I don't do a single humanity subject in the hsc so I had a look at some humanities syllabus out of interest. When I compared them to science subjects like bio and chem, what I noticed was a vast disparity in quantity. With science subjects, you do 4 modules, full of theory and experiments and secondary research, but then I look at subjects like legal studies or modern history and there is far less content by comparison. We are actually struggling to maintain our pace in biology right now, not because of our teacher, but because there is just so much content crammed into such little time. I am not trying to undermine the importance or difficulty of any humanities subject, but does anyone know why they have far less content than science subjects?
And the general trend is, people are opting out of science subjects, which is why they pretty much got rid of all the maths in HSC physics. Even my maths teacher reckon it is far easier to score well in humanities nowadays with far less work.
You can't assume that humanities (whether it be history or social sciences) have far less content than science subjects from just their respective syllabus.
I did Business Studies, Economics and Physics in Year 12 and if I had to rank how content heavy they were... I would actually have to say that they're pretty even for me personally. There was a high degree of memorisation involved in Business but the sheer quantity of my notes for Economics and Physics (especially the Q2Q option) weren't a joke either.
It's interesting how you've raised these points when most people would actually assume that Business Studies and Economics are much more content heavy than Physics!
As for the assumption that - ''it is far easier to score well in humanities nowadays with far less work''...
Wouldn't the fact that humanities involve a greater degree of memorisation actually mean that getting the higher marks would require far MORE work (the effort of having to ''memorise'' more often) rather than LESS?
Easier to score well in humanities with an EQUAL AMOUNT OF WORK? This is because the sciences inherently have a much more strict marking criteria compared to the histories or social sciences.
We still have to account for the fact that the sciences, in the end, scale better than the humanities (only Economics can really match the scaling of Physics and Chemistry).
I'd agree that subjects like Legal Studies, SOR and Business lack content, but Modern and Economics surely dont. Both are extremely content heavy. However, with a lot of humanities subjects (especially Modern), learning the content is only half the picture. In order to do well in a subject like Modern, you need to have a firm grasp of the issues in order to produce a band 6 quality essay.
In terms of the Business and Economics comparison, these are basically my thoughts on it:
I think in terms of the sheer quantity of content that you have to PROCESS - Economics is probably more content heavy in this regard compared to Business Studies. Like, my Economics notes were definitely longer than my Business Studies notes in Year 12.
However, in terms of the quantity of content that you have to consolidate/revise/learn by memorisation or rote learning - Business Studies is probably more content heavy in this regard to Economics. There is more opportunity for ''understanding'' in Economics, hence you can avoid memorising more often when it comes to exam preparation and revising the syllabus, than in Business Studies.
There is more opportunity for ''understanding'' in Physics, Chemistry and Biology as well (maybe more than Economics). Nevertheless, Economics and these sciences still involve a significant degree of memorising/rote-learning for most people.
Scaling isn't determined beforehand by the BOSTES but after the exams each year as a comparison of the performance of the candidature of each course against the performance in every other course. They appear similar year on year because similar students do them each year.
I also know many students who do the Sciences and do very well but who struggle in the humanities and vice versa.
The types of knowledge and skills required in each subject is very different.
Modern is a subject that is very content heavy by the way - if all you do is look at the number of dot points then you aren't doing a comparison of the quantity of content anyway.
This.
Just because the Physics, Chemistry and Biology syllabus are very detailed, in terms of the dot-points, compared to let's say the Business Studies or Economics syllabus, it doesn't directly mean that Business Studies and Economics are less content heavy than Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
