Is Science first class and Art second??

In the conversation with a person whom you have just met, you usually include harmless topics like where you live, what kind of job you do, how many children you have (if married)...etc. Some people ask me what I studied in college. A few months ago, I was introduced to a 29 year old pretty Saudi girl from Riyadh. She is married and has 2 children. We asked each other how many years we had stayed in this country...etc. (We both live here as foreigners)

She told me she loved Animation or Manga since I am from the country which is famous for its production and that she wanted to study it after she finished high school and here is exactly what she said. "You know my parents are both doctors and wanted me to study not that kind of stuff but something else and I studied computer science." If I hadn't had a conversation with my friend, Faisal a few months back, I couldn't have understood the link between her parents' job and her not being able to pursue animation in college in spite of her interest in it.

Faisal explained to me how the educational system goes in Arab. For many people, regardless your interest, if you are very smart, you are encouraged to go to medical school. If you are smart, you are advised to study engineering. If you are not smart, you have no choice to go to science course in college but to art course. Faisal told me he studied engineering though he wanted to study history but his family pushed him to go to an engineering school. The same thing happened to some of his friends. Well, I have my degree from art field, so I asked Faisal. "Does it mean once an Arab knows what I studied in college, he concludes I am not smart enough?". Faisal said "Most probably". Actually I don't care what kind of judgment Arab people make on me. I just think it is a crazy system where people's interest is not much reflected in the process of deciding what study they want to pursue. I hope the explanation given by Faisal was just an extreme example in Arab.

Back to the conversation with the pretty Saudi lady....
So, after she looked so proud of having studied computer science, not Manga and I thought she wanted to be just kind to me, a person from Manga country by saying she loved Manga so much as to want to study but it turned out rather RUDE to me. From the way she said I could feel the field of Manga is not considered something great in her society as a study subject and I felt it was lower kind of study compared to other scientific fields like medicine, engineering...etc. I wasn't happy at all with the way she said it. If she hadn't said it proudly, I would have said right away "Oh, I feel sorry that you couldn't study Manga that you really wanted to study" but seeing her so proud, I swallowed it. Everybody has different interest and it is the best if one can pursue his study based on his interest and this interest has no superiority or inferiority. All art fields of study should be considered as highly as other science fields. For me, it is such a shame and so unbearable if a person has to pursue what he is not interested in. I wish I had had the guts to say to the Saudi girl "Why can't a daughter of doctor parents study Manga? Is there anything wrong?" but I knew sadly that my point and her point would never cross becasue I didn't think she could understand that Manga is as a great field of study as science field, especially in the world where she doesn't live. My real point is that she should stop and think about the situation where she can't even choose and go for what she really wants to do in her life based on her interest. She may say to me "It is none of your business" becasue she herself might be considering Manga as lower kind of studying field than that of computer science but she thought she was being just nice and modest in front of me and I want to say it is wrong!