social Studies textbook". I do agree that general knowledge is important because last month a friend of mine didn't knew the CM of Maharashtra. But, I must say that the base to general knowledge is Social Studies. 

Some may believe that I am writing this blog because I am going to be a lawyer and 'Social Studies' is the base of it. Well, this isn't an emotional appeal to bring the 'unimportant' subject to limelight but, it is just an explanation as to why social studies is important to every layman. 

So, in school Social Studies was divided into four fragments namely History, Geography, Civics and Economics. I believe History is the most hated child because it has a lot of facts and names and a lot more of memorization. To go back to school days and reminisce the answer to the question as to why History/ past is important we may remember, 'It helps you prevent the from making the same mistakes of the past.' 

Are we repeating some mistakes? Well, Yes we are! 
How? might be the next question. 

Consider, the Russia Ukraine war. Was UN able to take an action against Russia? No because, Russia is a permanent five country. Have we made made a similar mistake before? Yes, we have with the failure of League of Nations. 
Now this is all History, Civics and GK!
The Russia Ukraine war is all GK and present affairs but, one with no knowledge of NATO's formation, the reason of its formation (history!) will be able to decipher the objective of the war. One without the History will have 'half knowledge'....which is always dangerous. 

So we now know that Social Studies is important for building up our General Knowledge. But the very first question is still unanswered, 'Why do we study Social Studies?'

Civics, which is basically the constitution of India is of importance because without it we may be unaware of our basic fundamental rights. Fundamental Rights and Duties are of importance to any lay man. 
Women in the history were exploited because they were unaware of their rights! They weren't educated enough to fight for them. No doubt, even today the people of oppressed class are exploited because they don't know their rights....the very basis of Civics! 

Geography! Longitudes and Latitudes! Why can that be important? Well for a huge country like India, it is very important to know about the Geography. 
Green revolution was carried out in Punjab (land of five rivers) because of the abundance of water, great soil and most importantly the type of crops grown there (wheat: which made India self sufficient and an exporter of agricultural goods). 
Geography becomes important in defense. One who is well versed with the Kargil War may know that India won the war because we used our 'Geographical position' wisely. 
Even during the natural disasters we use a lot of geographical knowledge. I leave this unexplained because with so many cyclones hardly anything remains to be explained. 
Aircraft pilots require 'geographical excellence' as the recent demise of our beloved Gen. Bipin Rawat was due to lack of knowledge of the climate!

No doubt, Economics is important. Stocks, unemployment, policy making everything depends on it! 

All in all we need Social Studies! In fact no area of the so called 'unimportant subject' can be ignored!