As part of the world’s constitution the social sciences plays important roles that govern our existence as well as other sciences. The age of enlightenment has forgone different kinds of revolutionary changes from the Stone Age to the Digital Age. The various fields of study have immensely sharpened our world. Thanks to endless research/experiments, and the ever probing minds of great thinkers such as Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, Auguste Comte, karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Gordon Allport, Cesare Beccaria , Charles Darwin, and a host of others to numerous to mention. Studies in behavioral patterns have pushed the frontiers and modified the barriers of the way psychology defines or perceives the individual as one unit of a societal collective.
We can only acknowledge that there has been a lot of a debate in regards to some theories and issues, and even then, their impacts have been felt in numerous ways both positively and negatively. (I’ll like to bypass those debates/issues for now).
Sociology is simply the study of societies' various empirical investigations and critical analysis that have been used to develop composite knowledge about the social activities of humans. Auguste Comte defined sociology as the science of social phenomena "subject to natural and invariable laws, the discovery of which is the object of investigation". Psychology on the other hand is the study of the mind and behavior, the main objective is to understand individuals in the society, for example areas like motivation, personality, brain function and so on.
Lets take a journey down memory lane into the adolescent years, looking back at the past from elementary school to high school I could only imagine the influence that psychology or sociology would have had on young developing minds if introduced early enough. Back in high school the pre-requisites you needed to obtain admission into higher education were English, Mathematics and other subjects that were relevant to your intended course of study hence, six years of intensive study in these compulsory subjects, I remember having issues with mathematics, I really had no choice but to study hard to pass. Even when I knew my intended course had no need for mathematics.
As time has changed, western education has afforded the availability of a wider range of subject areas to choose from. Imagine a scenario where the rudimentary levels of Psychology or sociology were made compulsory, think about it for a minute when I say elementary I mean units such as their immediate family and school function in its societal structure. Imagine, a myriad of issues would have been solved or avoided by understanding the individual behavioral patterns of the immediate environment. For example knowing why a kid derived pleasure from bullying his mates - these could be issues stemmed from parental influence or transferred aggression. Think about the benefits this would have, if we simply layed out these foundational precepts through a thoughtfully revised curriculum, the end result- A more psychologically balanced generation, equipped with better people skills since we live in a world that is social driven where the core existence is based on human understanding and mutual respect.
