NSS History

NSS History S3 Subject Choice

Why should I study History? Analytical skills can be applied to current issues and other subjects.

Critical mind with Solid foundation

1.

2.

3. An understanding of the past

Discover the origins and development of modern events Approach the past and the present from multipleperspectives Develop skills of critical thinking and make sound judgments

What will you learn in NSS History? Theme A: Modernization and Transformation in the Twentieth-Century Asia • China • Hong Kong • Japan • Southeast Asia

Theme B: Conflicts and Cooperation in the Twentieth-Century World • Major conflicts and the quest for peace • The Two World Wars, The Cold War, International cooperation and the conflicts in the 1990s

An Introduction – The making of the Modern World

Assessments Public Examination (80%) • Paper 1 (Data-based questions) • Paper 2 (Essay questions)

Elective (20%) An individual project A.Comparative Studies B.Issue-based studies C.Local heritage studies S5: Submission of Study Outline (10%) S6: Submission of Final Product (10%)

Examples of SBA titles 1. Characteristics of different totalitarian states: A comparison between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Comparative studies) 2. Was the First World War due to German ambition? (Issue-based studies) 3. Changes and transformation of the Central Police Station in Hong Kong (Local heritage studies)

Students’ qualities to study History 1. An inquiry mind to explore and explain (Why?) 2. A willingness to … Imagine the situations in the past

Listen to stories Draw connections to the present 3. Abilities to … Read, write, memorise and make critical judgment Have a fair level of English

“History is unrelated to me.” • …People currently living were paying insufficient attention to the dead. … young people at schools have been given the idea of a liberal education, without the substance of historical knowledge. … They have been trained in the formulaic analysis…, not in the key skill of reading widely and fast. They have been encouraged to feel empathy with imagined … Holocaust victims, not to write essays about why and how their predicaments [suffering] arose. … Niall Ferguson, Civilisation The West and The Rest (Allen Lane, 2011)

“I’m only interested in the future.” • The dead outnumber the living, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind. The past is the only reliable source of knowledge about the fleeting present and to the multiple futures that lie before us, only one of which will actually happen. History is not just how we study the past, it is how we study time itself. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation The West and The Rest (Allen Lane, 2011)

Thank you!