Labs are a crucial method of gaining hands-on experience and insight while working within the realm of science. A lab’s controlled nature with every step and measurement being planned out ahead is essential to properly performing and comprehending what is going on. And so long as the parties performing the experiment understand why they are doing each of these steps, labs are an extremely useful pedagogically useful tool. This is particularly true for science classes such as biology and chemistry because seeing organ systems or chemical reactions first hand is necessary to fully grasp the concept of what may be occurring. These fields require a fundamental understanding of how these subjects exist in the real world, and labs allow for this experience unlike the simple reading of a textbook ever could.

 

Labs may not be explicitly necessary for non-specialist subjects like the sciences, but the application of learned knowledge in a real setting could have the potential to benefit any other subject. If we think of labs as simply the practice of a skill following strict guidelines to yield a highly specific result, then students perusing majors ranging from theater to accounting already perform this in the real world through internships and introductory jobs in their respective fields. And for those who don’t, the implementation of the skills they learn in the classroom under a highly controlled setting could be largely helpful prior to pursuing jobs in the real world. For example, students pursuing accounting majors could practice the skills they learn within the classroom in computer labs, balancing budget sheets in the presence of a skilled professional from within the field.