1. NSS History
S3 Subject Choice

2. Why should I study History?
Analytical skills can be applied to current issues and other subjects.
An understanding
of the past
A Critical mind with Solid foundation
Discover the origins and development of modern events
Approach the past and the present from multiple-perspectives
Develop skills of critical thinking and make sound judgments

3. 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

4. Assessments Public Examination (80%) Paper 1 (Data-based questions)
Paper 2 (Essay questions)
Elective (20%)
An individual project
Comparative Studies
Issue-based studies
Local heritage studies
S5: Submission of Study Outline (10%)
S6: Submission of Final Product (10%)

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

6. Students’ qualities to study History
An inquiring mind to explore and explain (Why?)
The ability to …
Imagine the situations in the past
Listen to stories
Draw connections to the present
Read and memorise large amount of content
Make critical judgment
Have a fair level of English

7. “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)

8. “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)

9. Thank you!