Well, I don’t think anyone would ever completely discard any discipline as unimportant. Every discipline is as important as it is needed in specific ways.
But an undeniable fact is that some disciplines are more sought after than others in vital areas of life and by extension, more important than others.
We cannot pretend that all subjects have equal prospects in the industry, no. The employability rate of some disciplines is much more than others, and that’s because of the demand from employers which eventually translates to the comparative importance of such subjects in human endeavors over others.
In addition, the displacement of many employees asa result of automation is a clear proof that some disciplines have less prospects, because nowadays, there are software and machines that can do just what those displaced employees can, often more reliably.
There’s Natural Language Processing as a branch of study, which can do as much as demanded, for instance. Automating the instruction of History is even easier.
The truth therefore is, there are many Arts, Social Sciences and even Science courses that automation has rendered least prospective.
So while the perceptions held by different people about Arts and Social Sciences (as unimportant) may be somewhat wrong, it does not disprove the fact that other disciplines are more sought after by employers, have more prospects for employability (including self employment), and are more important in human endeavors than others which are important in their own rights, but of course less than the others.
It is what we live with, so I wonder why it is difficult to decipher.
